Karol Szymanowski - Szymanowski: Stabat Mater [CD]

Karol Szymanowski (1882 - 1937)Stabat mater, Op. 53Veni Creator, Op. 57Litany to the Virgin Mary, Op. 59Demeter, Op. 37bPenthesilea, Op. 18Karol Szymanowski was born at Tymoszowka in the Kiev District of the Ukrainein 1882, the son of a Polish land-owner and of a mother of Swedish extraction,born Baroness Anna Taube. The family and their immediate circle had a deepinterest in the arts, a fact reflected in the subsequent careers of the fivechildren of the marriage as musicians, poets or painters. His sister Stanislawalater became a singer and his brother Feliks a pianist. Szymanowski's earlyeducation was at home, since a leg injury at the age of four prevented him fromattending school in the neighbouring town of Elisavetgrad (the modern Kirowograd),where, nevertheless, he had music lessons from a relative, Gustav Neuhaus, whohad a school there. In 1901 he went to Warsaw to continue his musical studies,taking lessons from the composer Zygmunt Noskowski in counterpoint andcomposition and from M. Zawirski in harmony.The feelings of Polish nationalism that had inspired Chopin and hiscontemporaries continued through the nineteenth century, exacerbated by therepressive measures taken by Russia, in particular, in the face of open revolt.Warsaw in 1901, however, remained as provincial as it had been in the time ofChopin, who had sought his musical fortune abroad in Paris in 1830. The centuryhad seen Polish performers of the greatest distinction, particularly theviolinists Lipinski and Wienawski. The opera composer Stanislaw Moniuszko,however, a rival to Chopin in his own country, enjoyed only a local reputation,while his successors, in Szymanowski's esteem, occupied a still lower place.Polish music was to a great extent isolated and provincial, a reflection of thesociety in which it existed. The new century, however, brought together a groupof young musicians of much wider outlook, a circle that included the pianistArtur Rubinstein, the violinist Pawel Kochariski and the conductor GrzegorzFitelberg. The last named, the composer Ludomir Rozycki and the pianist andcomposer Apolinary Szeluto, together with Szymanowski, established under thepatronage of Prince Wladyslaw Lubomirski the Young Poland in Music group, forthe publication and promotion of new Polish music. Fitelberg, by training aviolinist and composer, made his later career as a conductor, and directed thefirst concert of the group in Warsaw in 1906, when Szymanowski's ConcertOverture was performed. He won later distinction as conductor at the ViennaStaatsoper and in work for the Russian impresario Dyagilev, before returning todirect the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and, from 1947, the Polish RadioSymphony Orchestra in Katowice. Kochariski's support was to prove invaluable,particularly in the composition of the first of Szymanowski's two violinconcertos and in a number of works written for violin and piano. Rubinstein,who, like Kochariski, made his later career in the United States of America,prov