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Donald Macleod surveys the musical impact of Szymanowski’s travels to Italy, Sicily and Algeria, including on his Third Symphony, inspired by medieval Islamic poetry.

The reshaping of Europe at the end of the First World War had a defining effect on Karol Szymanowski. As Europe was being reapportioned, the comfortable world he’d known up to that point vanished for good. His family’s comfortable and cultured life disappeared, their assets wiped out by the October Revolution. From that point on, Szymanowski ceased to be a man of some privilege, able to compose in the relative seclusion of his family’s estate in what was then part of Ukraine. He needed to support himself and his mother and sisters but he found himself ill-equipped temperamentally to deal with this dramatic change in his lifestyle. He became increasingly weighed down by illness, quite probably tuberculosis. That, coupled with a chain smoking habit and struggles with alcoholism, were to take their toll. He died in poverty at the age of just 54 in 1937.

Across the week, Donald Macleod explores five distinct influences on Szymanowski’s music, starting with his formative years growing up in a family with a passion for the arts. As a young student, his studies in Warsaw led him towards the language of Richard Strauss and Max Reger, while his love of travel directed him towards impressionism, the ancient world and the Orient. Meeting Stravinsky in Paris and hearing the Ballets Russes was another turning point, as was in his later years in particular, his commitment to establishing a national musical voice for the newly formed country of Poland.

The stimulation of visiting foreign lands enriched Szymanowski with a wealth of new ideas and a change in direction, with his music evoking the exotic sounds of the Orient, tales of antiquity and the shimmering Mediterranean sun.

La fontaine d’Aréthuse (Mythes, Op 30)
Kaja Danczowska, violin
Krystian Zimerman, piano

Sérénade de Don Juan (Masques, Op 34)
Piotr Anderszewski, piano

Demeter, Op 37b
Anna Malewicz-Madej, contralto
Polish State Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra
Karol Stryja, conductor

String Quartet No 1 in C major, Op 37 (3rd movement)
Apollon Musagète Quartet

Symphony No 3, Op 27: The Song of the Night
Jon Garrison, tenor
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Chorus
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle, director