Opening Day Recordings

"Fialkowska's warm, robust sound and her willingness to take risks are a rare treat...she is a pianist in the grand romantic tradition".
-The Globe & Mail, Toronto

"...a sweep and fluency of expression that is aLmost miracuLous."
-Montreal Gazette

"Janina Fialkowska played with glittering panache".
-The Times, London

The Four Etudes, opus 4, date from Szymanowski's early student days in Warsaw (1900-1902) when his piano music responded not only to Chopin, but to German romanticism as in the first study, with its Brahmsian parallel sixths or in the Wagnerian progression of the fourth study. There are even hints of Scriabinesque writing, particularly in the second study. The third Etude, incidently, found an early champion in the renowned virtuoso Ignace Paderewski.

The Variations on a Polish Folk Theme, opus 10 was adapted from Kleczyynski's collection of folk music from the Tatra mountains in Poland; this collection was to become a major source of inspiration for the composer. Later in his career Szymanowski was to demonstrate a less academically refined approach to folk music (the opus 62 Mazurkas, for instance) but at this time his chief mentors were Chopin and the German romantics and it is not difficult to pinpoint their influence on the overall plan and detailed working of the piece - it is nevertheless an astonishingly mature essay in a challenging genre. Most striking of all is the control of the ambitious musical structure. Using the full arsenal of romantic piano devices (excruciatingly difficult for the performer at times) Szymanowski creates altemating rapid and exquisitely crafted slow variations. An imposing Funeral March, with heavy tolling bells, leads to the final variations. The finale introduces a touch of humour when a fugue, which begins solemnly enough, explodes in pianistic fireworks!

The three poems comprising 'Metopes' were composed in 1915 and in this work the composer adopts a highly personal impressionist manner. Like the metopes of Doric architecture (a metope being the space between two triglyphs; an ornament with three vertical channels on a Doric frieze) Szymanowski's pieces are intended to outline stages in history, in this case hased on Homer's Odyssey. 'Isle of the Sirens' takes much of its musical detail from mythological sources. Strange pianistic configurations reflect the double flute and lyre of Homer's time, an insistent lullaby, and bird-calls remind us that the sirens were half-bird and half woman. 'Calypso' portrays the daughter of Atlas and Tethys, who personifies the depths of the sea and who kept Odysseus on the island of Ortygia for seven years. 'Nausicaa' depicts the danc- ing of Nausicaa and the Phaeacian maidens who discover Odysseus after his shipwreck.

'Masques' (1916) consists of a set of tone poems for piano, with elaborately sectional formal schemes reflecting the unfolding narratives. The first poem depicts the familiar Scheherazade of the 1001 nights. 'Tantris the Clown' is based on Ernst Hardt's distortion of the Tristan legend and clearly aims to depict in musical terms the grotesque antics of a crazed lover. Amidst the crisp rhythmic patterns and points of sharp dissonance, both the Love theme from Scheherazade and a new theme are subject to wicked distortion. Don Juan's Serenade (dedicated to Artur Rubinstein) opens with an extended passage of quasi-improvised character. The serenade grows impassioned and urgent as it develops, eventually leading smoothly to a retum of the introductory cadenza.

Szymanowski's final works for piano, the Mazurkas opus 62, were commissioned by Sir Victor Cazalet, a British music lover. Delicate, nostalgic and intensely personal, the Mazurkas are imbued with a dream-like shadowy quality. The composer's beloved Tatra folk music makes here its final unearthly appearance in his music.

Notes by Janina Fialkowska