BBC Symphony Orchestra

Polish music played by the Brits – this is a brief introduction to the evening's program, during which the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michał Nesterowicz will perform. The first of the compositions, Symphony prelude ‘Polonia’ Op. 76 by Edward Elgar, written in 1915 at the request of the conductor Emil Młynarski, is a unique tribute to Polish music. The work contains quotations from the works of Frédéric Chopin and Ignacy Jan Paderewski (from ‘Polish Fantasy’) and from the Polish patriotic songs: ‘Warszawianka’ and ‘Dąbrowski’s Mazurka’, a crowning of the entire piece. The premiere of the composition took place in London in 1915 during a concert organized by Paderewski and Sienkiewicz to help Polish refugees.

The evening, apart from Elgar's piece, will also be filled with music by Polish artists from three different generations. Performed by a Canadian pianist with Polish roots, Janina Fialkowska, we will hear Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 17 by Paderewski. He began writing this youthful composition in Poland in 1882, and this work continued over the next few years, traveling with the pianist through Warsaw, Kraków, Zakopane and Vienna, until its final shape in Paris in 1888. The composition was dedicated to the composer's Viennese teacher Teodor Leszetycki.

The work of another young artist, yet regarded as a breakthrough, promising further development of the composer's style, is Symphony No. 1 by Witold Lutosławski. The composition which he was writing for six years was completed in 1947 and premiered one year later. In the following year, when socialist realism became an obligatory trend, this piece, referring to the classic four-movement form experimenting with harmonics and melodies, was considered "formalistic", and because of this it disappeared from concert halls for several years.

The concert will also feature a new piece commissioned by the BBC from one of our best-known contemporary Polish composers, Paweł Szymański.