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Donald Macleod explores the richly stimulating artistic environment in which Szymanowski grew up and thrived on his family estate.

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.

Szymanowski’s interest in the arts was encouraged by his father. Described by those who knew him as something of a Renaissance man, by the time he was in his teens, Karol was already a skilled linguist, fluent in French, Russian and German. He was a voracious reader, and interested in philosophy, all of which found its way into his vocal and instrumental music.

Study in G flat major, Op 4 No 2
Martin Roscoe, piano

The Swan, Op 7
Piotr Beczala, tenor
Reinild Mees, piano

L’île des sirènes (Métopes, Op 29)
Piotr Anderszewski, piano

Violin Concerto No 1, Op 35
Nicola Benedetti, violin
London Symphony Orchestra
Daniel Harding, conductor

Songs of a Fairytale Princess, Op 31
Izabella Klosińska, soprano
Orchestra of the Polish National Opera
Robert Satanowski, conductor