Chamber Music Concert commemorating the 110th Anniversary of the birth of Roman Palester will be held on December 5, 2017 at 7 p.m. at the Warsaw Philharmonic.
The concert will feature works written by Palester and other composers active in the same period: Bohuslav Martinů, Karol Szymanowski and Dmitri Shostakovich. Among the performers will be pianist Jakub Tchorzewski and Duo Viennese (violinists Paweł Zalejski and Monika Hager-Zalejski).
Bohuslav Martinů’s Sonata (1932), neoclassical in both content and form, employs a fairly typical contrast between lightness and a dense texture in the central movement. Roman Palester’s Sonata (1939), completed during the Occupation, only appears on the surface to have a neutral outlook. Palester did not manage to fully hide the overtones of calamitous fate. It was only while already in exile, 25 years later, that he could afford the luxury of composing works free of any extra‑musical connotations. His Duos for two violins showcase the acoustic potential of these two instruments, which only appear to be treated in an identical manner.
Shostakovich’s 5 Pieces for Two Violins and Piano is not an original piece. It was written by the composer’s long‑time friend Lev Atovmyan, whom over the years Shostakovich assigned to come up with various arrangements of his music, including piano reductions of his monumental symphonies. Atovmyan compiled a very vivid suite from fragments of Shostakovich’s incidental music (The Human Comedy, 1934), a ballet (The Limpid Stream, 1934/35) and a film score (The Gadfly, 1955). A deep melancholy interweaves here with an almost purely carefree mood – after all, they were composed by an expert in character psychology, who on more than one occasion demonstrated his great sense of drama in theatre and film.
Detailed information: http://filharmonia.pl