Karol Szymanowski - Complete songs for voice and piano

Karol Szymanowski - Complete songs for voice and piano

 Piotr Beczała

 Juliana Gondek

 

Urszula Kryger

 Iwona Sobotka

 

 Reinild Mees

Channel Classics 2004 4 CDs

(not my rip)

Szymanowski

Complete Songs for Voice and Piano

Juliana Gondek, Iwona Sobotka (sopranos)

Urszula Kryger (mezzo)

Piotr Beczała (tenor)

Reinild Mees (piano)

Channel Classics

CCS19398 (4h 24' • DDD • lit)

CD1: Piotr Beczała, Reinild Mees
Sześć pieśni, op.2
1. Daleko został cały świat
2. Tyś nie umarła
3. We mgłach
4. Czasem, gdy długo, na pół sennie marzę
5. Słyszałem ciebie
6. Pielgrzym

Trzy fragmenty z poematów Jana Kasprowicza, op.5
1. Święty Boże
2. Jestem i płaczę
3. Błogosławioną niech będzie ta chwila

Łabędź, op.7

Cztery pieśni, op.11
1. Tak jestem smętny
2. W zaczarowanym lesie
3. Nademną leci w szafir morza
4. Rycz, burzo...

Trzy piosenki (Piosenki żołnierskie)
1. Do dziewczyny, Mazurek
2. O zwiedzionym żołnierzu
3. Wyszywała raz Hanka...

Idom se siuhaje dołu, śpiewajęcy...

Pięć pieśni, op.13
1. Głos w mroku
2. Kołysanka Dzieciątka Jezus
3. Na morzu
4. Zulejka
5. Czarna lutnia

Trzy pieśni do słów Dymitra Dawidowa
1. Wschód słońca (Kaк тoлькo вocтoк)
2. Bezgwiezdne niebo (Heбo бeз звëзд)
3. Jesienne słońce (Oceнee coлнцe)

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CD2: Juliana Gondek, Reinild Mees

Barwne pieśni, op.22
1. Pustelnik (Einsiedel)
2. Pieśń dziewczęcia u okna (Lied des Mädchens am Fenster)
3. Dla małych dziewczynek (An kleine Mädchen)
4. Nocy letniej srebrny cud (Das hat die Sommernacht getan)
5. Przeznaczenie (Bestimmung)

Pieśni muezina szalonego, op.42
1. Allah, Allah, Akbar...
2. O, ukochana ma...
3. Ledwie blask słońca...
4. W południe miasto białe od gorąca...
5. O tej godzinie, w której miasto śpi...
6. Odeszłaś na pustynię zachodnią...

Seven Songs (James Joyce), op.54
1. Droga moja (Gentle Lady, Do Not Sing)
2. Zaśnij (Sleep Now)
3. Złocisty włos (Lean Out of the Window)
4. Turkawko moja (My Dove, My Beautiful One)
5. Struny ziemi (Strings in the Earth)
6. Majowe wiatry (Winds of May)
7. Po deszczu (Rain Has Fallen)

Pieśni Kurpiowski, op.58
1. Lecioły zurazie
2. Wysła burzycka
3. Uwoz, mamo
4. U jeziorecka
5. A pod borem
6. Bzicem kunia
7. Sciani dumbek
8. Leć, głosie, po rosie
9. Zarżyjzę kuniu
10. Ciamna nocka
11. Wysły rybki
12. Wsycy przyjechali

Dans les prés fleuris

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CD3: Urszula Kryger, Reinild Mees

Sześć pieśni, op.20
1. Na księżycu czarnym
2. Święty Franciszek mówi
3. Pachną mi dziwnie twoje złote włosy
4. W mem sercu
5. Z maurytańskich śpiewnych sak
6. Na pustej trzcinie

Pieśni miłosne Hafiza, op.24
1. Życzenie
2. Jedyne lekarstwo
3. Płonące tulipany
4. Taniec
5. Zakochany wiatr
6. Smutna wiosna

Grób Hafiza, op. posth.

Cztery pieśni (Tagore), op.41
1. Moje serce (My Heart)
2. Młody królewicz I (The Young Prince I)
3. Młody królewicz II (The Young Prince II)
4. Ostatnia pieśń (The Last Song)

Dwanaście pieśni, op.17
1. Wczesnym rankiem
2. Tajemnica
3. Zaloty
4. Nocą
5. Refleksya
6. Zwiastowanie
7. Po burzy
8. Zawód
9. Kołysanka
10. Dusza
11. Fragment ("Płomienny")
12. Noc miłosńa

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CD4: Iwona Sobotka, Reinild Mees

Pieśni księżniczki z baśni, op.31
1. Samotny księżyc
2. Słowik
3. Złote trzewiczki
4. Taniec
5. Pieśń o fali
6. Uczta

Słopiewnie, op.46 bis
1. Słowisień
2. Zielone słowa
3. Święty Franciszek
4. Kalinowe dwory
5. Wanda

Trzy kołysanki, op.48
1. Pochyl się cicho nad kołyską
2. Śpiewam morzu
3. Biały krąg księżyca

Rymy dziecięce, op.49
1. Przed zasnieciem
2. Jak się najlepiej opędzać od szerszenia?
3. Mieszkanie
4. Prosię
5. Gwaizdka
6. Ślub królewny
7. Trzmiel i żuk
8. Święta Krystyna
9. Wiosna
10. Kolysanka Lalek
11. Gil i sroka
12. Smutek
13. Wizyta u krowy
14. Kołysanka Krysi
15. Kot
16. Kołysanka Lalki
17. Myszy
18. Zły Lejba
19. Kołysanka gniadego konia
20. Nikczemny szpak

Vocalise-Étude M 65

Samotny księżyc op.31 No.1 (a)

Szymanowski
Complete Songs for Voice and Piano
Juliana Gondek, Iwona Sobotka (sopranos)
Urszula Kryger (mezzo)
Piotr Beczała (tenor)
Reinild Mees (piano)
Channel Classics
CCS19398 (4h 24' • DDD • lit)

A fine set that shows how far and wide in mood this Polish songsmith roamed what a journey is on offer here. This set proposes a kind of luxury musical package tour for the jet-set age today expressionist Austria, tomorrow Slavic fantasy, the day after high-romanticism in Germany, and then away for a weekend in the exotic realms of the Near East. The different locales here just materialise out of thin air, colourful, fully formed, without a moment for the traveller to get bored on the way.

Szymanowski's song output is doubly intriguing - first, for those far-flung contrasts of style; second, because it is so little known. Half a lifetime of attending live recitals is unlikely to bring one into much contact with his songs, apart from the Songs of the Fairy Princess, which come round from to time in their orchestral version, Of course, the Polish language is an issue, but this admirable set reminds us that there are also songs in German and even a James Joyce cycle in English.

Four singers take part, one to each disc. Piotr Beczala is a light, poetic young tenor, who also has some passion up his sleeve. He is dreamily captivating in the early Six Songs of Op 2, where Faure and Rachmaninov seem to be whispering ideas alternately over Szymanowski's shoulders; catches well the change of tone to religious concentration in the Three Fragments by Jan Kasprowicz; and brings lyric beauty to the Schoenberg-inspired Op 13 settings.

Soprano Juliana Gondek is less appealing. Her voice is a touch brittle for the sultry mood Szymanowski must have had in mind for the Songs of the Infatuated Muezzin and a bit more could be made of the words in the Joyce cycle. Yet there is still much to enjoy: why don't the Bunte Lieder, with their Viennese air of cultured enjoyment, come round in recitals today?

The third disc introduces the sensitive singing of mezzo Urszula Kryger. She plunges straight into the swirling Tristanesque ecstasy of the Wagnerian Op 20 set with its embarrassingly over written poetry by Tadeusz Micinski (it must be tricky not to blush at a line like 'In the gardens of your breasts apple trees [are] in blossom'). The glinting lights of the Orient return in Des Hafis Liebeslieder, another set of paraphrases by Hans Bethge to place beside Das Lied von der Erde, and the four songs of Op 41 then take us forward into more ambiguous and experimental terrain.

The familiar Songs of the Fairy Princess promise a magical opening to the fourth disc in a winning performance by young lwona Sobotka, a name to note. Here is a pure, steady, light soprano, who can flit up into the ledger lines where Stravinsky's very similar Rossignol takes wing without a hint of shrillness. Sobotka is also interesting in the antique Polish songs of the Slopiewnie, Op 46 and makes a lively job of the miniature Children's Rhymes of Op 49, even if a few of those go rather a long way.

Through all of this the pianist, Reinild Mees, exhibits a faultless sense of atmosphere, whether delicately conjuring Oriental mystery or thundering up and down Lisztian octaves. Those who fight shy of more than an hour of Szymanowski might prefer Dorothy Dorow's single-disc survey on Etcetera (1/92), but her edgy coloratura affords less enjoyment than this Channel Classics set. The adventurous traveller need look no further.
Richard Fairman
The Gramophone
November, 2004 p.89

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Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) is now best known for one opera, the highly charged King Roger, and a handful of works for orchestra, including two violin concertos and a choral symphony. The rest of his output is explored only occasionally in this country, so this survey of his songs, all performed with great care and sensitivity by a quartet of Polish singers, opens up territory that will be unknown to most British listeners.

The only familiar items here are the Op 42 Songs of the Infatuated Muezzin, and the Songs of the Fairy Princess Op 31. Like the Op 24 Love Songs of Hafiz, these exist in orchestral as well as piano versions and were composed in the years of the first world war that also produced Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto and Third Symphony.

Those cycles typify all that is most intriguing about Szymanowski's finest music, for by the time they were written he had forged his own distinctive style, replacing the heavily laden romanticism of his early works with a language showing his awareness of what modernism had already achieved. It contains identifiable echoes of Debussy and Ravel, Scriabin and Stravinsky, but fused into a deeply personal and expressively powerful whole, which proved the perfect vehicle for a series of works that explored his fascination with exoticism in general and the world of the near east in particular. In the 1920s his music shifted its focus again, with Polish nationalism driving his attempts to integrate folk material into what had become basically a neoclassical style.

All of those phases are represented in the songs, for which Reinild Mees is the accomplished pianist in this set. The tenor Piotr Beczala has the hardest job with the early settings, which bring together French and German song traditions in a sometimes uneasy mixture, but does it well. The soprano Juliana Gondek is a little edgy in groups like the Muezzin songs, which ideally need a more voluptuous sound, but the soprano Iwona Sobotka gets the Fairy Princess cycle just right, and the mezzo Urszula Kryger really projects the Hafiz settings and the powerful group of Four Songs to Poems by Tagore Op 41.

But there are fascinating things to be discovered on all the discs; this is a genuinely important release.
Andrew Clements
The Guardian
23 July, 2004