POKOLENIE STALOWOWOLSKIE [pdf] - Radio Katowice SA

quartet to which the composition is dedicated, presented the piece for the first time on the 13 th of June,
1993 in Waterloo (Ontario), and it Polish premiere took place during the festival of “Warsaw Autumn”
in 1993 – the performers were the Silesian String Quartet.
Played attaca, the four-part piece (Deciso con grazia – Deciso con agitazione – Molto tranquillo
e semplice – Vivo e marcato) makes the next stage of Lasoń’s playing with the interior oppositions, bringing
them up together into the formally coherent whole. Looking somewhat into two different directions (of
this mentioned above element almost untamed in allegro and that also mentioned above lyricism, almost
romancing in adagio) – is admirable: Lasoń is not acquiring the aesthetic crossed eye, our (the listeners’)
– the receivers’ – reactions, leading us to what is (still!) coherent in his music, and not allowing them
to disperse into many incoherent units, which don’t have anything to do with each other. Here we have
Lasoń the dialectician who is pulling the listener’s leg, whatever he will, not letting him feel rested in any
of his expressive spots – either expressive or impressive, proving effectively that they do not tear his piece
apart into shapes separate from each other, but into shapes harmonically complementing each other.
According to the composer’s words, this piece became the next stage of his work over the new tonality, and
before all the new melodics. The expanded first part is a peculiar resume of the whole. Then we have the
fast and motoric part (with vigour), and then the third one, being a bit short “suspension” in the stativity
of the sounds more on the quiet side (contemplation), and eventually the finale – dynamic and lively.
The special tone of this piece is its melodiousness of a “romanticising” character. So we have here all
this, “romanticising”, but restrained, as if “kept in reins”. In her commentary to the piece, Elżbieta Widłak
pointed out that the “element bringing some order to the run of the musical narration, and to the balance
of tensions is the harmonic plan, and the single sounds-centres as well as the simple co-sounds make the
turning points of the musical action”.
In Deciso con grazia the first part of 3 rd Quartet, the form of which is divided by the energetic “beats”, like
in 3 rd Symphony or Witold Lutoslawski’s String Quartet, melizmatics seems oriental-wise, “Hebrew-like”
(?). In an obvious manner, here – but it applies equally well to other Quartets – the run of the narration,
very often piled up, very expressive and intense, aims in its density at the pure accords of the third, as the
point of destination. To a certain extent, like in Eugeniusz Knapik’s Quartet. He very often aims at these
points with his glissandos, and as often with the ones used by Paweł Szymański. In Deciso con agitazione,
the second part of 3rd Quartet we have vigour, waves of very strong energy, vitality turned into motority.
This is a narration somewhat appealing, as if agitating for its arguments: the appeal, the breath; the appeal,
the breath. And a little different is the final part of this Quartet – Vivo e marcato. Pushing forward,
the unisons bringing on the memory of the best sides of Krzesany and Orawa by Wojciech Kilar, almost
Podhale-wise folk type (although this one is a bit distant association), “hewing”, letting go the “motor” as
if echoing Harpsichord Concert by Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, rhythmicality disturbed with syncopes, joyfully
wound figures “slicing” for us the time of the perception of the piece. Well, and then Molto tranquillo
e semplice the third part of 3 rd Quartet. It is just a special stop on this dense, vigorous narration of the
whole of this four-part piece. The breath of the form, the stop in the run, in the time even. It is very close
to the idea of minimal music, something very exceptional in Lasoń’s scores. The notes (sounds) as if laid
separately, the texture quasi-punctualistic, like splinters, but the whole of this short part flowing in a slow
motion (paradox: short slow part!) makes the impression of the song of the breaths.
*
Relief for Andrzej Aleksander Lasoń composed in 1995, five years after his friend’s passing away, in the
title referring to the cycle of nine pieces by the author of Broadcasts. Reliefs were written by Andrzej
Krzanowski between the years of 1984 and 1988 for different solo instruments, especially the accordion,
and among these the final one – Scottish for the string quartet and the tape. The outside impulse for
writing this piece was for Lasoń the initiative by Bożena and Ryszard Gabryś, connected with the occasion
of giving the name of Andrzej Krzanowski to the Chamber Hall of Mieczyslaw Karłowicz’s Music School
in Katowice in the course of the 50
62–63
th jubilee of this school. On the 2nd of October 1995 this piece was performed
for the first time there by Silesian String Quartet, and then in 1998 it was presented again by the
same ensemble at the festival of “Warsaw Autumn”. In the year of 2000, the composer worked out the new
version of the piece for the viola and the string quartet.
And there we got a one-part piece of a formal rondo structure, starting with delicamente e affettuoso,
after which come agitato, misterioso con affetto, eroico i arioso con affetto – delicamente e molto vibrato.
Just the quoted here expression notions become the description of the genre of the emotionality of this
work, its “affections”, the work in which delicacy and sadness, mystery and heartfulness at the end of it
melt, so to speak, in the aura of the coloured key of F sharp major, in the ether-like void. This expression
tone no doubt dominates, but is being counterpointed with another – a tone in a sense of con vigore (as
a matter of fact, it is also the title of Krzanowski’s composition for eight performers, which is included in