Festiwal Szymanowski / Polska / Świat by Szymanowski, Mahler, Od (2022/2022), Dirigent Richard Rosemberg, Filharmonia Narodowa, Warsaw, Poland

Building the world. Mahler and Szymanowski “Symphony for me means building the world with the use of all available techniques” – these words, repeated by Gustav Mahler, became his artistic credo. In fact, music – not only symphonic music – was for both Mahler and Karol Szymanowski the art of metaphor and the creation of the human world in sounds. Rocking the world Karol Szymanowski had the personality of a lyricist: he composed songs throughout his life, and it was first in the song genre that he underwent important stylistic changes. Three lullabies op. 48 were composed in 1922: the composer used in them the poetic texts of his cousin, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. These miniature songs belong to the stylistic circle defined by Słopiewnie op. 46 bis: there is also a motif from this earlier cycle, processed and presented in a new light. The melody is colored by modalisms, so characteristic of Szymanowski's "Lechitic" style of those years. The first two lullabies – Lean softly over the cradle and I sing to the sea, the stars and you (with a moving phrase – a request: Listen to me… ) – are kept in dark colors: Szymanowski was, after all, a “composer of the night”. Only the last song: The white circle of the moon brings lightening of dark colors, although with a leading note of melancholy. The nostalgic beauty and intense expressiveness of Three Lullabies resulted in an arrangement for voice with chamber orchestra by Jan Krenz. Man and Nature In 1908, Gustav Mahler composed Das Lied von der Erde ( Song of the Earth ) - his most personal work, which he called the Symphony. He reached for texts from the poetry collection Chinese flute from the 8th century, freely translated by Hans Bethge into German. He selected six poems and arranged them into a cycle about the spiritual journey of man: Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde ( Toast to Earthly Sorrow ) and Der Abschied ( Farewell ) form the framework heree). In this last song we experience time stopped: the world is getting ready for winter sleep. The cycle's message is clear: tam-tam becomes a symbol of human mortality, and the eternally reborn Nature is represented by the ephemeral and almost mystical sounds of the harp, mandolin and celesta. Composing Songs of the Earth was Mahler's antidote to the traumatic year of 1907, when he lost his child, had to resign as director of the Vienna Opera in the face of increasing anti-Semitic sentiment, and was diagnosed with a heart disease. Hence the key motif of the passing of time combined, by way of contrast, with admiration for the beauty and sublimity of Nature.