Marcin BŁAŻEWICZ (1953-2021)
Sonata for Violin and Accordion ‘Night Full of Sins' (2019) [15:21]
Double Concerto for Violin, Accordion and Symphony Orchestra (2015–2016) [35:12]
Iwo Jedynecki (accordion); Karolina Mikołajczyk (violin)
Orkiestra Filharmonii Śląskiej/Mirosław Jacek Błaszczyk
rec. October 2019, Karol Stryja Concert Hall, Katowice (concerto); August 2021, S-2 Studio of Polish Radio, Warsaw
First recordings
DUX 1729 [51:21]
As an avowed musical Polonophile, I have found this new release on the Dux label really quite fascinating – not simply because I get to discover yet another Polish composer, but it also features a pretty uncommon, though highly-successful instrumental combination.
The lavish CD booklet is full of useful and extensive information about every aspect of the product, in Polish and English, including an especially-comprehensive biography which is itself a fascinating read. But for those of you new to Marcin Błażewicz, here are some basic facts to get you up to speed.
He was born in Warsaw in 1953, and first studied philosophy, before going on to the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, where he graduated with honours in Composition. He won a SACEM (Sociéte des Compositeurs et Éditeurs de Musique) scholarship, and as the holder of an ‘Acanthes’ award, attended a course in composition led by Olivier Messiaen in Avignon in 1987. He received many prizes for his compositions, some of which were special commissions, and was also a promoter of musical culture, having organised well over 200 concerts devoted to the promotion of contemporary music.
He also worked as an educator, and was a member of the faculty at his Alma Mater since 1985. In 2003, he became an associate professor at the Chair of Composition, while also teaching score-reading, composition, and instrumentation. In 2008 he was elected Dean of the department. Błażewicz has an impressive and wide-ranging catalogue of works which have been heard from China to Europe, and in the United States. The two works heard on this new CD are the result of a close relationship between the composer, and the Polish Violin and Accordion Duo of violinist Karolina Mikołajczyk, and Iwo Jedynecki (accordion).
The Sonata for Violin and Accordion (2019), entitled ‘Night Full of Sins’ was a gift as well as a surprise for the duo, who worked on it with the composer, carefully implementing his comments and suggestions, before premiering it in 2021. However, the album recording was made shortly after the composer's death in April 2021. It opens with a vigorous, and business-like Allegro appassionato¸ which gets an effective work-out and leads to an impassioned climax, immediately followed by a contrasting middle episode, where things calm down considerably, and the writing becomes far more lyrical and rhapsodic in character. The rhythmic patterns heard at the start then begin to reappear, which heralds the recapitulation. This is followed by another more-expressive section, which is rounded off by a brief, but effective coda – where the composer has a ‘little trick’ in store at the final cadence.
The slow movement, marked Grave semplice, opens somewhat dirge-like, as the violin sings its highly-expressive melody over a simple, repeated-note accompaniment from the accordion. Rather than simply increase the volume, Błażewicz appears to do this in palpable stepwise movements, after which the dynamics tend to drop back again. The bassline from the accordion has so far intoned four beats per bar, while its movement has been stepwise, in either direction. There follows another incremental increase in volume, as the violin-writing becomes more passionate with the appearance of double-stops in sixths, at which point the accordion firstly reverts to long-held single notes, before suddenly bursting forth in what might initially be considered a cadenza, before the violin joins in and both instruments in tandem build to a most impressive climax. The single dirge-like notes from the opening now resume, and, with a few small variations, the movement moves to its almost-imperceptible bare-fifths close – very much the emotional hub of the sonata as a whole.
The Allegro finale is cast as a decidedly up-beat bolero. From the very outset, the accordion maintains the inherently-familiar rhythmic pattern with the absolute metronomic precision, while the violin weaves its sinuous line above – by no means atonal, but where chords and melody don’t always quite accord, essentially echoing the composer’s uniquely-piquant harmonic style. As with the slow movement, there are occasional small ‘outbursts’ from both players, and Błażewicz tweaks the bolero-rhythm slightly, which must make added demands on the player, given the instrument’s innate method of sound-production. At this juncture, it’s worth mentioning that Jedynecki performs on a button accordion – that is, with buttons not only for the chords and bass, which is the norm, but additionally for the melody – unlike the more familiar layout of the ‘piano’ accordion.
Returning to the finale, I hear the persistent ‘clackety-clack’ rhythm of an old train journey, or the pounding hooves of galloping horses. Just after two minutes in, you will pick out a couple of short, almost percussive sounds from the accordion, which will crop up again later. These are actually glissandi, just as you’d expect get on a conventional keyboard, when you rapidly slide your thumb up, or down, a run of white keys. However, doing this on buttons instead can create an effect where it sounds as if whole chords are shifting with great alacrity, due to the way the buttons are configured. There is the briefest gasp for air, before both instruments rush headlong towards the close, with the violin also becoming involved in the bolero’s ingrained rhythm pattern. The end, though, when it finally arrives, will surely catch you out, as it did me. If the second movement had been the Sonata’s emotional hub, then the immensely exciting finale must qualify as the work’s engine-house.
Błażewicz has shown a perfect appreciation of the two instruments, by way of the highly-effective interplay he creates between them, while still fully respecting their individuality. In essence, the accordion tends to support the violin, sometimes with a motoric, or ostinato-like accompaniment when the situation demands, while equally able to provide the perfect foil, when the string instrument is in a more wistful, and expressive mood. The very perceptive CD notes comment on the fact that, especially towards the middle of a movement, the accordion’s sound-pattern alters, seemingly as if to suggest that it would now like to take over the musical-lead from the violin. The violin temporarily seems to grant the accordion its request, and, for a moment, the accordion does become the lead-instrument. But the violin very quickly reclaims it, and, while there is an impressive amount of interplay in the writing, the accordion is well aware of its place in the hierarchy of the score. As for the significance of the work’s title, there appears to be no mention of it anywhere in the booklet. Even the performers were unaware of the specific connotation of ‘Night Full of Sins’, but coyly responded that ‘it is surely referring to some (undisclosed) romantic activities, more than anything else’.
Błażewicz wrote his Double Concerto for Violin, Accordion and Symphony Orchestra in 2015-2016, dedicating it once more to the Mikołajczyk/Jedynecki Duo, and which the booklet says is an ‘unprecedented work in world literature’ – no pressure there, then. It’s a three-movement work, which the notes describe as ‘fast-slow-fast’, even though, on paper, the tempo instructions – Andante – Adagio – Allegro con fuoco – would seem to indicate that the opening movement is slow. However, taken as a whole, the booklet’s description proves closer, in fact, to what we hear, than what we glean from the Italian.
From the outset, there is, of course, a fundamental difference between this work, and the Sonata. Yes, it’s grown a full symphony orchestra, but now each of the two solo instruments is seen as equal protagonists – the accompaniment is now essentially the orchestra’s responsibility. At the very start of the opening Andante, for example, it sustains a pianissimo pedal-note on A, while the violin, followed by the accordion are introduced, almost quasi improvisando above. The moment the full orchestra makes its bold entrance, some fifty seconds in, the whole movement comes to life, even if the two soloists are more or less reduced to mere onlookers just at this point. The orchestra suddenly pauses, leaving the duo alone for a short period of meditation, before striking up again, where the rhythmically chordal accordion-part now makes its telling contribution. Throughout, the violin line has shown a noticeable propensity towards ethnic and folk scales, which makes for an often-shifting sense of tonal centre as the music unfolds, while increasingly appearing to suggest the distinctive style of Klezmer music. The soloists’ lines combine and contrast, as the orchestration becomes ever more exhilarating and almost gypsy-like at times. There is a further brief orchestral pause, followed by another calm and introspective dialogue between the soloists. The composer now builds towards the close, mainly reworking, and expanding on the opening material, which the composer shifts ever-more-chromatically, until the final denouement which, I have to say, while effective in practice, does seem to change key right at the eleventh hour.
The ensuing Adagio opens mysteriously with a clarinet solo, taken up by the oboe, where the sinuous melodic lines would seem to be steeped in the idiosyncratic scales of Eastern Europe. Strings quickly build to an impassioned climax, before the clarinet is heard once more, after which a second climax is reached. This quickly subsides and the two soloists make their entry, calm and pensive to begin with, but always with the feeling that something more impassioned is waiting on the horizon. Both instruments follow each other’s melodic contribution, rather than in combination, while the orchestra provides a quiet, and gently-pulsating chordal support below. Once more, the violin’s use of double-stopping greatly adds to the composer’s expressive armoury. Meanwhile the music itself continues to build relentlessly, once more evidencing Błażewicz’s apparent penchant for tweaking his volume in a step-wise manner – two increments up, followed by one increment down – which pattern is then continued. Brass is used prominently to build towards some really imposing climaxes which, as has happened before, are suddenly interrupted by another short passage for the soloists alone. This sudden juxtaposition of soloists and orchestra happens once more, and now leads to a passage where the orchestral backing and rhythmic pulse considerably gain in strength. The tonality moves towards the minor, and the clarinet, and later the oboe, are again prominent, while the music becomes increasingly more dramatic and powerful. But after all these exciting, and quite devastating climaxes, in the end the slow movement takes its leave in hushed undertones.
The finale – Allegro con fuoco – opens with a brief fanfare-like call-to-arms on brass and strings, which leads straight into the main theme – not a bolero on this occasion, but a four-in-a-bar pulsing accompaniment, over which the soloists develop the potent thematic material. This leads to a more exciting passage, where the composer’s partiality for unusual chord juxtapositions proves really effective, enhanced by his real expertise in orchestral scoring, especially for the timpani. For both soloists, while the writing has become decidedly more virtuosic, there is always enough time for more lyrical and expressive interjections along the way. At just after six minutes in, the sound of the tam-tam makes for a truly arresting climax, even though the finale has still got another four minutes or so to go. This, however, culminates in another general pause, after which both soloists embark on an extended cadenza together. This is conceived in sections, the final one rapidly accelerating as the orchestra re-enters. Whereas at the start of the finale, the orchestral backing had consisted of four plodding beats per bar, the composer, with one simple adjustment – halving the note-values – produces a familiar, circus-like ‘um-pah’ accompaniment, complete with the occasional suitably-irreverent trombone glissando, all of which paves the way for the homeward gallop. But even now, just a minute or so before the close, there’s another general pause, followed by a quite ethereal passage from the soloists, combining the accordion’s top register with high harmonics on the violin. I have to admit that, at this stage, I was closely scrutinising the time elapsed, to see if anything followed after a very quiet ‘F’ in the bass at 10:33, with just thirteen official seconds left. Was there still time for what would have to be one of the shortest ‘big finishes’ ever? But I won’t let on, just now.
In 2020 Błażewicz was asked to sum up the place of this Double Concerto in his overall musical output. He replied, saying that the Concerto was a kind of summary of his work in the style that he’d been practising since 1999. This essentially originated in opposition to modernism, which he associated specifically with Arnold Schoenberg, the Second Viennese School, and the concept of dodecaphony, which, he felt, in extreme cases, led to the creation of ‘acoustic items’, rather than musical works in the accepted sense. Having now heard the music of Marcin Błażewicz for the very first time, and with this unusual, yet very effective combination of instruments, I would very much concur with the composer’s self-appraisal. His is an individual, undeniably contemporary voice, which is expressive, emotional, exciting, erudite – yet undeniably entertaining.
Of course, without the simply-inspired playing from Karolina Mikołajczyk and Iwo Jedynecki, this new CD would have lost much of its impact, despite the composer’s compelling writing. But it seems absolutely right that they should repay Błażewicz’s faith in them by what are here as simply blistering performances, not only from the technical standpoint, but because of their mutual empathy and understanding of the composer’s style. Yes, they play as a finely-honed duo, but it is abundantly clear that this sense of ‘ensemble’ goes much deeper, and it comes as no surprise to learn that they are very much an ‘item’, to use today’s parlance. Iwo Jedynecki plays a ‘Sirius Millennium’ button-accordion by one of the best-known Italian manufacturers, Pigini.
They are self-sufficient in the Sonata, but in the Double Concerto, they receive tremendous support from the Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra, under the assured direction of conductor, Mirosław Jacek Błaszczyk. The Sonata was a studio production, while the Double Concerto was recorded live in the concert-hall. Dux’s sound-engineers have done an excellent job here, especially in successfully managing the change in acoustic between the two locations.
This new Polish offering satisfies on so many levels, none more so than it features two works for a less-common instrumental pairing, which were written within the last ten years, but which are decidedly approachable, and wouldn’t need to be filed under ‘easy-listening’, or ‘crossover’, in an gratuitous attempt to add to their popularity. Even if you’re not an accordion aficionado per se, there is more than enough here to appeal to the widest range of musical tastes, as well as those who occasionally like to try something exciting, and out of the ordinary.
Philip R Buttall
