Witold Lutosławski (1913 - 94); 22-26/1/18

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think describing the Fourth Symphony as being a "largely re-worked" Third about as accurate as saying the same thing about RVW's or Sibelius', or Beethoven's ... two completely different works, each with their own areas of expression!

I think the flaw in these (otherwise very useful) programmes is the remit that seems to be propounded on the CotW website:

Witold Lutoslawski's extraordinary life mirrors the turbulent history of his homeland Poland, yet he consistently denied the effect of any of this tumult on his music. Donald Macleod is joined this week by Dr Nicholas Reyland to explore the truth of this denial alongside the life and career of one the most revered composers of the Twentieth Century.

... so they've brought in a Lecturer in Film Studies from Keele University to keep repeating a "well, what the composer says might be taken with a pinch of salt" mantra and churning out "fluffy clouds" comments, such as suggesting that the Third Symphony "might" remind us of contemporary Polish events (or events that the composer "might have been recalling from his childhood"). Can the conclusion of the work be so inanely described as "optimistic" - the preceding passages simplified to "bleak and dark"? Considering the number of the composer's other works which end with this type of flourish such comments are empty and crass - unless the conclusion of the Preludes & Fugue (for example) also looks forward to the triumph of the Solidarity Union?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"i", not "y" at the end, S_A! (Winter Sports, not Murdoch!)

[ahinton]

There are always places in these programmes where spaces open so wide one could drive a coach and horses through them - as for instance when on today's programme, mention made of Pope John Paul II's putative influence on the struggles that would lead to the ending of "communism" could have sparked an illuminating diversion completely germane to the directions taken by erstwhile avant-garde Polish composers thereafter, and considering Lutoslawsky's music in relationship with them. I suppose microscopic timings have to be calculated in the making of these programmes and the musical slottings therein, thus speedily foredooming any off-topicalising to never-never land.

Well, perhaps, up to a point but this is, I believe, where on some occasions mere mention is possible but meaningful exploration is not in the context of a slot of the length of CotW without compromising the amount of actual music broadast - and that "mere mention" en passant might risk coming across as at least as frustrating as wholesale omission.

[ahinton]

I think describing the Fourth Symphony as being a "largely re-worked" Third about as accurate as saying the same thing about RVW's or Sibelius', or Beethoven's ... two completely different works, each with their own areas of expression!

I think the flaw in these (otherwise very useful) programmes is the remit that seems to be propounded on the CotW website:



... so they've brought in a Lecturer in Film Studies from Keele University to keep repeating a "well, what the composer says might be taken with a pinch of salt" mantra and churning out "fluffy clouds" comments, such as suggesting that the Third Symphony "might" remind us of contemporary Polish events (or events that the composer "might have been recalling from his childhood"). Can the conclusion of the work be so inanely described as "optimistic" - the preceding passages simplified to "bleak and dark"? Considering the number of the composer's other works which end with this type of flourish such comments are empty and crass - unless the conclusion of the Preludes & Fugue (for example) also looks forward to the triumph of the Solidarity Union?

Agreed on all counts. My own comment on the Third and Fourth symphonies of Luto and Roussel (each of whose symphonic output totals four works) was intended solely to convey my impression that, in each case, the Fourths were somewhat weaker than the Thirds (which in each case would not be so difficult!) rather than that the Fourths were in any sense "reworkings" of the Thirds or other previous material, which I do not believe to be the case. As to the rôle of Dr Reyland, the phenomenon of "you can't always take at face value what the composer said" is a perennial cliché that can sometimes embrace truth but reiterating it in various contexts can never be as helpful or meaningfully illustrative of anything as can be listening to the music itself. Any suggestion that Luto ever worked independently - still less aloof - from what was going on around him in his country (especially given that, like Shostakovich, he remained determined to continue to live there regardless of what it might sometimes throw at him) would of course be entirely fatuous, but to attempt to speculate on - let alone draw specific conclusions from - his responses as a Polish citizen or as a Polish composer to the events through which he lived is to open oneself to the risk of walking upon unsteady ground. Furthermore, "in its end is its beginning" is something that one might reasonably say of the that fabulous work that is his Third Symphony and, if both are indeed in "optimistic" vein, I need to wash out my ears, I fear, for I must entirely have missed the point...

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, perhaps, up to a point but this is, I believe, where on some occasions mere mention is possible but meaningful exploration is not in the context of a slot of the length of CotW without compromising the amount of actual music broadast - and that "mere mention" en passant might risk coming across as at least as frustrating as wholesale omission.

I guess so, ahinton - particularly in the general context of R3 programming these days, where any mention to the effect that "and the spiritual aspects of this composer's music are being discussed in a linked programme to Composer of the Week, to be broadcast on Radio 3 in the next week, so get your pencils and diaries ready: on Friday a discussion on the role of Pope Jean Paul II's in the collapse of Communism, and the effects of the latter on Modernism on the Polish arts, 30 years on" would be beyond the conceptual mindset of those in charge at R3. It's a fat lot of good, expecting joined-up programming on Radio 3 nowadays!

As to the 4th symphony - pace your and ferney's comments! - I shall have another listen to the work tomorow, and let you know if my feelings are confirmed!

[ahinton]

I guess so, ahinton - particularly in the general context of R3 programming these days, where any mention to the effect that "and the spiritual aspects of this composer's music are being discussed in a linked programme to Composer of the Week, to be broadcast on Radio 3 in the next week, so get your pencils and diaries ready: on Friday a discussion on the role of Pope Jean Paul II's in the collapse of Communism, and the effects of the latter on Modernism on the Polish arts, 30 years on" would be beyond the conceptual mindset of those in charge at R3. It's a fat lot of good, expecting joined-up programming on Radio 3 nowadays!

As to the 4th symphony - pace your and ferney's comments! - I shall have another listen to the work tomorow, and let you know if my feelings are confirmed!

I cannot help but feel - after listening to quite a few performancs of the Fourth Symphony over the years - that the opening was actually written by Szymanowski, just as the opening, the middle and the end of Szymanowski's delightful Concert Overture was written by Richard Strauss!

[DracoM]

Well, No 3 sounds a pretty raw, angry, violent but orchestrally exciting piece to play

[Serial_Apologist]

I cannot help but feel - after listening to quite a few performancs of the Fourth Symphony over the years - that the opening was actually written by Szymanowski, just as the opening, the middle and the end of Szymanowski's delightful Concert Overture was written by Richard Strauss!

We know (from having watched the TV documentary!) how much Lutoslawski loved the third symphony of Szymanowski - the Song of the Night. There are strong Straussian influences in the first movement of Szymanowski's second symphony of 1909/10, right down to the clichés Strauss used to depict his own heroics in Ein Heldenleben etc! Prompted by what might appear to be incongruous Franco-Germanic stylistic juxtapositions in, particularly, Szymanowski's music up to around 1917, I've just now bumped up the thread on Egon Wellesz I started last night, which has been overlooked - possibly because people think it might be some kind of snack, or relation to a famous guide to restaurants! Wellesz was markedly influenced by then-modern French composers - one can clearly hear Debussy, Koechlin and even Satie in the music he was composing, even as he was studying with Schoenberg, alongside Berg and Webern.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, No 3 sounds a pretty raw, angry, violent but orchestrally exciting piece to play

- I'd add "exuberant", too. It combines Mahler's "containing the world" and Sibelius' "profound logic". Marvellous piece.

[Serial_Apologist]

- I'd add "exuberant", too. It combines Mahler's "containing the world" and Sibelius' "profound logic". Marvellous piece.

If anyone exemplified the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-thesis aetology it had to be Lutoslawsky! - first the thesis stage, as represented by the very beautiful traditional choral piece played right at the start of the week, through the antithesis stage of rejecting many if not quite all the stylistic traits accrued under pressure from imposed authoritarianism, represented by the music he composed in the 1960s and 70s, arriving eventually at the synthesis stage of the third symphony, in which the original genius finds full florescence in the light of experience and discovery: a trajectory followed by most if not all the greatest long-lived composers.

[HighlandDougie]

Glorious in every way, wasn't it? I've never heard this work played or sound better.

I've just pre-ordered the Chandos bundling together of the Gardner discs:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0788XVFFT/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Can I also commend this CD (about which I've enthused before - thrilling performance of the Concerto):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lutoslawski-Concerto-Orchestra-Symphony-No/dp/B01BLXNIMG/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1516901682&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=lutoslawski+kryzystof+urbanski

And this has reminded me that it is almost 50 years (49 in fact) since I bought the Rowicki/Warsaw PO Philips LP of the Concerto, Jeux Venitiens and Musique Funèbre - which I still possess - thinking that I was being terribly cool. The callowness of youth - but I've liked his music (well, most of it) ever since then.

[DracoM]

Try this No 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0aJHZ7LBMc

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If anyone exemplified the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-thesis aetology it had to be Lutoslawsky!

Lutoslawski!

[Serial_Apologist]

Lutoslawski!

Not in all my books!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not in all my books!

Get rid of the ones that don't give the "i" - they're shi--bbish.