Ignacy Jan Paderewski; Zygmunt Stojowski - Violin Sonatas (Piotr Pławner; Piotr Sałajczyk)

Information

Composer: Ignacy Jan Paderewski; Zygmunt Stojowski

• (01) Paderewski - Violin Sonata in A Minor, Op. 13
• (04) Stojowski - Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Op. 13
• (07) Stojowski - Violin Sonata No. 2 in E Major, Op. 37

Piotr Pławner, violin

Piotr Sałajczyk, piano

Date: 2021

Label: CPO

https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/ignaz-paderewski-sonate-fuer-violine-klavier-op-13/hnum/9735510

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Review

This appealing trans-centennial musical diversion offers a good excuse to showcase three quality Polish sonatas that fall beyond the familiar realms of Chopin and Szymanowski. First, that most dignified darling of concert audiences at the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, pianist-composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski, who wrote his Violin Sonata in A minor in 1882 during a difficult time in his life: his first wife had recently died and he was trying to provide proper care for his handicapped son. It’s an imposing piece that suggests parallels with various composers of the day, most notably Grieg, Brahms and César Franck. The forceful opening anticipates Fauré (ie the Second Piano Quartet of 1886) while the harmonically sophisticated second movement opens as if we’re eavesdropping midway through a conversation – intimate, ornate music, beautifully crafted. By contrast, the finale crosses Baroque-style assertiveness with just a hint of Spanish fire.

Zygmunt Stojowski was a pupil of both Delibes and Paderewski whose Symphony in D minor, Op 21, won first prize in a Paderewski Music Competition in Leipzig in July 1898. Stojowski’s First Violin Sonata, which appeared in print in Paris five years earlier, shares with Paderewski’s Sonata a certain restlessness but is perhaps marginally more amiable, certainly in the first movement. The second-movement Allegretto capriccioso resembles in its musical punctuation the second movement of Schumann’s A minor Sonata, meaning the elegant way it opens then coyly pulls back. The finale is a theme with variations, and it certainly helps that the theme itself is so noble while the variations provide numerous telling contrasts to savour.

Stojowski composed his Second Violin Sonata in the US in 1911 for the 20-year-old Polish violinist Artur Argiewicz (the work’s dedicatee). The opening again recalls the world of Fauré (retrospectively this time, especially the First Sonata). The following Intermezzo has an appealing simplicity about it, almost childlike in fact, whereas the Arietta third movement could easily serve as a lullaby. The Allegro giocoso finale admits a quota of extra warmth to nourish the playful mood. All three works are well recorded and sympathetically performed by violinist Piotr Plawner and pianist Piotr Saajczyk, while Jan Brachmann provides excellent annotations.

-- Rob Cowan, Gramophone

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Ignacy Jan Paderewski (18 November [O.S. 6 November] 1860 – 29 June 1941) was a Polish pianist and composer, politician, and spokesman for Polish independence. As a pianist, he was a favourite of concert audiences around the globe, and his musical fame opened access to diplomacy and the media. As a politician, he was the prime minister of Poland and also Poland's foreign minister in 1919, and represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Despite his relentless touring schedule and political engagements, Paderewski left a legacy of over 70 orchestral, instrumental and vocal works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_Jan_Paderewski

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Zygmunt Stojowski (May 4, 1870 – November 5, 1946) was a Polish pianist and composer. He studied with Władysław Żeleńsk, and then with Louis Diémer and Léo Delibes. However the teachers who had the most profound influence on him were Wladyslaw Gorski and Ignacy Jan Paderewski. In 1905, Stojowski moved to New York, which became his home for the rest of his life. In New York, he was acclaimed as a great composer, pianist and pedagogue, and had the distinction of being the first Polish composer to have an entire concert devoted to his music performed by the New York Philharmonic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygmunt_Stojowski

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Born in 1974 in Lodz, Poland, Piotr Plawner began studying the violin at the age of six. He was the first prize winner of not less than five international violin competitions, including the ARD Competition in Munich. Yehudi Menuhin described him as a violinist with "phenomenal ability". Plawner has performed as a soloist all over Europe, in the Middle East and the United States, at many famous venues, and with major orchestras and conductors. His repertoire includes works from Baroque to contemporary music, particularly less well known, rarely performed pieces, and the work of Polish composers.
http://piotrplawner.com/

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