The first season of Andrzej Boreyka as the artistic director of the National Philharmonic will begin with a unique symphony concert on 4 October 2019 at 7:30 p.m.
Polish music could not be missing from the programme of the concert opening the new artistic season. Karol Szymanowski wrote his solemn Veni Creator for an equally festive event – assuming the post of rector of the Higher School of Music. Commissioned by the Ministry of Education in 1930, the piece, by necessity, had quite a pompous character, and was not among Szymanowski’s favourite works. However, as the composer expected, it quickly became very popular with the Warsaw audience.
Piano Concerto No. 3 holds a special place among the works of Béla Bartók: it is the last work that he managed to finish just a few days before his death in 1945. Contrary to his two previous concertos, the Third was not intended to display the soloist’s prowess as a virtuoso. The difficulty consisted in performing it with reserved expression that would evoke the striking beauty of the piece.
Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, dubbed “Beethoven’s Ninth of the 20th century” by Sergei Diaghilev, seals the end of the Romantic era equally uncompromisingly as Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde did some time earlier. The famous introduction to The Rite of Spring, which Stravinsky penned himself, describes nature waking up and the fear that every sensitive soul feels when confronted with its mighty power. Therefore, we have here a similar vision to the one from the beginning of Joseph Haydn’s oratorio Die Schöpfung – from endless nothingness to a mysterious vision of Chaos. The premiere of the ballet in May 1913 in Paris was remembered as one of the greatest and most scandalous affairs in the history of art, but on the other hand, one could speculate that Stravinsky wanted to follow the fashion and actually intended to write a piece that the spoilt Parisian audience would expect. After all, the incident during the first performance gave the Ballets Russes the greatest publicity they could dream about.
Piotr Maculewicz
More information at: http://filharmonia.pl/