Chamber music by Andrzej Kurylewicz – the discovery
Journal Title: Notes Muzyczny - Year 2014, Vol 1, Issue 1
Abstract
Andrzej Kurylewicz was a unique artist. He played the trumpet and trombone, but primarily he played the piano. Nevertheless, the basic area of his artistic activity was composition; he left us with 65 opused works. Even though he sometimes engaged himself with institutions (e.g. in the period of 1964–66 he was Director of the Orchestra of the Polish Radio and Television in Warsaw), he always seemed to be faithful to the views he had. He followed those currents and art directions he wanted to follow, so he was not always accepted by culture representatives of that time. In 1954 he was expelled from university in Cracow for playing jazz which was thought to be a product of harmful imperialism. So he created a jazz formation called MM 176 (after a room in a student dormitory). From 1962 on he wrote film music. His soundtracks for the films Polskie drogi [Polish roads] (1976) and Lekcja martwego języka [Dead language lesson] (award at the Gdynia Festival, 1979) and TV series Lalka [Doll] (1977) and Nad Niemnem [On the banks of the Niemen] are widely recognizable. In 1965, together with his wife Wanda Warska, he created his own autonomous artistic stage – the Kurylewicz Basement, which was initially situated at 24 Nowy Świat Street in Warsaw, and since 1969 it has been situated at the Old Town Market Square no. 19. The Kurylewicz basement focused artists with unconventional artistic views. It still organises concerts, exhibitions, as well as music and poetry evenings. In the period of 1969–1978 Andrzej Kurylewicz headed the ensemble he had created called the Contemporary Music Formation, with which he performed pieces combining modern jazz and avant-garde European music, and he gave concerts worldwide. At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s he cooperated with the State University of Kansas in Lawrence, USA. He was a great admirer of music by Chopin and Szymanowski, which was his endless source of inspiration and which, apart from jazz, he played till the end of his life. In the 1980s, after the success of String Quartet no.1 (1980), performed in 1981 at the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ festival, Kurylewicz devoted himself to writing classical music. For 27 years he wrote poems for choir and symphony orchestra, a lot of compositions for chamber orchestra, chamber pieces with piano, string quartets, instrumental works, songs, as well as numerous works for solo piano. Among the 65 opuses of catalogued pieces by Kurylewicz three chamber items with piano, i.e., one duo and two trios, have a special place. Even though each of them has a different harmony and expression convention, it has a value in itself. Duetto lirico op. 31 for violin and piano (1984) is a one-movement (but multi-element) composition with a dominating violin part, which lasts 17 minutes and is a well-composed form. In Trio per tre Kurylewicz uses a modern, even experimental, sound and a segment-based form (similarly to Duetto lirico). The trio, written for clarinet, cello and piano, also has its version for violin, cello and piano. However, no matter what instrument line-up it uses, it requires skills to work out improvised and aleatorical fragments. Trio El dancion, inspired by the composer’s stay in Cuba, has a character of a contra dance with Cuban rhythms. Until not long ago it was performed without a mazurka introduction, which was discovered by the composer’s daughter Gabriela Kurylewicz in 2011. From the performance perspective, it is not the precise realization of each part that is difficult, it is the feeling of style. They key element is the swinging picture of the phrase, which is far from classical, it is distanced from metricality, and the emphases of syncopated harmonies support the lyrical tissue of the theme in it. To sum up the reflections on the chamber pieces by Andrzej Kurylewicz, it needs to be pointed out that in a performance aspect each of his works is a discovery. Despite some universal style features, which can be distinguished in his compositions (a structural form with elements of improvisation, harmony, jazz rhythm and minimalism), each of his pieces requires a separate key opening the door to how it should be performed.<br/><br/>
Authors and Affiliations
Ewa Skardowska
Keywords
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