Of the tragic composer deaths on record, the cake for most unusual may be taken by that of Mieczyslaw Karlowicz, who was caught in an avalanche while on a ski trip in the Tatra Mountains. He was of the increasingly often performed Polish generation that came of age in the late 19th century, and he wrote several symphonic poems that were, like Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra, influenced by the writings of Nietzsche. Strauss was but one influence on his music; the two works here take Tchaikovsky as a model, and it ...
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Of the tragic composer deaths on record, the cake for most unusual may be taken by that of Mieczyslaw Karlowicz, who was caught in an avalanche while on a ski trip in the Tatra Mountains. He was of the increasingly often performed Polish generation that came of age in the late 19th century, and he wrote several symphonic poems that were, like Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra, influenced by the writings of Nietzsche. Strauss was but one influence on his music; the two works here take Tchaikovsky as a model, and it was partly these multiple derivations that caused Karlowicz to fall into obscurity after World War I. Yet he doesn't ape his models, and he's worth another listen. The youthful Serenade, Op. 2, marries an attractive concision to a sort of fin de siècle nervousness that emerges over the course of the piece, as if the opening march can't quite put its confidence across. Sample the tripartite Waltz movement (track 3). The Violin Concerto in A major, Op. 8, carries less of...
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