Programme note: Polish(ed) Power

[CONCEPT] Traditionally, the classical canon of Polish composers of the 20th century is exclusively male (Szymanowski, Penderecki, Lutosławski, Górecki …). However, there is at least one woman who more than merits a place in this circle: Grażyna Bacewicz. Between 1935 and 1968, she built up an oeuvre of over two hundred works, mainly in instrumental genres. She had become an internationally renowned as a violinist, but had to largely give up her solo career after a car accident in 1954. The resulting disability compelled her to focus more on composition. Bacewicz’s music is almost always lively and powerful, and very immediate. What is also remarkable about it is how much her style evolved over the years. At first she was fairly in line with the neoclassicism that was very popular at the time, which incorporated many elements from Polish folk music, in particular in the dance movements. Later on, she opened up more and more to modernist innovations. Her two piano quintets are clear examples of this stylistic shift. Also on the programme is Bacewicz’s Fourth String Quartet, often considered one of her finest works. 

[PIANO QUINTETS] Thirteen years lie between Bacewicz’s two piano quintets. The first, from 1952, has a traditional four-movement structure, in which the movements strongly contrast with one another. Remarkably, Bacewicz often works with oppositions even within the movements, rarely staying on a chosen path for long. The first movement, for example, alternates between passages focussed on timbre and creating a mood (opening and closing) and moments that sound outspokenly like Bartók in their sharp dissonances and unconventional rhythms. At other times, she opts to give free rein to lyricism, but here too, it often gets obscured by overgrown contrasting ideas. Emotions oftens run together: a feeling of menace alternates and even sometimes overlaps with an apparent carefreeness, giving her quintet an outspoken dramatic power. The (three-movement) second quintet is even more radical, but no less energetic or thrilling – in fact, it’s even more so! Bacewicz works with brief gestures here, which heightens the sense of drama even more. The use of more modernist composition and playing techniques brings even more fine shades to her language. A crucial quality is harmonic expansion: while Bacewicz anchors the tonality in the first quintet, she largely lets go of it in the second, proving that tonality is not a prerequisite for writing exciting, coherent music.

[STRING QUARTET] Bacewicz wrote her fourth string quartet (of seven) in 1951 after winning Belgium’s very first ‘Concours international de quatuor à cordes de la Ville de Liège’. The prize was even more significant since the entries had to be submitted anonymously, and there were no fewer than 57 of them. The award did her no harm: it was partly thanks to this work that she received a Polish state prize the following year and in 1953, her piece was the compulsory work at a prestigious competition in Geneva. Stylistically, the quartet is fairly close to the first piano quintet, but its links to Polish folk music are clearer.

Pieter Bergé