Szymanowski, K.: Harnasie / Mandragora / Prince Potemkin: Incidental Music To Act V

Featuring

Antoni Wit
Wiesław Ochman
Alexander Pinderak
Ewa Marciniec
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra
Warsaw Philharmonic Choir

Karol Szymanowski

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Compositional Technique

Szymanowski's ballet score Harnasie makes full use of the folk music he heard in the Tatra mountains, presented with rich imagination and original elements from the mountain people's primitive music.

Composer's Artistic Vision

After World War I, Szymanowski began integrating elements of Polish folk music into his works, similar to Bartók and Janáček.

Historical Context

Szymanowski's family and immediate circle had a deep interest in the arts, with his siblings pursuing careers as musicians, poets, or painters.

Composer Biography

Karol Szymanowski, the composer, was born in 1882 in the Kiev District of Ukraine to a Polish landowner father and a Swedish mother.

Composition History

The short ballet Mandragora was designed for inclusion in the third act of Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme, a play also used as a pretext for Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.

Composer Biography

Szymanowski's sister Stanisława became a singer and his brother Feliks became a pianist.

Composition History

Szymanowski, along with Grzegorz Fitelberg (a conductor), Ludomir Różycki (a composer), and Apolinary Szeluto (a pianist and composer), formed the 'Young Poland in Music' group to promote new Polish music.