Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess, songs (6) for voice & piano (1,2 & 4 also orchestrated), Op. 31, M32
Harnasie (The Highland Robbers), ballet pantomime for tenor, chorus & orchestra, Op. 55, M68
Love Songs of Hafiz, songs (8) for tenor & orchestra, Op. 26, M28
With this CD, Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Orchestra and Chorus continue their traversal of the orchestral and dramatic works of Karol Szymanowski. They have become expert interpreters and passionate advocates for his work and deserve credit for bringing it to a broadening audience. The three works featured here, the ballet Harnasie, and two orchestral song cycles, are notable for demonstrating Szymanowski's clear grasp of the difference between music written for the concert hall and for the theater. Harnasie, ...
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With this CD, Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Orchestra and Chorus continue their traversal of the orchestral and dramatic works of Karol Szymanowski. They have become expert interpreters and passionate advocates for his work and deserve credit for bringing it to a broadening audience. The three works featured here, the ballet Harnasie, and two orchestral song cycles, are notable for demonstrating Szymanowski's clear grasp of the difference between music written for the concert hall and for the theater. Harnasie, scored for tenor, chorus, and orchestra, is narrative music as aptly conceived for dramatic presentation as Stravinsky's ballets and whose influence can be detected both in its structure and in the new gestural and orchestrational freedom Szymanowski unleashed in this work. The subject of the ballet is the abduction of a not-unwilling bride on her wedding night by the leader of a group of bandits in the Carpathian Mountains, and the score is flavored by the folk music of that region....
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