POKOLENIE STALOWOWOLSKIE [pdf] - Radio Katowice SA

motifs, quotations – this is our electronic, computer-wise, colouring, the quartet’s sound broadening level.
The melody of the piece is charming indeed – in the cantilenas of the cello and the viola we can found the
breathtaking glissandos, transferred then into very unusual accord settings, sometimes bringing on the
memory of the exceptional accordion sound, And the effect is overwhelming – the hum of the synthetic
wind. We have then in this Relief a world of very special intimacy, a lyricism of the sound’s poetry
submerged so to speak in the landscape of some nature. The nature, because of the wind. And the nature
of the soul because of the nostalgia. As if in this – as it happened to be – final work of his, Krzanowski
yearned for the world which he had foreseen, or just had wished to foresee…
I
n Aleksander Lasoń’s work it is not very easy to point to the composer’s spaces in any special way
outstanding. For the content of this album, needs to be noted the chamber work of this composer.
The fact of its being very rich can be supported just by the set of the chamber works presented
here: ten compositions written between 1980 and 2007. Similarly to the work of Andrzej Krzanowski, in
the catalogue of Aleksander Lasoń brings our attention – next to the seven numbered string quartets,
and numerous solo and chamber pieces – the separate cycle under the common title: Chamber Musics.
There are six of them, being written between 1974 and 200 – the piano quintet Chamber Music no. 1”Of
Stalowa Wola”, the second version of which has been presented within this collection, Number 2 for the
piano, 2 horns, the trumpet, 2 trombones and the tuba, Number 3for the wind instruments, the drums and
the piano, Number 2, finally titled “The Wind Quintet “Spring”, Number 5 – Four Seasons for the clarinet,
the trombone, the piano, and the strings, and finally Number 6 – Saxophonium for the saxophone quartet
and the drums. What is very characteristic – in some of these Musics (e.g. Number 2), and some other of
his chamber pieces, the set of the instruments brings them to the edge of what is still chamber, but about
to turn into a sinfonietta-like kind, that is intended for a small but still a chamber orchestra. As if a chamber
composer thought of taking a symphonic path…
Aleksander Lasoń fairly often underlines the fact that he feels like a symphonist. And indeed, the symphonio-orathorian
stream is in his catalogue exceptionally vivid and significant: four symphonies, symphonic
images, like Mountains, Cathedral, the concerting pieces – 2 nd “Concerting” Symphony with the piano,
Concerto “Pablo Casals in Memoriam” with the cello solo, the violin Concerto Festivo, with the accordion
Concerto “Harmonium”, the project in progress Missa Symphonia… This stream of Aleksander Lasoń’s
music is extremely intense, expressively dense, broad in dimension, strong and strict in its idea and
aesthetics. The chamber stream on the list of Aleksander Lasoń’s works is of not in the least secondary
importance and less significant – it counterpoints the symphonio-orathorian stream, the grand forms,
and sometimes reaching the shape of monuments, on the equal terms, binding this output into the
building vivid indeed, separate, different, unique and original. If Aleksander Lasoń underlined then his
feeling of being, above all, a chamber composer, it would not stir our reception of his work, and would
not depreciate him as a symphonist, just like his feeling of being a symphonist cannot possibly depreciate
him as a chamber composer that is always in him. But once upon a time a pianist-composer, too, also an
improviser – and this in the field of chamber music, and, in recent years, a composer-conductor – and this
in the field of symphonics. The conductor, it needs to be mentioned, managing not only the performances
of his own work. So the element of chamber music as well as of symphonism meet in Lasoń’s artistic life
with the performing practice from the very beginning – from The Concert for the Improvising Piano and
Three Tapes, which was written specially for the festival “Young Musicians for the Young Town” in Stalowa
Wola, and introduced together with Lasoń as the performer, up to the conducting author’s creations of his
of 3 rd Symphony “1999”, to mention just one.
*
Chamber Music no. 1 “Of Stalowa Wola” is chronologically the earliest of Aleksander Lasońs’s works
presented here. The firsts version of the composition, titled Chamber Music for the Piano and the String
Quartet, was written in 1974. In the catalogue which documents the output of the composer, worked out
by Iwona Bias and published under the title of Aleksander Lasoń – The Portrait of the Composer by Karol
Szymanowski’s Music Academy In Katowice in 2001 it holds the position number 6. There are four pieces
56–57
preceding it, written to the words by Teresa Snopkowska, and Impressions for the piano and the orchestra
– both pieces enjoying their first performance between 1872–1974. As early as in 1975 1st Symphony for
Wind Instruments, Drums and Two Pianos is conceived, and in 1976 presents the composer with the 2nd award at the 18th Grzegorz Fitelberg’s Composer Competition in Katowice, and in 1980 receives the highsest
score at the auditions of the International Composers’ Tribune in Paris. The first version of the piece closes
down then the juvenilia of the 24-year-old composer, at that time, still a student at Józef Świder’s class of
composition. It was performed for the first time within the concert cycle of the Silesian Composers’ Tribune
in Katowice on the 16th of April, 1975. The second version finds itself among the grown-up output, though
still so very “young”, and is made in 1978. Under the nickname “KRZYSZTOF-ANDRZEJ” it had been submit-