CDs (A)

Garbal Aleksandra

Aleksandra Garbal: Kalejdoskop spojrzeń

The Kaleidoscope of Views is a two-disc album containing 21 compositions - improvisations composed under the influence of the events of the past years that took place in Poland and around the world. The presented album was created in 2022, it was recorded by the composer on May 12-13 and November 10, 15 and 24 on a Calisia piano. This album is a bird's-eye view of the earth, an insight into the hearts, thoughts and dreams of generations. The piano plays the role of a neo-Renaissance singer performing madrigals and recitatives.

The source of inspiration was the texts of the Old and New Testaments, and the vision of this piano cycle is a continuation of the original message from Unfinished Symphony - Beethoven's Friends Visions addressed to contemporary people. The kaleidoscope of Views is music without words, it does not impose any specific images, therefore the piano miniatures do not have titles, only numbers.

The album opens with a 9-minute improvisation which is a paraphrase of the first Polish knight's anthem. The first 12 miniatures are shorter in time than the next 9 from the second disc, which are an extension of the composer's original statement. The elements that bind the piano cycle together are the motives and the evolutionary treatment of the forms of individual miniatures, also the neo-modal harmonic language referring to the works of French and Italian impressionists, ornamentation and virtuosity, and the superior role of the timbre, its flickering through rhythmics.

Aleksandra Garbal