Monday Music - Grażyna Bacewicz

My new favorite composer is Grażyna Bacewicz. I heard her Concerto for Strings performed by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra last week and loved it. Bacewicz was a Polish composer and violinist, and was the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition.

I. ALLEGRO

II. ANDANTE

III.  VIVO

From Polish Music Information Center, Polish Composers' Union, Dec. 2001...

Considered "one of the finest examples of neoclassicism in Polish music", the Concerto for String Orchestra is surely an excellent demonstration of Bacewicz's striving for the most harmonious combination of tradition and modernity. Of course, the term 'neoclassicism' is used in the broad understanding of the word, the Concerto making references to classical and well as Baroque music. Take Allegro, the first movement: its form is classical - or rather early classical - but its main theme clearly utilizes Baroque melorythmics. Likewise, the lyrical second movement, Andante, features a number of solo fragments played by various instruments producing a varied and diverse sound colours reminiscent of Baroque. Finally Vivo, the third movement, introduces the elements of the rondo and sonata forms, applying them to a bouncy, folksy music. It seems only appropriate to call the Concerto a synergy of a neoclassical form and neo-Baroque content.