Months after the premiere of Szymanowski's Masques, his ancestral home was plundered and burned by Bolsheviks, destroying his two grand pianos.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Claude Debussy, the composer of Images, believed his first book of Images would find its place in piano literature, to the left of Schumann or to the right of Chopin.
Performer Biography
Yuval Zorn, the pianist on this album, dedicated it to the memory of his piano teacher and mentor, Professor Benjamin Oren.
Composition History
The three pieces in Szymanowski's Masques Op. 34 were each dedicated to a different pianist, including Arthur Rubinstein, a lifelong friend of the composer.
Compositional Technique
Debussy's Images, Book II, includes a tantalizing suggestion of an East Asian gamelan ensemble, inspired by the Javanese musicians he heard at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition.
Composition History
Karol Szymanowski's Masques Op. 34 was written in Tymoszówka, his ancestral home, between 1914 and 1916.
Composer Biography
Karol Szymanowski, the composer of Masques, is often considered the first notable Polish composer since Chopin.
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