席曼诺夫斯基小提琴协奏曲

看了砍柴兄的帖子，提到了席曼诺夫斯基（Szymanowski）这位波兰作曲家，刚好这两天也对他颇为着迷，就来说两句。

前一段时间载了一个席曼诺夫斯基两部小协的广播录音，听后甚为惊艳，如此优美绮丽的作品，实在应该成为主流曲目。再回头听以前买的席曼诺夫斯基第三交响、Stabat Mater等作品，觉得颇有可回味之处。



我越来越觉得在无调性与德奥式晚期浪漫派之间实在还是大有余地可挖，新的有些不和谐式的音乐语言加上较传统的主题诉求，产生的独特效果实在不能用一句不够现代一笔勾销。


为此我还买了emi拉特尔与伯明翰两部小协加第四交响曲（实际上是部钢琴协奏曲）的录音。



第四交响曲也是部不错的作品。不过拉特尔与伯明翰的第二小协似乎不够理想，尤其是与Frank Peter Zimmermann与Sylvain Cambreling 指挥SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg的广播录音相比，正是就怕货比货啊。

主要问题在于拉特尔这个组合的小提琴家技术上似乎不如Zimmermann，一些段落就不如Zimmermann挥
洒自如、畅快淋漓，而偏偏这两部小协对演奏家技术要求甚高。第一小协从头至尾就是一个梦，但又不是像德彪西那种朦胧慵懒的梦幻气质，也非拉威尔那种光亮的
似乎有棱角但有些冰冷的异想世界，而是带着些甜蜜的透明的浪漫主义式的梦幻迷离；第二小协和第四交响曲里面有些民歌元素，与巴托克类似，都是消解了的民
歌，但不像巴托克那么音响凌厉。在Zimmermann、Cambreling 的合作下那种梦幻的气质就更完整，拉特尔那个组合在第二小协个别段落听来有些吃力，影响了效果，当然也不明显，只有和Zimmermann这样的演奏相较之下，才能体会这梦幻可以到达什么样的境地。

不过可惜，Zimmermann、Cambreling 的合作似乎没有录音，但我怀疑真录音室录音了可能也没了这种现场的热力，似乎 Zimmermann与拉特尔、BPO的一个合作也缺了点什么，当然这也可能是我先入为主了。
Zimmermann与拉特尔、BPO的第一小协，外加布鲁克纳第7：
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/OperaShare/message/28661
这个下载文件里还包括一份programme note，对理解作品很有帮助，转帖如下：

Szymanowski - Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35 (1916)

Szymanowski wrote the first of his two violin concertos in 1916, during what is usually described as his ‘Impressionist’ period – the time when he really found himself as a composer. Whether or not the label ‘Impressionist’ is appropriate, the sound Szymanowski draws from the orchestra is unique, instantly recognisable. By the standards of the early 20th century, the number of instruments is not remarkable, though they include two harps as well as a piano and several percussion instruments. Yet the effect of spaciousness, rather than weight or loudness, is extraordinary. Szymanowski’s melody and harmony are typical of ‘advanced’ composers of the time in their empirical mix of pentatonic, chromatic, whole-tone and bi-tonal elements (the very opening may owe something to the black-against-white note clashes of Stravinsky’s Petrushka); in fact, Szymanowski seems to be able to do anything he likes while consistently achieving an effect of transparency.

As for the solo part, Szymanowski himself claimed that the style of writing that he developed with the help of his friend, the violinist Pawel Kochanski, created a new mode of expression for the instrument, which can be summarised as ‘ecstatic’. Pitched mostly (though not invariably) very high, it was intended only for the most accomplished players, preferably with a very sweet tone. All its technical devices are collected in the cadenza which Kochanski wrote near the end of the work.

Kochanski was to have given the first performance, with Alexander Siloti conducting, in St Petersburg at the beginning of February 1917: political unrest put paid to th at. In the event, the leader of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Józef Oziminski, played it, with Emil Mlynarski conducting, in the capital of the new Polish Republic on 1 November 1922. Kochanski introduced it to America, with Leopold Stokowski, in New York and Philadelphia, in 1924.

However dazzling the writing for the violin, the Concerto is not a vehicle for bravura display: the orchestra is used with restraint, and there is no dramatic confrontation or argument; instead, the relationship between soloist and orchestra recalls Chausson’s Poème, written 20 years earlier, though that has a very different expressive character.

Szymanowski took his inspiration for this Concerto from the poem May Night by Tadeusz Micinski:

Asses in crowns settle majestically on the grass –
fireflies are kissing the wild rose –
and Death shimmers on the pond
and plays a frivolous song.
Ephemerids
fly into dance –
oh, flowers of the lakes, Nereids!
Pan plays his pipes in the oak grove.
Ephemerids
fly into dance,
fly into dance –
plaited in amorous embrace
eternally young and holy –
stabbed with a lethal dart.
In the twinkling blue water
golden crucians and roach,
and patient kingfishers
gaze with their eyes of steel –
and on the trees the hammering of the
little blacksmiths,
amid the sorb, red crooked-beaks
and kestrels with eyes like tinder –
merrily whistling and chanting
I fly: here over the water – there under
the trees …
In the woods are glades as if appointed
for these nocturnal revels.
All the birds pay tribute to me,
for today I wed a Goddess …
And now we stand by the lake,
in crimson blossoms,
in flowing tears of joy, with rapture and fear,
burning in amorous conflagrations:
the fire seizes these aged trees
and they shed tears of pitch,
and the familiar gull from the Polar seas
describes a halo over us.

(Translation by Sylvia and Benjamin Shoshan, taken from the BBC Music Guide to Szymanowski by Christopher Palmer, 1983)

The Concerto is in a single movement, though constantly fluctuating – floating, transfixed in reverie, dancing, driven – but never moving towards a goal, for it is all a dream, from the first excited fluttering in the orchestra to the soloist’s final disappearance into the stratosphere. Szymanowski summed up the whole as ‘awfully fantastic and unexpected’. It takes some time for two themes, or rather motifs, to emerge – a swooning sixnote descending phrase, and a grimly emphatic motif of four notes (two descending semitones followed by a rising minor third); these provide a kind of structural scaffolding. Midway occurs a still, sublime moment in which the violin at last reveals its heart then, coming to its senses, gets busy; it’s recalled later, shortly before the cadenza. Surely, Szymanowski intended it all to remain a beautiful mystery.