Olga Pasiecznik; Mariusz Godlewski; Kevin Kenner; R Kurek
Description
Chopin did not compose very many songs, around thirty or so, and he did not write all of them down, and so no more than twenty have come down to us. Nevertheless, they are not an entirely marginal strand in the Chopin oeuvre,
but rather a path running alongside the highway.
They may be regarded as documents and evidence of his private life, reflections of events, sensations and experiences, the notation of situations and states of mind that altered
over the years. A kind of intimate journal. He did not write his songs to commission or for the stage. He himself chose the lyrics, through which he sometimes expressed his reactions to the world, to the course of history and to his own life.
Chopin composed all his songs to Polish verse by contemporary poets, nearly all of whom were well known to him. His friendships from Warsaw with the poets Stefan Witwicki and Bohdan Zaleski became closer and
deeper in exile. Chopin turned to Witwicki's Rustic Songs ten times; it was Witwicki who inclined him at first towards a rustic and early Romantic disposition, influencing the character of his early songs.
He composed his songs as if casually, in passing, over the course of twenty years, between 1827(?) and 1847. Two parallel strands entwine and complement one another, in a way that was particularly characteristic of Polish song, where the erotic frequently coexisted—in art, as in life—with the heroic.
None of Chopin's songs were performed on a concert platform during his lifetime. He did not include any of them in his recitals. He heard only some of them, in 'domestic' situations, interpreted by his sister Ludwika, Maria WodziÆ’ska and Delfina Potocka.
Olga Pasichnyk (Pasiecznik) performs the songs here, having debuted with the Warsaw Chamber Opera in 1992, and four years later with the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris
as Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute. She has performed in operatic productions at major venues around the world.
She is accompanied by Californian pianist Kevin Kenner, winner of the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, the International Terence Judd Award in London, and third prize at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow.
Singer Mariusz Godlewski is also the laureate of many national competitions. In 2002, he made his debut at the Polish National Opera in Warsaw as Pelléas in Debussy's
opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He has appeared on many operatic stages in Poland and abroad and has performed under the baton of Valery Gergiev amongst others.
In 2019 the Fryderyk Chopin Institute released an album of songs by Stanislaw Moniuszko in which Godlewski was accompanied by pianist Radoslaw Kurek who himself has performed as a soloist with Wroclaw Philharmonic, Pomeranian Philharmonic and Baltic Philharmonic orchestras.
Tracklisting
Cyprien Katsaris
Vadym Kholodenko
Ewa Poblocka
Maria Joao Pires
Halina Czerny-Stefanska
Ewa Poblocka
Aleksandra Swigut
Chouchane Siranossian, Oh! Orchestra, Martyna Pastuszka
Soloists; Les Traversees Baroques; Meyer
Richard Casey, Annabelle Lawson, Joanna Lam, Peter Lawson, Stephen Plews, Jean Hasse, David Owen Norris, John McCabe, Aleksander Szram
Duncan Honeybourne, Helen Cawthorne
Maria Callas
Mayke Rademakers
Katharina Konradi, Catriona Morison, Ammiel Bushakevitz
Lisa Illean, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, GBSR Duo, Juliet Fraser, Explore Ensemble
Narratio Quartet
