Nowowiejski’s name
has fallen pretty much into oblivion
but in his day he was a significant
presence in Polish and indeed international
musical life. He studied at the Stern
Conservatory in Berlin and pursued his
earlier career as an organist. He was
a prizewinner: his Under the Banner
of Peace
won a London competition in the early
years of the twentieth century. He met
Dvořák and studied for a
time with Bruch until 1906. His early
major success was his oratorio Quo
Vadis, premiered in 1907, which
he conducted in Carnegie Hall in 1912.
A more patriotic success was his song
Rota, which in time became a
second Polish national anthem. His life
in Cracow was not unclouded by spats
with a leading critic so he upped sticks
to Berlin returning after war’s end
to take a leading role in the revivification
of Polish culture and language after
independence. His last years were difficult;
he hid his manuscripts during the Second
War and though he still composed – Fourth
Symphony, a Piano Concerto – he suffered
a stroke and died in 1946.
Magdalena Adamek has
scoured the surviving albums and manuscripts
with penetrating editorial insight.
She brings her accumulated experience
to bear in these two volumes of the
composer’s piano music – both volumes
are available separately. Her playing
is crisp, warm and inviting, though
she has a tendency to push the tempi
in the more substantial works. That
said many of these pieces happily fall
into the genre categories – light music,
salon or consciously paying homage to
the shade of Chopin. Little here will
give one a frisson or indeed intimations
as to the big works for which he was
famed. Certainly his smaller morceaux
have some delicious moments but they
are circumscribed pleasures and not
to be taken at one go.
The Polish Dances are
distinctly Chopinesque in flavour and
probably written in the 1930s; to that
one can add a certain amount of Szymanowski’s
influence. The First Ballade is one
of the warmest and most immediately
attractive things here, and once more
steeped deep in the influence of Chopin.
The Fourth has poetry and drama but
one should perhaps turn in preference
to the Mazurkas, which seem to me to
be more comprehensively successful and
to have a greater stamp of personality.
We also have his "Young Poland",
London prize-winning march, Under
the Banner of Peace, a jaunty affair.
As an aside I should
add that the rather haphazard programming
means that we can’t journey with any
chronological certainty through his
oeuvre. This is a pity as his later
works were far better at assimilating
the diverse influences he’d earlier
accumulated.
Rather like his younger
Polish colleague Józef Koffler,
also championed by this label, Nowowiejski
wrote a children’s cycle. The Easy
classical and contemporary dances for
children doff the cap to Mozart
and Chopin and are agreeable enough.
We really need to turn to the second
volume’s E minor Mazurka to find the
composer at his best – strenuous and
powerful but with moments of intense
reflection. It would have been better
not to have split the Mazurkas between
volumes because they represent some
of the most persuasive compositions
here. The Threnody is similarly
impressive – it sounds like a piano
reduction of a much bigger orchestral
work. We end with the Praetorian’s March
from Quo Vadis. I hope we have
the opportunity to hear his magnum opus
in the not too distant future.
Recorded in a rather
airless and unflattering acoustic these
are nevertheless all first ever recordings
and as such strongly to be welcomed.
The best of him lies in the later works
from the 1930s and those Mazurkas in
particular. There may be a great deal
of generic ephemera to wade through
elsewhere but it’s well crafted of its
kind and the greater rewards are certainly
there.
Jonathan Woolf
Full
Acte Préalable Catalogue
Magdalena Adamek (piano) 
for
details
