Thursday, March 27, 2008 | 7:30 p.m.
Alfred Newman Recital Hall, USC (see AHF on campus map)
3616 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA
Reception following the concert
Admission is FREE and open to the public
Campus Parking: $8
Enter Gate 3 at Figueroa St. & McCarthy Way (Parking Structure X)
Program
Works by Frederic Chopin, Witold Lutosławski, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, and Krzysztof Penderecki in performance by USC faculty, students, and guest artists
Polish Music Spring
From March 2010 PMC Newsletter
The Polish Music Center at the University of Southern California is pleased to invite you to our spring 2008 concert. An exciting program of music by some of Poland’s greatest composers – Chopin, Lutosławski, Paderewski, and Penderecki – will be presented by USC faculty, students, and guest artists. The concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. on 27 March 2008 at the Alfred Newman Recital Hall at USC. This performance is free and open to the public.
The program for the evening will feature several fascinating compositions for strings and piano, including Lutosławski’s 1984 Partita for Violin and Piano and Penderecki’s Second Sonata for Violin and Piano dating from 1999. Lutosławski described the Partita as “one of my most important works.” According to Midori Goto, one of the greatest violinists of our time and a renowned interpreter of modern music, Lutosławski’s Partita is “… a masterpiece for violin and piano. It contains everything one can imagine in a deeply-moving musical work: the life within this music is so powerful that both to play it and to listen to it is an overwhelming experience.”
Although Penderecki is chiefly known for his large-scale, ground-breaking orchestral works, his few chamber music compositions are very important in their own right. His First Violin and Piano Sonata dates from 1953. Written almost half a century later, the Second Sonata for Violin and Piano shares with its predecessor the idiom of tonal language. It also embraces traditional forms and modes of musical expression that Penderecki returned to in his recent compositions. This expansive, five-movement work alternates between virtuosity and introspection within its wide spectrum of moods.
Nocturnes and Mazurkas by Chopin and Paderewski, as well as the lesser-known Cantabile and Trois Ecossaises will also be featured on this program, but not in their original version for solo piano. They will be heard for the first time in a new arrangement for piano and strings by pianist and Polish Music Center Director Marek Żebrowski. Chopin composed only a few chamber music works and this selection of arrangements seeks to demonstrate that Chopin’s unforgettable piano masterpieces can be shared in a chamber setting with a violin and cello.