Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969)
A Portrait
Sonata No 1 for solo violin (1941)
Polish Caprice for solo violin (1949)
Polish Caprice No 2 for solo violin (1952)
Concertino for violin and piano (1952)
Melody for violin and piano (1949)
Stained-glass Window for violin and piano (1932)
Partita for violin solo (1945)
Scherzo for solo violin (1935)
Capriccio for violin and piano (1946)
Cradle Song for violin and piano (1952)
Four Caprices for violin solo (1968)
Kinga Augustyn (violin), Alla Milchtein (piano)
rec. 2021, John Kilgore Sound and Recording, New York City & Oktaven audio, Mount Vernon, USA
CENTAUR CRC3971 [67]
Grażyna Bacewicz is receiving more and more interest from soloists. As she was herself a violinist and recorded a swathe of her own violin music for the Muza label, it’s right that this should be a primary focus for contemporary performers. In Centaur’s disc we have a wide-ranging ‘Portrait’ that moves from 1932 to 1968, the year before her death when she was still in full spate and moreover includes two claimed world première recordings.
Kinga Augustyn has selected with acumen, ensuring that larger Sonatas and Partitas take their programmatic place alongside small Melodies, Scherzos and Caprices to create a balanced picture of the composer-executant’s range of influences in her position as a bridge between Szymanowski, by whom she was clearly influenced (and one of whose pieces she also recorded) and the later post-60s generation of Polish composers. The Sonata No 1 for example is a restless wartime piece, whose withdrawn, vaguely neo-baroque elements fuse with a contemporary use of variation form in the finale, where one finds a seamless flow of invention. Augustyn plays this with eloquent refinement at a steady tempo; for a more incisive reading – though not necessary a superior one – try Annabelle Berthomé-Reynolds on Muso MU-032.
The Partita for violin solo dates from 1945 and is one of the two première recordings. It’s in three movements and is a crisp demanding piece that takes the soloist very high up the fingerboard in the central section, a rather aloof Andante. The finale is a quirky ‘baroque’ dance replete with pizzicati – which, as befits a performer she never - either here or elsewhere - overdoes. Bacewicz knows that such devices should serve the performer selectively. In the same year she composed a very different work, the Concertino for violin and piano, played by Alla Milchtein. This is an avowedly neo-baroque piece, almost a total retrenchment from the abrasive elements to be found in the Partita. The Four Caprices (1968) are very late works couched in her own accommodation with atonality, fast and virtuosic.
The small-scale violin and piano pieces reflect her wide assimilation of her native country’s folkloric elements. The Polish Caprice for solo violin dates from the early post-war years, played by Augustyn with fast bowing and relish for its vitality. The Polish Caprice No 2 is a slower and more expressive work, less intense, though still lively in its outer sections. In the very early Stained-glass Window, written in 1932, one can feel the influence of Szymanowski – refined, quizzical and atmospheric. The other world premiere recording is the Scherzo for solo violin (1935) which is a moto perpetuo type of affair but full of geniality. Another fast and fiery piece is the little-known Capriccio for violin and piano whilst the Cradle Song is full of dappled intimacy.
Approaches to Bacewicz’s solo violin music on disc divide into the completists and the selectives and Augustyn and Milchtein belong firmly to the second camp. They have chosen wisely and well, have found two previously unrecorded works, of which the Partita is especially interesting and important, and have been finely recorded in two different locations. Centaur and their artists can be proud of this recording.
Jonathan Woolf
Published: October 17, 2022
