A Rich Survey of Lesser-Known Polish Composers

With three living Polish composers--Henryk Gorecki, Krzysztof Penderecki and Zbigniew Preisner (best known for scoring Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films)--popular in America, it is easy to fool ourselves into thinking we have a pretty good idea of the current state of music in Poland. And fools may be just what the UC Santa Barbara New Music Festival will prove us.

“In Solidarity,” this year’s five-day festival, is devoted to less well-known Poles. Wednesday night, Zygmunt Krauze opened it with a piano recital in the Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, performing his music and that of several colleagues. He is a penetrating, powerful pianist. He is also a major composer.

Musical cultures are too complex to be identified by a single characteristic, but nonetheless the one that stands out in Polish music is the richness and depth of its harmony. That was true for Chopin. It was true, as well, for the two most notable figures of 20th century Polish music, Karol Szymanowski and Witold Lutoslawski--with whose works Krauze began his recital--and it is true for composers today. Szymanowski’s Prelude and Lutoslawksi’s “Melodies Populaires,” brief works from early in the composers’ careers, grabbed us with their layers of sonority--mystical chords for Szymanowski in 1905, spiky dissonances to enliven folk tunes for Lutoslawski 40 years later.

Krauze is a current Polish master of sonority and among the most inventive. Two works from the early 1970s, “Stone Music” and “Gloves Music,” translate theater into arresting sound. For the first, he placed beautiful stones directly on the strings of the piano, using metal bars to set them ringing. We could not, from the audience, see what he was doing, so like a magician he began a soft mystical tolling. By adding more stones and more volume, he increased the sonic energy to the point where the hall seemed a riot of celebrating peals of intersecting pitches.

“Glove Music” is meant to alarm. The heavy gloves the pianist wears symbolize infirmity; hands no longer in control flay and knead the keys. But in Krauze’s dramatic performance, his gloved hands took on a life of their own, their wild glissandi making remarkably grand and satisfyingly new sonorities. In a later, more conventional piece, “Refrain” from 1993, alternating sections of intense chords and more delicate, quiet melodic filigree produced equally strong physical resonances, almost as if they were portals into new sonic dimensions.

The remainder of Krauze’s recital was devoted to works from the early ‘60s and early ‘70s that demonstrated just how actively involved Poland was with the newest ideas of the European and American avant-garde. The most impressive piece was Boguslaw Schaeffer’s “Non-Stop,” a page of instructions that potentially gives a pianist enough ideas to keep the player busy for up to eight hours. Wednesday’s performance was only a tantalizing seven minutes of beautiful and startling sounds, which included notes on the piano, taps around it and in it, whistles, bits of Chopin lingering in extended anarchic resonances. The imaginations of composer and performer were at about equal levels.

Also heard were Kazimierz Seroki’s “A Piacere”, a fantasy of small, angular gestures in a mobile-like frame; Andrzej Dobrowolski’s Music for Tape and Piano, with its striking piano part but less interesting electronic partner; and Tomasz Sikorski’s “A View From the Window,” grippingly hard-edged repetitive music. The encore was an improvisation on Chopin, familiar harmonies taking on darker 20th century sonic embellishments, less old music living in a new time than new music with a foundation in the old.

Krauze is an important composer in Europe: The Bavarian Radio Symphony, under Lorin Maazel, will premiere a new orchestra work in Munich in June; Warsaw Chamber Opera will premiere a new opera, “Balthazar,” in October. He has been active as composer and performer for four decades, yet no recordings of Krauze’s music are in print in the U.S., and he drew a too small crowd in Santa Barbara. We are not as curious about the world as we should be, nor is the university committed enough in promoting its activities. I hope word gets out for the Saturday-evening program of Krauze’s chamber music.

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* “In Solidarity” continues through Sunday, Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, UCSB, Santa Barbara, concerts: $7-$10, (805) 893-7001.