Concerto for Orchestra (Lutosławski)
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Polish composer Witold Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra was written in the years 1950-54, on the initiative of the artistic director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, Witold Rowicki, to whom it is dedicated. It is written in three movements, lasts about 30 minutes, and constitutes the last stage and a crowning achievement of the folkloristic style in Lutosławski's work. That style, inspired by the music of the Kurpie region, went back in him to the pre-1939 years. Having written a series of small folkoristic pieces for various instruments and their combinations (piano, clarinet with piano, chamber ensemble, orchestra, human voice with orchestra), Lutosławski decided to use his experience of stylisation of Polish folklore in a bigger work. However, the Concerto for Orchestra differs from Lutosławski's earlier folkloristic pieces not only in that it's more extended, but also that what is retained from folklore is only melodic themes. The composer moulds them into a different reality, lending them new harmony, adding atonal counterpoints, turning them into neo-baroque forms.
The three movements are:
- Intrada — a sort of extended two-subject overture.
- Capriccio notturno ed Arioso — the Capriccio is an airy, virtuoso scherzo, the main subject of which is intoned by the violin. It is followed by an expressive Arioso initiated by the brass section.
- Passacaglia, Toccata a Corale — in three sections: the Passacaglia being a set of variations on a brooding theme played by the double-basses; followed by a vivacious and dynamic Toccata; and rounded off by the (instrumental) Corale.
The Corale's second appearance produces a solemn finale for the monumental construction, the material for which is borrowed from a nineteenth-century collection compiled by an outstanding Polish ethnologist, Oskar Kolberg.
The work was first performed in Warsaw on 26th November 1954, and was responsible for making Lutosławski's name recognised in the West. However, once Lutosławski embarked on a style marked by heavy aleatorism in the early 1960s, he attempted to distance himself from the Concerto for Orchestra.
