Poland Abroad Vol. 2
Symphonic Poems
Sheet Music

SKU: M7.EDA-27

Symphonic Poems. Composed by Alexandre Tansman, Eugeniusz Morawski, Grzegorz Fitelberg, and Simon Laks. CD. 64-page booklet. Duration 64'. Eda records #EDA 27. Published by eda records (M7.EDA-27).

Eda records launched the 'Poland Abroad' series in 2004 in cooperation with Deutschlandradio Kultur following a festival that the Konzerthaus Berlin dedicated to Poland as Germany's neighbor on the occasion of the eastern expansion of the European Union. This large-scale presentation put the spotlight on composers who have largely gone unnoticed on the international music scene and were persecuted or driven into exile due to the political situation (during the partition of Poland, the Nazi occupation, and the Communist yoke that followed). Some of them survived the war and the Shoah under dramatic circumstances. One such figure the festival highlighted was Auschwitz survivor Szymon (Simon) Laks, whose oeuvre runs through the 'Poland Abroad' series like a golden thread. It presents compositions of every genre: opera, ballet, symphony, concerto and chamber music. The goal is to highlight the outstanding quality of this repertoire in reference recordings and to encourage listeners to take an interest in two central aspects of cultural history (and not only that of the 20th century): transculturality and transnationality. All of the composers presented here stepped outside of their national context and demonstrated a style that was as individual as it was universal in their engagement with the various movements of the European avant-garde of their time. Vol. 2 of the series: a recording of a festival concert by the State Orchestra of Frankfurt an der Oder that not only commemorated the 500th anniversary of the Viadrina University, once the cradle of European humanism, but also the 100th anniversary of the inaugural concert given by Karol Szymanowski's 'Young Poland' group in Warsaw and Berlin in 1906 and 1907 - a concert that actually marked the birth of the musical modern age in Poland. The four world-premiere recordings on this CD include one of the 'founding compositions' of the movement, Grzegorz Fitelberg's symphonic poem Das Lied vom Falken (The Song of the Falcon), as well as Eugeniusz Morawski's Nevermore, composed in Paris and based on Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, and Alexandre Tansman's Hommage à Erasme de Rotterdam, one of his last and most important symphonic works. The city of Rotterdam had commissioned him to compose it in 1969 to honor the 500th birthday of the great humanist. Simon Laks composed his Poème for violin and orchestra - a violin concerto in one extended movement - in 1954 as a homage to his native country, destroyed by the Nazis and suppressed anew by a communist regime.