Szymanowski - L'ile des sirenes

[fnork]

Live from Santa Barbara, California, earlier this summer.

[rachfan]

Hi fnork,

This piece strikes me as a florid work yet having a mystical element perhaps inspired by Scriabin's late period. It's surely a difficult piece, but you play it very naturally, convincingly and with fine artistry.  Superb!

David

 

[fnork]

Regarding Scriabin, that's a very correct observation! It is said that Szymanowski often had the scores of both Chopin and Scriabin lying around where he lived, also when he was composing. I don't know how familiar he was with Scriabin's LATE style at this time (the music here dates from 1915, and Szymanowski had just returned to Ukraine after extensive traveling in europe and north africa), but he was surely familiar with the earlier works. For me, Szymanowski seems to have made a very succesful blend of the styles of Ravel/Debussy on one hand (he spent a fair amount of time in Paris, and let's not forget that he titled the pieces in french although they weren't written there!) and Scriabin on the other. Debussy and Ravel were both after writing in a manner that sounded like a free improvisation - to me, Szymanowski went way ahead of these two, creating something music more wild and free of restraints in form...

[ahinton]

Regarding Scriabin, that's a very correct observation! It is said that Szymanowski often had the scores of both Chopin and Scriabin lying around where he lived, also when he was composing. I don't know how familiar he was with Scriabin's LATE style at this time (the music here dates from 1915, and Szymanowski had just returned to Ukraine after extensive traveling in europe and north africa), but he was surely familiar with the earlier works. For me, Szymanowski seems to have made a very succesful blend of the styles of Ravel/Debussy on one hand (he spent a fair amount of time in Paris, and let's not forget that he titled the pieces in french although they weren't written there!) and Scriabin on the other. Debussy and Ravel were both after writing in a manner that sounded like a free improvisation - to me, Szymanowski went way ahead of these two, creating something music more wild and free of restraints in form...

Indeed so - yet look also at the three piano sonatas (for all the shortcomings of the first), all of which are highly disciplined structurally and end with fugues, the latter being of particular interest given that these three works each belong to a quite different period of his creativity.

Best,

Alistair

[fnork]

I totally hear what you're saying (and he really WAS such a crafsman as well, probably a lot thanks to his earlier grounding in the german school of composition, which he later said he resented, except the "old" germans), though the 3rd sonata to me comes across as very improvisatory and free as well (just consider the constant tempo-shifts..). I don't know it well enough to comment in detail though - I'm sure it is brilliantly crafted as well. I mean, the Metopes in all of its occasional wimsyness and spontaniety is ALSO structurally very coherent - the very ending is a reminiscenze of the theme from the 2nd piece, Calypso, and the melody of L'ile des sirenes could be traced down to a few motivic ideas, perhaps a bit similarly to something like Ravel's "Ondine". And of course, the interval of the ninth is heard consistently throughout, and various compositional techniques like having one hand play only on white keys and the other only on black, are all things that help making the music sound more coherent. Even when Szymanowski is improvisatory, there is a clear sense of where the music is going.

Hope that makes some sort of sense Played any Szymanowski, Alistair? I'm thinking of what to do next - learning more mazurkas would certainly be fun!