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10 April 2026 Wrocław (Wroclaw) (Poland)
Eternal songs
NFM Wrocław Philharmonic conducted by Yaroslav Shemet - NFM Narodowe Forum Muzyki (Main Hall)
Program Info: There are few figures in the history of Polish music as tragic as Mieczysław Karłowicz. His promising career was interrupted by death in an avalanche on the slopes of Mały Kościelec in February 1909. He was only thirty-two years old at the time. One of his outstanding works will be recalled by Yaroslav Shemet – artistic director of the Silesian Philharmonic and music director of the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk. The program will be complemented by compositions by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Giuseppe Martucci and Richard Strauss.
Mieczysław Karłowicz's favourite musical genre was the symphonic poem. Six of his works are considered by scholars to be the pinnacle of Polish symphonic music of the early twentieth century. The eternal songs are quite unusual, as they consist of three links. The composer also did not leave a very extensive commentary on this work, but only two mottos: "Here I stand before you to complain about my fate..." and "Greatness, Power, Majesty, Eternity, Ruthlessness, Necessity". Karłowicz's friends mentioned that his main source of inspiration was hiking in the Tatra Mountains, and Henryk Opieński noted after a conversation with him: "In the form of a symphonic triptych, the author said what sang to him in the soul of a musician-artist, when, perhaps resting on the granite peaks of the Tatra Mountains (among which he has been constantly staying for several years), he pondered about the greatest mysteries of human existence: the eternal longing of the spirit, about love and death...".
It is often pointed out how much film music composers owe to the creators of late Romanticism. One of the artists combining both of these fields was Brno-born Erich Wolfgang Korngold. He was called a child prodigy, and Gustav Mahler himself spoke of his talent with great enthusiasm. In the thirties of the twentieth century, Korngold left for the USA and gained great fame as an author of music for Hollywood productions. An example of such success was the soundtrack to the adventure film Sea Hawk from 1940, from which a Suite was later compiled to be performed independently during concerts. The colourful, accessible and effective Overture is a good example of Korngold's style.
Italian Giuseppe Martucci is now a somewhat forgotten figure. His atmospheric, lyrical and singing Nocturne in G flat major is a reminder that composers from the Italian Peninsula wrote not only operas, but also symphonic works devoid of programmatic elements. For this reason, and because of the inspiration of the German Romantic school, Martucci is sometimes referred to as the "Italian Brahms".
The concert will end with a performance of Richard Strauss's colourful, lavish Suite from the comic opera The Chevalier der der Silver Rose . It was prepared by Artur Rodziński – the artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, who also conducted the premiere of the Suite in October 1944. The Polish conductor certainly had a great sentiment for this work: in 1922 he presided over the Polish premiere of Strauss's work at the Warsaw Opera – it was later considered one of the most important events in the history of this institution in the interwar period.
Program: Mieczysław Karłowicz - Eternal Songs – symphonic poem Op. 10 Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Overture Suite from the movie the Sea Hawk *** Giuseppe Martucci - Nocturne in G flat major , Op. 70 No. 1 Richard Strauss - Suite from the opera The Knight of the Silver Rose , Op. 59, TrV 227
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