Karol Szymanowski - Love Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princes; Harnaise

Karol SZYMANOWSKI (1882-1937)

 

 Harnasie, Op.55

Love Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess, Op.31

Love Songs of Hafiz, Op.26

  Iwona Sobotka (soprano)

 Timothy Robinson (tenor)

 Katarina Karnéus (mezzosoprano)

  City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus

Simon Rattle

Despite being influenced by the likes of Richard Strauss, Debussy, Ravel, and his countryman Chopin, Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) composed music of great beauty and unique exoticism. The two song cycles recorded here, written during World War I, are more than tinged with orientalisms, with the East filtered through French pastels. The first, Love Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess, consists of just three songs and is only nine minutes long. The titles--"The Lonely Moon", "The Nightingale", "Dance"--give away the styles in which they're composed: each is a coloratura gem that sometimes lapses into sheer vocalise, with the texts left behind. Bird-like soprano Iwona Sobotka sings them splendidly.

Love Songs of Haviz, the other cycle, is based on translations of 14th-century Persian poetry. The late-Romantic texture, the expressive honesty, and the use of percussion--both high and low, is warm and tempting. Szymanowski wisely uses a darker, mezzo-soprano voice to express the intermingling images of nature and desire, and Katarina Karneus caresses each languourously. The lushness and decadence of a song like "Pearls of my soul" occasionally calls to mind Zemlinsky and his like.

Sandwiched between the cycles is a ballet called Harnasie, completed in 1931 and peculiarly scored for tenor, chorus, and orchestra. Inspired by the folk sounds of the Tatra Mountains, this is forwardly propulsive, rhythmically jerky, occasionally Stravinsky-like music that perfectly suits the subject of a bride being willingly abducted on her wedding night by bandits in the Carpathian Mountains. The textures are on a grander scale here--still strangely ethereal at times, but intercut with more earthbound sounds. Blocks, snare drums, and possibly a whip enter the aural landscape, and the xylophone goes wild.

All of the music recorded here is gripping and thrilling, filled with harmonic and orchestral surprises, and Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Orchestra and Chorus obviously feel passionately about it. The performances and sonics are exemplary. This out-of-the-ordinary program is vastly entertaining, very rewarding, and comfortably otherworldly.

--Robert Levine., ClassicsToday.com .10/10

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The Songs of a Fairy-tale Princess was written by Szymanowski to poems written by his sister Zofia, originally for piano and voice and then orchestrated in 1933. The three movements (originally 6) are for a coloratura soprano and are very impressionistic in style, reminiscent of Debussy and Ravel. The orchestrated poems - The Lonely Moon, The Nightingale and Dance - have a eastern sound to them, and there were written shortly after Szymanowski composed music for a series of Persian poems titled Love Songs of Hafiz (from translations by Hans Bethge). The songs were completed in 1914 with three of the eight songs composed in 1911; all of them exhibit a lush oriental sound that is exotic and mysterious. The longest song is the last - Hafiz' Grave - and is a beautiful lament sensitively sung, as is the entire cycle, by Iwona Sobotka

The ballet-pantomime Harnasie was begun in 1923 and was completed in 1931. One of the musical influences in the work is music from the Tatra Mountains in the Ukraine where the composer's family had a home, and where Szymanowski enjoyed a happy working atmosphere. The plot concerns the abduction of a bride by one Harnas, leader of a group of bandits known as the Harnasie. The music owes a debt to Stravinsky for the battery of percussion but the music is also descriptive of the land of the Carpathians, has some exotic dances and is wonderfully orchestrated as only Szymanowski could. The ballet premiered in 1936 with Serge Lifar dancing Harnas and was a great success. The ballet makes use of a chorus and tenor soloist to great effect.

The recording is beautifully balanced and is a must for anyone interested in the music of Szymanowski and late-romanticism in general.