The music of Karol Szymanowski has been on an upswing since the recession of the self-serving avant-garde and the rise of an eclectic spirit. Szymanowski was criticized specifically for his eclecticism in his own time, but it's looking better and better, rooted in an engagement with a variety of classic models. He drew on Chopin, certainly, but also Wagnerian harmony, Scriabin, Stravinksky, Beethoven, and Debussy -- although he is in a way parallel to Debussy rather than his disciple, and there is a meaty lyricism in his ...
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The music of Karol Szymanowski has been on an upswing since the recession of the self-serving avant-garde and the rise of an eclectic spirit. Szymanowski was criticized specifically for his eclecticism in his own time, but it's looking better and better, rooted in an engagement with a variety of classic models. He drew on Chopin, certainly, but also Wagnerian harmony, Scriabin, Stravinksky, Beethoven, and Debussy -- although he is in a way parallel to Debussy rather than his disciple, and there is a meaty lyricism in his music that's all his own. This Polish recording surveys his piano music and does well to begin with the rarely heard Métopes, Op. 29 (1915). Metopes are bas-relief images interpolated bewteen the small "triglyph" posts on the façade of the top of a Doric structure. Szymanowski wrote the work after visiting the monuments of ancient Greece, and the three short pieces not only evoke episodes of Greek mythology but transport the listener to a mythic space through unusual scales and...
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