No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 June 2023
1 I thank Bennett Zon, General Editor of Nineteenth-Century Music Review, for editing this CD review. I also thank Heather de Savage for reading an earlier draft and offering suggestions regarding its improvement.
2 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the territory corresponding to contemporary Poland was partitioned several times among European powers. For instance, after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the western city of Poznań was controlled by the Kingdom of Prussia and renamed Posen. Kraków, in the southwest, was influenced by the Habsburgs of Austria. Warsaw, toward the east, was governed by Russia. After the November Uprising, also known as the Polish–Russian War of 1830–1831, Congress Poland, as the Russian-ruled region was known, lost what little autonomy it had and effectively became a province of the Russian Empire. For an overview of this era, see Lukowski, Jerzy and Zawadski, Hubert, A Concise History of Poland, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 For more information about the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music (Uniwersytet Muzyczny Fryderyka Chopina – UMFC), see https://chopin.edu.pl/university/about-the-umfc (accessed 25 May 2023).
4 The Polish Romantic Guitar website, which includes an ordered track list and a biographical sketch of the guitarist, plus notes about the music and its composers, may be seen at https://publikacje.nifc.pl/en/wydawnictwa-plytowe/artykul/32_nifccd-118-chopin-bobrowicz-horecki-szczepanowski-sokolowski (accessed 25 May 2023).
5 Mateusz Kowalski's website may be seen at www.mateuszkowalskiguitarist.com (accessed 25 May 2023).
6 More video performances and interviews are available via Kowalski's YouTube channel; see www.youtube.com/mateuszkowalskiguitarist (accessed 25 May 2023).
7 I am grateful to Heather de Savage for this observation.
8 For more information about The Fryderyk Chopin Institute (Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina – NIFC), which is separate from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, see https://nifc.pl/en/ (accessed 25 May 2023).
9 For more information about the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego), see https://culture.pl/en/tag/ministry-of-culture-and-national-heritage (accessed 25 May 2023).
10 For more information about the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio, see www2.polskieradio.pl/studio/lutoslawski_en.aspx (accessed 25 May 2023).
11 For the luthier's website, see www.roemmich-guitars.com/index.php?lang=en (accessed 20 June 2023).
12 The artist's first release, Mateusz Kowalski – Classical Guitarist, on the CD Accord label (ACD 251; 2019), featured music by J.S. Bach, Francisco Tárrega, Manuel Ponce, Astor Piazzolla, Sergio Assad, Mauro Giuliani, Augustín Mangoré, and Franz Schubert. Its website may be seen at https://cdaccord.com.pl/en/en-mateusz-kowalski-classical-guitarist/ (accessed 25 May 2023).
13 Streaming service delivery diminishes perception of significant relationships and comprehensive insights within compact discs. For a track list of Polish Romantic Guitar, see the link cited above in note 4.
14 Stanisław Szczepanowski's birth year remains uncertain; see p. 35 of the CD's liner notes.
15 See Stanisław Szczepanowski, Introduction et Variations Brilliantes sur un Air National, Une Larme, Morceau Expresif, for guitar, Editions Orphee (# 49402503), 2001.
16 A nineteenth-century copy of Szczepanowski's score for Introduction et Variations Brillantes sur un Air National is held by the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)/Petrucci Music Library, which may be reached via https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page) (accessed 20 June 2023).
17 The Polish national anthem, ‘Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła’, which was which dates from 1797 and bears words by Józef Wybicki (1747–1822), was formally adopted in 1927.
18 The Polish equivalent of ‘mazurka’ is ‘mazurek’, which refers to the region of Mazovia, whose largest city is Warsaw.
19 Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), a poet and patriot, and Eustachy Januszkiewicz (1805–1874), an author and publisher, were Polish exiles living in Paris. For more on Mickiewicz, who was a friend of Chopin, see Koropeckyj, Roman, Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Mickiewicz, Adam, Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania, trans. Johnston, Bill (New York: Archipelago Books, 2018)Google Scholar; Mickiewicz, Adam, Ballads and Romances, trans. Kraszewski, Charles S., illust. Mendor, Max (London: Glagoslav Publications, 2022)Google Scholar. Sor's ‘Variations on a theme of Mozart’ were first published in London in 1819 and based on a theme from Die Zauberflöte (1791). Copies of early editions of the work held by the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)/Petrucci Music Library, which may be reached via https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page) (accessed 20 June 2023).
20 A copy of Bobrowicz‘s arrangements of these four mazurkas from Chopin’s Op. 6 is held by the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)/Petrucci Music Library, which may be reached via https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page) (accessed 20 June 2023).
21 Pauline Viardot (1821–1910) recognized the vocality embodied within this music, and in 1864, created vocal arrangements of 12 of Chopin's mazurkas using poetic texts by Louis Pomey (1835–1901). Her setting of Chopin's Op. 7 No. 3 (VWV 4029), was called ‘Faible cœur!’.
22 A copy of Bobrowicz's variations on a Ukrainian song is held by the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)/Petrucci Music Library, which may be reached via https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page) (accessed 20 June 2023).
23 Readers of Nineteenth-Century Music Review will recall that Chopin's Op. 2 elicited Robert Schumann's oft-repeated remark (expressed in print by Schumann's character Eusebius) ‘Hut ab, ihr Herrn, ein Genie’ [‘Hats off, gentlemen, a genius’]. Schumann, Robert, ‘Ein Opus II’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 33/49 (7 December 1831): 49Google Scholar.
24 A copy of Bobrowicz's variations on Mozart's ‘Là ci darem la mano’ is held by the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)/Petrucci Music Library, which may be reached via https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page) (accessed 20 June 2023).
25 A copy of Bobrowicz's Distraction: Rondeau brilliant et facile is held by the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)/Petrucci Music Library, which may be reached via https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page) (accessed 20 June 2023).
26 Kintore is about 20 kilometres from Aberdeen.
27 A manuscript copy of Horecki's (Horetzky's) Fantasia, as well as a printed copy originally published by Metzler & Co. in London, are held by the International Music Score Library, which may be reached via https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page) (accessed 20 June 2023).
28 For more on the ‘lament tetrachord’, see Rosand, Ellen, ‘The Descending Tetrachord: An Emblem of Lament’, The Musical Quarterly 65/3 (1979): 346–59Google Scholar.
29 Some listeners might be surprised that, in this recording, the guitarist does not repeat the first section of Horecki's theme, nor those of the Fantasia's subsequent variations, as the score directs. But perhaps these choices reflected a matter of time: at a generous 79 minutes, the Polish Romantic Guitar album nearly exceeds the capacity of its compact disc.