Feliks NOWOWIEJSKI (1877-1946)
Malowanki Ludowe (Folk Paintings), Op. 18 (1928)
Polish Radio Choir
Sinfonia Varsovia/Sebastian Perłowski
rec. 5-6 June 2015, Warsaw, Poland
WARNER CLASSICS 9029565789 [50:37]
Folk Paintings is the first of two ballets by Polish composer Feliks Nowowiejski. The second, King of the Winds, blew me away – no pun intended – when I reviewed it recently. Both ballets were lost until their rediscovery in 2014. These are their first recordings.
For biographical context, Feliks Nowowiejski was born in what was then Eastern Prussia into an old Polish family. He studied music in Berlin under Max Bruch, then shuttled back and forth between Germany and partitioned Poland in the years before the First World War. During this time, Nowowiejski filled various musical posts and completed the oratorio Quo Vadis, based on the novel by Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916), which would secure his reputation. When the Great War broke out, Nowowiejski became a conscript in the German army and conducted a Berlin military orchestra in garrison duty. Despite this, Nowowiejski became so devoted to the cause of Polish independence that in 1918, his former teacher denied Nowowiejski entrance to the Akademie der Künste and had his works boycotted. Nowowiejski then settled in Poznań, part of the newly independent Poland, where he joined the faculty at the Paderewski Music Academy as conductor and organist. After the Nazi invasion of 1939, Nowowiejski fled to Kraków, where he spent the remainder of the war in hiding. Nowowiejski suffered a severe stroke in 1941 that ended his compositional career and died on 15 January 1946.
Besides Quo Vadis (review, review, review), Nowowiejski also wrote five symphonies (review, review), two operas, and various orchestral works (review, review), in addition to nine organ symphonies and four solo organ concertos (review, review). Now that recordings of both ballets are available, more of Nowowiejski’s prodigious output is open to exploration and reappraisal.
Folk Paintings is unusual in having no story. Nowowiejski instead organized the ballet around songs and dances from traditional Polish wedding festivals. This makes it a sort of Polish Les Noces. It is much more conventional than Stravinsky’s 1923 ballet, however, lacking the earlier work’s minimalist scoring, overt stylization, and intense yet ambiguous emotional weight. Like its counterpart, King of the Winds, Nowowiejski intended Folk Paintings for mass audiences as a celebration and apotheosis of Polish folk culture in a nationalist context. This is not to say it is not tremendously enjoyable and artistically successful, only that its resemblances to Les Noces stop at its scenario.
Folk Paintings has six tableau of varying length. The first is the wedding procession, a broad and stately march with much-elaborated lines over harmonies built of parallel thirds, fifths, and minor sevenths. The combination feels folk-based but also formal. The chorus enter the procession with a tuneful melody and, once the guests have settled, the tempo picks up. The second tableau is a blend of kujawiak dances from central Poland and wedding songs. The chorus is as busy as the orchestra in the dances, with graceful melodies in largely homophonic settings – singing together in a melody-plus-harmony format – with occasional moments of imitation. The songs are alternately lyrical and lively.
The third and fourth tableau form the core of the ballet. The third is the millennia-old ritual of the “hops” song and dance. This is restrained, almost rigid, in its ritualistic rhythms and sway. The “popular” element in the second tableau is absent, replaced by a sense of concentration and inwardness. The liner notes are vague on specifics but note that it is “imbued with symbolic meaning archaic to the point of obscurity to contemporary eyes and ears.” The fourth tableau contains the capping ceremony, in which the bride leaves her unmarried friends to join the community of married women. These replace the flower wreath on her head with a decorated cap. The bride is symbolically pleased with the cap – her marriage – but misses the wreath – her freedom – thus laughing and crying at the same time. This formalization of naturally mixed emotion is also set to discreet music. These two central tableau nod in the direction of Les Noces by their mixture of joy and sadness embodied in the rituals themselves. Bright krakowiak dances, a hurrah, and another kujawiak end the scene. A bit of humor features in the second krakowiak with the musicians traditionally interrupting their playing until receiving payment, food, and drink.
The fifth and sixth tableaus are for the orchestra alone. The fifth tableau is a set of lively obertas dances while the sixth returns to the music of the opening tableaus, which Nowowiejski develops briefly but symphonically.
The Polish Radio Choir and Sinfonia Varsovia deliver knockout performances. Sebastian Perłowski leads stylish playing and singing from performers completely comfortable with Nowowiejski’s blend of Late Romanticism and folklore, with the two groups balanced evenly throughout. The recording is excellent, though captured at a high volume. Unfortunately, there are no texts, so listeners must infer the content of choruses and solo songs from their contexts but even this does not detract in any serious way from enjoying the tuneful melodies, clear-cut rhythms, and colorful orchestration of Folk Paintings. Together with King of the Winds, this album is a must-have for anyone the least bit curious about Nowowiejski.
Christopher Little
