Catalogue raisonné

• Prelude for piano (1922)
• Small pieces for piano (1923-1926)
• Lullaby in E major for piano (1926)
• Three Preludes for piano (1927)
• Sonata for violin and piano no. 1 (1928)
• Sonata for violin and piano no. 2 (1928)
• Poème for piano (1928)
• Variations for piano (1929)
• Dance of the Chimera for piano (1930)
• Scherzo for orchestra (1930)
• Haroun al Rashid for orchestra (1931)
• Water-Nymph i Linden Lullaby for voice and piano (1934)
• Music for three educational films Fire, Beware!, Short-circuit (1935-1937)
• Double Fugue for orchestra (1936)
• Prelude and aria for piano (1936)
• Requiem aeternam for choir and orchestra (1937)

The Piano Sonata serves as sole testimony to Lutosławski’s first completely successful compositional activities. He was fascinated by the sonic world of the impressionists, so different from the – as he called it – “abused tonality” popular at the time. And so he composed a work in which the quality of musical colour comes to the fore. We do not find here many symmetrically constructed themes with a rhythmic clarity and unequivocal tonal references. Instead, Lutosławski revels in the colours of the piano’s sounds, very gracefully shading the dynamics, dispersing the texture, and finding much pleasure in obscuring the rhythmic pulse.

Although the influence of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are to be clearly heard, the three-movement Sonata is strongly rooted in the past schemata of musical architecture.

Let us take for example the first movement – Allegro. It is an almost classically conducted sonata allegro form, whose tonal orbit is marked out by the b flat minor and D flat major chords. An accumulation of broken vertical sonorities, whose components create further layers of musical colour, anticipates the characteristic orchestral texture of Lutosławski’s later works. The middle movement – Adagio ma non troppo, harmonically weaved around the f minor chord, distinguishes itself first by clearly lead phrases. However, sonic formations of rhythmic clarity quickly give way to a shimmering texture, remembered from the initial movement. The greatest motivic (and agogic) variegation is probably found in the final movement. This movement is composed of three fragments, which again enhance the particular polyphony of musical colours.

They contrast with each other in material, yet remain unified in the tonal axis of the b flat minor and D flat major chords. Repeated fragments, skillfully subjected to transformations by the composer, simultaneously tie in to the first movement of the Sonata. The composition thus gains in homogeneity, which becomes a value present in Lutosławski’s future masterworks.

In one of the composition adept’s first works – which nonetheless demands ample technical dexterity and sensitivity to musical colour – the lack of references to the music of Fryderyk Chopin, an icon of European pianistics, makes us think. Perhaps the only testimony to the possible influence of the great Pole is the ability to display an immensely wide array of musical colours. However, even with this element Lutosławski seems to turn more toward the music of Karol Szymanowski.

Besides, what may have been symbolic was the fact that both composers met in 1935 in Riga, specifically at the occasion of Lutosławski’s performance of his Sonata at the Conservatory.

The work was heard for the first time in Warsaw in a premiere given by Witold Lutosławski. Although later the composer did not hide his critical stance toward the youthful piece, one cannot deny that the Sonata, which survived the wartime turmoil, constitutes a historical testimony to the consistent development of its creator.

The Symphonic Variations, composed in 1938, received their premiere on March 1939 in a broadcast of the Polish Radio in Warsaw, and were again performed on April 17 of the same year at Wawel, the historical Royal residence in Cracow, during the World Music Days Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music that took place in Poland. In both cases, the Symphonic Orchestra of the Polish Radio in Warsaw (formerly the Great Symphony Orchestra of the Polish Radio in Katowice, and presently the National Symphony Orchestra of the Polish Radio) was conducted by Grzegorz Fitelberg. The Variations were the first piece composed by Witold Lutosławski directly after completion of his studies under Witold Maliszewski in the Warsaw Conservatory.

As basis for the Variations the composer uses a tonal (extended key of B major) theme of 10 measures, after the exposition of which one can formally distinguish a series of unnumbered variations presented in a continuous manner in the score, as well as a final coda - fugato (Allegro ma non troppo), yet the entire composition gives the impression of a structurally unified whole, a reason why its commentators indicate a disparate number of perceived variations (Krzysztof Meyer - 12, Tadeusz A. Zieliński - 8).

The employed variational change does not consist of a marked difference in tempos (fast and slow variations do not contrast with each other, but are grouped: the first is slow, the next four are fast, and the two final ones are slow), relying instead on transformations in the melodic and rhythmic motives, but even more in the phenomena of musical timbre. In such an approach to variational technique one may point out certain (external) analogies with the idea of ‘developing variation' from the school of Arnold Schönberg; furthermore, in the polychordal harmony and industrious ostinatos one hears the echoes of an early Igor Stravinsky and in the musical colour those of Maurice Ravel, while in the contrapuntal technique one finds a foreshadowing of the Symphony no. 1, and even Funeral Music of Lutosławski himself.

Variations on a Theme by Paganini (more precisely, transcriptions of Nicolò Paganini's twelve variations on the theme of his own Caprice no. 24 in A minor for violin solo) were created in 1941 in a version for two pianos and were premiered in the same year by their composer with Andrzej Panufnik at Aria cafe in the occupied Warsaw. An authored version for piano and orchestra has been prepared on the initiative of the Polish-American pianist and harpsichordist Felicja Blumenthal in 1978.

In the Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Lutosławski made a living for himself and his mother by playing the piano at cafes, most frequently at Art and Fashion, but also Aria, At the Actresses', and sporadically the Salon of Art, the latter having been run by the pianist and composer Bolesław Woytowicz. Occasionally, Lutosławski accompanied an ensemble in the style of The Revelers, namely the choir Dana, still popular before World War II, and took part in the rare, sometimes official, but usually secret concerts in private apartments. In the years 1940-1944 he regularly played in a piano duo with Andrzej Panufnik. The duo Lutosławski-Panufnik prepared a repertoire of nearly 200 pieces: arrangements of classical music from Bach to Brahms and Tchaikovsky, and even Stravinsky, as well as traditional jazz motives, among all of which found itself an authored arrangement of the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun by Debussy. This collection also included a transcribed version of Paganini's Caprice no. 24 in A minor prepared by Witold Lutosławski and played frequently at Aria cafe and other establishments. As a side note, Panufnik never claimed to have participated in the composition of this piece. From the entire collection of the Lutosławski-Panufnik duo, only the sheet music to the Variations avoided destruction in the Warsaw Uprising.

The theme and its 11 variations with a finale that make up the entire composition by Nicolò Paganini remained untouched as to their structure, but Lutosławski rendered his version with an extraordinary, virtuosic bravado that basically engages the original in a competition. This bravado makes itself apparent through the fact that no matter how varied the types of performance technique applied in Paganini's solo violin composition, they become transferred with great finesse to the effect of the two pianos, creating a ‘counterpoint' of that which in its timbral essence remains violinistic, and that which is pianistic. In the orchestral version we are dealing with a masterly operation, and even a juggling of three textures - violinistic, pianistic, and orchestral - assigned either alternately, or in counterpoint to the solo instrument and orchestral instruments or their groups. In the version for two pianos, the retained principle of an alternating exchange of melodic and harmonic material between both instruments slightly lengthens the duration of the piece when performed by one piano with orchestra - which results from a partially implemented, successive linking of musical portions played simultaneously by both instruments in the version for both pianos - but in turn significantly enriches the piece in the orchestral version through the qualities of musical colour.

In keeping with the original, the Variations are tonal, but Lutosławski overlays the diatonic scaffolding with chromaticism and technical solutions sometimes unknown to Paganini, such as the polytonality of the third variation. The variations themselves are simultaneously etude-like, which is a source of not only their expressional, but also purely articulative contrast in the types of motion and various formulas of pianistic technique, such as pizzicato, tremolo, the use of parallel chords, passages, scales, glissandos, and other devices. They naturally connect with the expressional composition of the cycle, something that is perhaps most clear in the sixth variation, marked Poco lento (also the strongest agogic contrast in the entire cycle, the latter being maintained in fast tempos, in keeping with the original model). In this variation the mutually divergent scales in both pianos are played dolcissimo molto legato, only to give way in a maximal contrast of expression to the Allegro molto of the seventh variation.

The piano part grows out of the finest virtuosic models from the musical line of Liszt, Busoni, and Rachmaninoff, at the same time becoming enriched by the experience of Bartók and - to an extent - Prokofiev, while the orchestral part owes it lustre to the Neoclassical vitalism being seasoned with elements of timbre and articulation originating not only in Ravel's use of the orchestra, but also in the references made in twentieth-century scores to folklorism and the contemporary orchestra's sonoristic, timbral and articulation palette. As to its harmony, the piece naturally relies on the A minor original, in relation to which the chordal textures, not having much in common with major-minor tonality, become a type of atonal and purely timbre-oriented variation that imbues the entire work with an almost piquant flavour. Contrast to the perpetual vigore spirit maintained in allegro is introduced solely by the aforementioned, lyrical and cantilena-like sixth variation (poco lento), in which one may discern an allusion to the musical poetry of Karol Szymanowski. This contrasting variant in the centre of the cycle and a passage-based, mini cadence of the piano in the closing of the final variation create a purely external allusion to the form of a miniature piano concerto.

Music for chamber orchestra in Witold Lutosławski's oeuvre is an extraordinarily interesting domain; in it as an area somewhere between the extended chamber music writing and prolegomenon to symphonic style an especially intriguing aesthetic play is being carried on, and one whose significance is fundamental to the musical poetry of Lutosławski. This significance results from the fact that Lutosławski's chamber output is rather modest (though it is difficult to consider the entirety of his achievements while omitting the String Quartet and Epitaph for oboe and piano), yet the spirit of chamber performance is present in an intensive form in the composer's symphonic scores, which constitute the crux of his compositional legacy. Viewing the compositions for string orchestra in this perspective is a valuable exercise.

Symphony No. 1 was composed between 1941 and 1947. It comprises four movements: 1. Allegro giusto, 2. Poco adagio, 3. Allegretto misterioso, 4. Finale – Allegro vivace. It was first performed in Katowice on April 6, 1948, by the Polish Radio Grand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Grzegorz Filtelberg. Subsequent performances took place the same year in Cracow and then in Warsaw. It was a very fateful year for the arts in Soviet Bloc countries. At the Congresses of Composers in Moscow and in Prague the principles of socialist realism were announced. A new term entered the political-aesthetic vocabulary – that of “formalist” music, which was supposedly harmful to communist society. Lutosławski’s Symphony No. 1 was one of the first musical works in Poland to be labelled “formalist”.

The piece was written during the Second World War and completed just after the end of the war. The composer said that the character of the work was “cheerful, as that was the original conception from the period of independence, before the war, even though it was developed during the terrible time of war and in the far-from-idyllic post-war period.”

As Lutosławski commented: “Those were the times when, among most orchestral musicians, a sequence of 3/4 and 5/8 time was deemed an unnecessary oddity, and a chord containing more than five different notes (and – God forbid – more than one minor interval) was seen as unbearable torture to the performer’s ear. It is easy to guess the reaction of the orchestra during the first rehearsals of my symphony. I had a vague sense that instead of the long awaited satisfaction, I was going to experience severe and unfamiliar distress. But nevertheless… After countless rehearsals, the orchestra, perhaps yielding to Fitelberg’s unwavering conviction, reached exceptional precision in performing my score.” “I don’t treat Symphony No. 1 with disdain. It was, however, a piece that did not herald anything for the future, there was nothing that I could develop further.”

The first movement takes the form of a sonata allegro, with shifting motifs and sequences of fast-changing chords as the first theme and a canon-like imitation of extensively developed melody lines as the second theme. Aesthetically, the music is close to Symphonic Variations, and some harmonic similarity to Igor Stravinsky’s music can also be observed. In a discussion about the adagio (second) movement, the English monographer of Lutosławski’s work, Charles Bodman Rae, points out that the piece is inspired by the music of three composers. The initial melody evokes the chromatism of Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta; the horn part is reminiscent of the slow movement of Albert Roussel’s Symphony No. 3; and the second theme is supposedly an allusion (through the parody of a march in the oboe part) to Sergei Prokofiev. The third movement is a loose scherzo with a trio (with no literal repetitions). The melody line in the bass register of the strings introduces a twelve-tone row pizzicato: its second six-note chord is an inversion of the first six-note chord, transposed upwards by a minor interval. The timbre of this movement is exceptionally interesting – the sophisticated combinations of instrumental timbres seem to herald the style and technique of sonorism. The final Allegro is described by Charles Bodman Rae as an expressive formal sequence of build-up–climax–resolution–abatement–coda and cadence in D major.

Although the symphony ends in D major, as a whole it is atonal or – to put it differently – post(pan)tonal. In no way does it refer to any inspiration coming from folk music and it does not introduce functional or popular elements, which would soon become characteristic features of Lutosławski’s music right up to Concerto for Orchestra. Stylistically, the work can be classified as formal neoclassicism with modernist textural ambitions.

Krzysztof Meyer wrote of the piece: “Lutosławski’s Symphony No. 1, although undoubtedly the most serious since the times of Szymanowski, could not compare with other symphonies composed in the 1940s – those of Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Honegger. It lacked both a fully shaped individuality and technical mastery. It was, however, a well-written work, which could have played an important role in Polish music at the beginning of the 1950s. It could not do so for political reasons, and when it was finally allowed to enter the musical stage, its time had already passed.”

Music for chamber orchestra in Witold Lutosławski's oeuvre is an extraordinarily interesting domain; in it as an area somewhere between the extended chamber music writing and prolegomenon to symphonic style an especially intriguing aesthetic play is being carried on, and one whose significance is fundamental to the musical poetry of Lutosławski. This significance results from the fact that Lutosławski's chamber output is rather modest (though it is difficult to consider the entirety of his achievements while omitting the String Quartet and Epitaph for oboe and piano), yet the spirit of chamber performance is present in an intensive form in the composer's symphonic scores, which constitute the crux of his compositional legacy. Viewing the compositions for string orchestra in this perspective is a valuable exercise.

The Overture for Strings was created in 1949. Dedicated to Mirko Očadlik (the director of Prague's radio orchestra), the piece received its premiere in the Czechoslovakian capital on November 9, 1949, with the Symphony Orchestra of the Prague Radio conducted by Grzegorz Fitelberg. This composition grows out of the tradition created by Paul Sacher and his series of commissions for the Basel Chamber Orchestra, with Bela Bartók's Divertimento and Igor Stravinsky's Concert in Re at the forefront. Beginning with the 1930s, the chamber string orchestra became one of the twentieth century's most popular formations, and one that was not exclusively, but mainly Neoclassical or in some way referring to Neoclassicism. While the Overture remained in the shadow of the Symphony no. 1 and the Concerto for Orchestra, it variously foreshadowed the changes in Lutosławski's music after the composition of his Funeral Music, or even the Venetian Games, i.e. in the music of ‘Lutosławski proper'. One may come to the conclusion that in the Overture the composer uses for the first time his ‘chain' technique, which relies on the dovetailing of various musical elements and their gradual replacement, an effect particularly characteristic of his later music.

This short, five-minute piece is in clear sonata allegro form (featuring a reversed recapitulation), but its clarity does not contradict the richness of elaborate detail in the employed compositional technique; it is as if the composer desired to create a super-complete symphonic aphorism, while not altogether eschewing the Neoclassical tradition (Grzegorz Fitelberg compared this composition to a "miniature human conserved in formalin"). We have used the term ‘super-complete' because the number of elements employed is greater than necessary for the completion of this form; and ‘aphorism', because of the extraordinary economy in the use of those elements. However, in respect to the latter, the piece does not create the impression of asceticism.

As a whole the composition rests upon three thematic ideas marked by clear motivic structures; moreover, the recapitulation adds one more theme. The impression of an integral unity of this construction is amplified by the reverse order of the themes in the recapitulation, and their partially contrapuntal presentation in the development. Although the themes create a sense of unity, they differ amongst each other in a decisive manner. The first relies on the filling out of a 12-tone spectrum with four-note motives derived from two eight-note scales. In their melodic outline these motives recall Bartók, and in their manner of presentation, Webern, while their shape foreshadows Lutosławski's motivic design of the 60s. The second theme, which also presents an eight-note scale (testifying in turn to modal thinking), can be regarded as an attempt to create the type of harmony that will be fully voiced in the composer's Funeral Music. Only in the third theme do we find characteristics that boast a Neoclassical typicality, owing much to its industrious vigour. What also deserves close attention is the aforementioned ‘side idea' near the end of the recapitulation - a trace after the absent slow movement, surprisingly sounding the adagio note of Lutosławski's episodes from his music of the 80s.

When listening today to the Overture for Strings one may come to the conclusion that artistically it directly precedes Funeral Music and Venetian Games, works of principal importance in the creative output of Witold Lutosławski. Written after the completion of the Symphony no. 1 (1947) and before the commencement of work on the Concerto for Orchestra (1950), in the official year of Poland's proclamation of social realism (1949), it does not have the character of functional music - as do Lutosławski's subsequent pieces, with the Little Suite (1950) and Silesian Triptych (1951) at the forefront.

In 1950 Witold Lutosłąwski accepted a commission by the musical director of the Polish Radio in Warsaw, Roman Jasiński, for a piece destined for the Orchestra of the Polish Radio, which specialized in popular and folkloristic repertoire. This is how the story of the Little Suite for chamber orchestra begins, a piece which was recorded later in the same year for the purposes of a radio broadcast by the Orchestra of the Polish Radio under Jerzy Kołaczkowski. In the following year the chamber version was orchestrated for symphonic performance, a guise under which it has subsequently functioned in concert practice. The piece received its premiere on April 20, 1951, in Warsaw, given by The Great Symphony Orchestra of the Polish Radio under Grzegorz Fitelberg.

The suite movements are: "Fife" (Allegretto), "Hurra Polka" (Vivace), "Song" (Andante), "Dance" (Allegro molto), and they use folk melodies from Machów in the Rzeszów voivodeship.

While the Symphony no. 1, which was completed in 1947, was very coldly received by the politico-cultural authorities and was judged to be a ‘formalistic' work according to the doctrine of social realism (following one of its first performances, the vice-minister of culture at the time was to say that the composer of such music should be thrown under a tramway - a remark which, in practice, made it impossible for an entire decade to further present the Symphony), the Little Suite became one of the most popular pieces of Polish music in the first half of the 1950s. Witold Lutosławski often recalled that his musical output from those years was of ‘substitute' character: on the one hand because continuing serious attempts at renewing the musical language and creating works with which he could be fully satisfied would condemn them to rejection due to the ever present cultural doctrine, and also because - and this aspect of the matter was markedly emphasized by composer - he was not yet ready to construct a new musical language for himself.

Hence, pieces such as the Little Suite and Silesian Triptych (both written in the same year) should not be interpreted as a sign of the composer's compromise regarding the aesthetic doctrine of social realism or some kind of aesthetic-technical ‘delay', but as the writing of functional music (without applying any pejorative valuation of the term), considerably based on folkloristic inspirations and indifferent to doctrine, which nevertheless accepted these works. While treating the issue in this manner, it is worth seeing in such pieces a variant of Gebrauchsmusik (cultivated intensively in the thirties and practiced in particular by Paul Hindemith), a variant that functioned in a wider context as one of the manifestations of Neoclassicism; it is also worth indicating the very abundant creative output of the group Les Six, whose program consisted of writing light, easy-to-listen-to, pleasant music devoid of any ambitions in the domain of invention. Music's primary goal, according to Satie and Cocteau, was to be mostly comfortable and functional, like a well-constructed piece of furniture.

The beginning of the 50s inscribes itself in the catalogue of Lutosławski's with a fair number of didactic pieces, written in particular for the piano, but also for children's voices. Thus, it is worth listening to the Little Suite in isolation from the Polish circumstances surrounding its creation, as to a stylization of folkloristic music of great imagination and technical virtuosity suited to the use of the piece, a stylization characteristic of the national currents in the European music of the first half of the twentieth century. In Lutosławski's creative output this piece also fills the role of a prelude or technical study to the compositional intentions of which the first ideas appeared in the very same year of 1950, and which came to be realized in 1954. We are referring here to the Concerto for Orchestra, a work that constitutes the summit of Polish music's Neoclassicism, based in great part on folkloristic inspirations.

An allusion to the title's ‘Fife' (Allegretto) in the first link of the cycle is made in the ‘dancing' part of the piccolo flute with the accompaniment of the snare drum. In the second movement of the suite, titled "Hurra Polka" (Vivace), the humorous use of triple meter in a stylization of a dance originally in duple meter imbues the piece with the spirit of a scherzo. The melody of the "Song" (third movement of the suite - Andante) is lead by constantly interchanging instruments, while the last movement - "Dance" (Allegro molto) - is a tri-partite piece in which the outer links present a stylization of a dance from the land of Rzeszów called ‘lasowiak', and its central link is based on a stylization of a lyrical Polish folksong in the tempo of Poco più largo.

The Silesian Triptych is a piece by Lutosławski the citizen of a Poland subjected for a few years (1949-1955) to the dictates of social realism, and it was brought into being in 1951 as an arrangement of Silesian folksongs drawn from an inter-war anthology, which itself was arranged by the Polish ethnomusicologist Jan Bystroń. Thus, the cycle of songs for soprano and orchestra does not introduce, as does the Little Suite, titles stemming from the authentic folk music. The lyrics are presented as the words of a Silesian girl, who - otherwise not making use of the Silesian dialect - talks in the outermost movements of searching for a suitable candidate for a husband, and in the centre movement paints a genre scene (a water source springing from a well).

On one hand, the use of folkloristic melodies for the compositional arrangement doesn’t seem to be at odds with the directives of social realism, and even meets them halfway, while on the other hand it strays from the same directives through the particular orchestral arrangement. In reality, the composition is not obviously a ‘popular’ type of music, its sonority approaching what Lutosławski was tending toward in the Symphony no. 1 and in the Concerto for Orchestra, rather than the aesthetics of his pieces written for social commissions and simply for remuneration, a series of which is to be found in the catalogue of his works from the first half of the 50s. Nevertheless, the piece was honoured with two prizes by the Polish cultural authorities of the time. Within two weeks of the premiere given on December 2, 1951, by Maria Drewniakówna and the Great Symphony Orchestra of the Polish Radio under its artistic director, Grzegorz Fitelberg, it received the State Prize of the second rank, accorded on the occasion of the state holiday of November 22, which symbolized the creation of the People’s Republic of Poland.

Witold Lutosławski was no doubt an able pianist. To this testifies even the diploma concert program crowning his pianistic studies at the Warsaw Conservatory. In spite of vistas for a promising career, Lutosławski had long announced that he wishes above all to be a composer.

However, the post-war times were not kind to artistic creators. Countries which served as factotums to the USSR celebrated the concept of social realist art, fervently heralded in Poland from the end of the 1940s by the Minister of Culture Włodzimierz Sokorski. The communist party deciders forced composers to assume a specific aesthetic stance, which postulated drawing inspiration from folklore and composing pieces “friendly” to the wider public and devoid of avant-garde progressivism.

Also, only great talents knew how to combine the regime’s demands with true creativity, turning to the Neoclassicism popular from the time of the 1920s and strongly suffused with folklore. An example: Witold Lutosławski’s Bucolics, or five children’s miniatures based on Kurpian folk melodies dedicated to Zbigniew Drzewiecki. Fitelberg assessed these musical bits in the following manner: “Listen to this music – this is a true master, one of the kind which had been long absent from here! Szymanowski was great – that’s for sure, but he did not possess such skills as Lutosławski – I assure you! For this one has to be born a musician!”.

The cycle was created on commission by the PWM Edition in 1952. The composer named the particular links of the cycle with the use of Italian tempo specifications: Allegro vivace, Allegretto sostenuto, Allegro molto, Andante, and Allegro marziale. Kurpian melodies from the collection of father Władysław Skierkowski served as the basic melodic material, sedulously hidden under the original arrangement.

Odd-numbered movements are characterized by quick tempo, rhythmic vitality and melody which barely make reference to the folkloric original. From time to time, raw-sounding fifths in the outer movements contrast with the refined harmonic arrangement of the slow movements. An almost impressionistic texture, slow narration, and a kind of suspension of energy already herald the musical-colour-oriented sensitivity of the composer.

The work’s rather simple texture, though not devoid of inventive solutions to compositional problems, as well as the moderate demands in performance skills, determined its practical application. Alongside the Folk Melodies (1945), Three Pieces for the Youth (1953), and the Miniature for Two Pianos (1953), the Bucolics constitute rewarding pedagogical material for use by young pianists. The cycle received its premiere in a performance by the composer in Warsaw, December, 1953.

Lutosławski composed the Ten Polish Dances in 1951 with the recording company Polskie Nagrania (Polish Recordings) and a children's music recordings library in mind. In contrast to many other pieces written for the youngest musicians, its the composer did not envisage children playing the music. For this the index of difficulty for the Dances is definitely too high - we are thus dealing with a composition destined for beginner listeners.

While the title itself - Ten Dances - suggests a loose collection of pieces, we are actually dealing with a cycle that has been carefully thought out. It contains eight settings of Silesian folksongs and two settings of songs from the Kaszuby region, inserted in the fourth and eighth place (Grozik and Maryszunka, respectively). In most of the cases Lutosławski used lively themes, but calmer pieces also occur among the Dances (the Kaczok in E flat major, No. 5 furnishes the primary example, and which, judging from the note Moderato maestoso - alla polacca is also a "stilted" polonaise written tongue-in-cheek).

The lively Szejper - the final and the most developed element of the cycle, counting over 130 measures - serves as the undisputed climax of the cycle.

Concerto for Orchestra was inspired by Witold Rowicki, who asked Witold Lutosławski to compose a work for the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra that Rowicki had founded in 1950. The composer initially wanted to answer the commission with a relatively short piece – functional and occasional in character, with no particular aesthetic aims. It turned out differently, however: the material demanded a more developed, symphonic form that made use of motifs from Polish folk music and was constructed on a broad plan of clearly neoclassical features. The Concerto was given its first performance on November 26th, 1954, by Warsaw’s National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Witold Rowicki, to whom the work is dedicated.

The piece comprises three movements: 1. Intrada (Allegro maestoso); 2. Capriccio notturno e Arioso (Vivace); and 3. Passacaglia, Toccata e Corale (Andante con moto – Allegro giusto). The third movement, which lasts longer than both the preceding movements put together, contains the climax of the entire work. This formal structure already suggests an idea that was to become a fundamental principle of Lutosławski’s large forms ten years later, i.e. the sequence of the introductory movement and the main movement. Lutosławski took this approach to cyclic form from his composition teacher, Professor Witold Maliszewski (1873-1939), who suggested to him a sequence of introductory, linking and main movements. Lutosławski’s teacher was also responsible for a more profound, structural approach to the use of folk material in composition.

The Intrada is based on a Mazovian folk tune, which is continuously enriched each time it reoccurs. From this material the composer draws another theme – cantando. In seeking an analogy with Lutosławski’s future work, one may observe the particular application of an idea that would be later used in Mi-parti: the use of the same material in different ways, which has little in common with the variation technique. Here Lutosławski is first and foremost a melodist, and not the harmonist he would become several years later, from Funeral Music onwards. The first section of this movement develops on the backdrop of the cellos’ low pedal-note F sharp – its “palindromic” equivalent (a prolonged high F sharp played by flutes) can be found in the final section of this movement. This may be seen as some kind of attempt at the structure of Funeral Music, where the Epilogue functions as an inversion of the Prologue. The whole movement develops in an arched structure: the thematic material first appears in a series of progressions rising by intervals of a fifth, and then descending by intervals of a fourth.

The second movement takes the form of a scherzo (Capriccio) and a trio (Arioso). It is perhaps the Capriccio that makes the most of the concertante role of the instruments, which exchange fragments of motifs in their solo passages. It is an airy vivace, with the passage-work and juggling of instrumental textures which would become so characteristic of Lutosławski’s later work. At the same time it is also a notturno, which is realised in terms of dynamics as a more muted mormorando, which is in violent contrast to the central trio, where the fortissimo trumpets introduce the Arioso. It is in the last movement of the Concerto that snatches of those elements which would come to typify Lutosławski’s later technique can perhaps most clearly be seen – particularly the chain structure. In the Passacaglia the eight-bar theme reappears eighteen times, developing from the lowest register of solo double basses with the harp, and then resurfacing through further instruments, to reach a tutti, before its final appearance is played by the highest register of the violin. The reoccurring theme is accompanied by non-thematic episodes, which are introduced non-simultaneously and often overlap or diverge from the main theme. Lutosławski himself pointed to this technique as one that he would many years later develop into his “chain” form.

The third movement of the Concerto can be understood as a variant of the whole work’s form, in inversion. While in the structure of the whole Concerto the third movement (Passacaglia, Toccata e Corale) is the longest and most significant in content, in its three sections it presents the reverse situation: after the most developed Passacaglia comes the linking Toccata with its obstinate theme, and then the archaised theme of the Corale, performed by oboes and clarinets. The Corale has a conclusive character, but it also brings about the climax of the whole work, which is set up by the preceding Toccata. After the four voices of the oboes and clarinets the chorale resurfaces in six parts of the brass, before finally extending over five octaves in fourteen string parts. There then comes a short coda (Presto), which will also become a principle feature of Lutosławski’s later work.

The inspiration for the Dance Preludes came from Tadeusz Ochlewski, the director of PWM Edition in Cracow, who wished to commission a cycle of easy pieces based on folk melodies for violin and piano to be used in secondary schools. Instead, in 1954 Witold Lutosławski composed a suite of five movements for clarinet and piano in the following tempos: Allegro molto, Andantino, Allegro giocoso, Andante, Allegro molto.

Lutosławski has said of the compositional process: "Somehow this violin writing wasn't working out, even though I myself played the violin for an extended amount of time. In view of this, I decided to write pieces for the clarinet. They were appropriate for young clarinetists, but posed difficulties for the accompanists".

The term ‘prelude' suggests the form of a piece that is an introduction to... the fugue, as in Bach; it suggests an etude-like sketch to a composition which develops its content in a more elaborated form, as in Chopin or Debussy. Alternately, it makes us think of a prolegomenon, or simply a musical illustration depicting a literary program as in Liszt. Since Lutosławski's cycle of miniatures contains ‘dance preludes', these can be understood as a folkloristic preludes to village dances, or an abbreviated sketch of such dances. Here, both types of reasoning can find their arguments. Although the provenance of this dance outline is evidently folkloristic, it is not easy to localize its origins in, for example, in particular quoted material or unequivocal models. The melodies in the Preludes are not derived from Oskar Kolberg's arrangements or any other songbook editions; they are rather generalized impressions revolving around the theme of folk-dance convention (while this intuitive remark could have been challenged by the composer himself, he did not do so; but a truly erudite and thoroughly competent ethnomusicologist could). In the successive preludes Lutosławski provides markings for only the tempos, and gives other additional word-based indications (especially in the orchestral version) regarding the desired types of articulation, dynamics, violinistic technique, and general expression, such as marcato, energico, forte ma dolce, poco sforzato, ritardando, perdendo, tranquillo, sostenuto e poi precipitando, etc.

Thus, the cycle is a type of five-piece suite, in which the even-numbered, ‘internal' pieces are maintained in slow tempos and exhibit even a nostalgic character, while the odd-numbered, ‘external' pieces are maintained in fast tempos and are lively, or even sprightly in character. The symmetrically shaped form made up of five pieces will - after many years - be taken up in Livre, Novelette, and Partita. Although the orchestral working out of the composition presents a completion of the extraordinarily nuanced solo version which makes very precise use of musical colour, there is also an exacerbation in the effects of the thick, step-by-step application of polymetry within the fast-paced sections. The changes in metre from triple to duple (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/4), which occur in proximity measure to measure, create a certain incertitude in determining the step (one asks whether the music is to be danced ‘in two' or ‘in three', and whether a particular rhythm is that of a krakowiak, mazurka, or kujawiak...). Polymetric shaping in the odd-numbered pieces imparts an almost spontaneous, folk-like spirit, and wildness of festivity to the music, while the even-numbered pieces are maintained in triple meter (the second in 9/8 and 6/8, the fourth in 3/4), more appropriate for their songful, also folk-like, but moreover dumka elegiac nature and expression that is more of a dolce than a con vigore.

Lutosławski called this composition his ‘farewell to folklore'. In fact, this is the last piece in his catalogue of works in which folk music material plays a significant role. Being very popular composition belonging to his most frequently performed repertoire (also favoured by young musicians for didactic reasons), it also seems to be a ‘swan song' of the Neoclassic-folkloristic Lutosławski of the first half of the 50s, a composer summing up the stylistic profile of his creative output to-date in the opus magnum of the times, namely the Concerto for Orchestra. What is telling is the fact that he did not want (or was unable to?) cut the emotional ‘umbilical cord' from the droll, alluring Dance preludes until when he had already finished working on Funeral music, but still did not complete their version for nine instruments for the world premiere given in Louny, close to Prague.

• Book no. I
• Book no. II

The first performance of this piece (dedicated “à la memoire de Béla Bartók) took place on March 26th, 1958, in Katowice. Jan Krenz, who commissioned the composition, conducted the Great Symphony Orchestra of Polish Radio and Television. The composition was awarded first place in 1959 at the International Rostrum of Composers organized in Paris by UNESCO’s International Music Council.

Funeral Music may be considered a key work in Witold Lutosławski’s oeuvre, as it is in this piece that the composer starts to form his own special, highly individual musical language and the various technical procedures that would constitute the poetics of his later work as a whole. The commission to compose a piece for the tenth anniversary of Béla Bartók’s death came from Jan Krenz in 1954 – Lutosławski needed four years to complete the work. The four years that passed from finishing the Concerto for Orchestra to finalising Funeral Music (which coincided with Five Songs to the poems of Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna, completed in 1957 for soprano and piano and, in 1958, for orchestra) can be compared to the seven-year break in Arnold Schönberg’s creativity (with the exception of the unfinished Jacob’s Ladder oratory, the composer’s key score), which preceded the first pieces written in the dodecaphonic technique. Witold Lutosławski often said that it was after these two pieces (Five Songs and Funeral Music) that he stopped composing only what he knew how to and began composing as he wanted.

“What I have achieved in this work is rather a set of ways which enable me to move with some sense within the twelve tones, naturally apart from the tonal system and dodecaphony. It is a beginning of a new period and a result of my long experience. I tried to create a range of means that would become my own. And it is the first word – though obviously not the last one – spoken in what is a new language for me" (Witold Lutosławski, 1958).

The fundamental problem of Funeral Music is the twelve-tone harmony, which is already fully established in the first two sections – the beautiful dodecaphonic canon of the Prologue (reappearing later in the Epilogue) and the expressively denser Metamorphoses – to reach a climax in the short Apogee, which is under a minute in length. The technique involves gradually building a twelve-note spectrum on the basis of a very expressive use of intervals, which for Lutosławski are a living sound quality and not – as dodecaphonic composers believed – just a structural entity. The work was the belated result of Lutosławski’s intention to create a piece for the tenth anniversary of Béla Bartók’s death, and this is the sole reason for its title, as it is in no other way related to the “funeral” category.

“In dedicating Funeral Music to the memory of Béla Bartók, I wanted to celebrate – as far as possible – the tenth anniversary (in 1955) of the great composer’s death. When writing my work, I did not try to base it on Bartók's music, and any similarities in Funeral Music are unintentional. If they do exist, they reaffirm the unquestionable fact that studying Bartók's music was one of the fundamental lessons for most of the composers of my generation” (Witold Lutosławski, 1964).

The Prologue is based on a twelve-note series built from only two intervals – a tritone and a minor second – and takes the form of canons which use an increasing number of voices (from two to eight). In the second section, Metamorphoses, the series which was treated melodically in the Prologue undergoes transformations: there are twelve of these, as the series is consistently transposed to successive degrees of the scale by an interval of a fifth, down the circle of fifths. The sonority of the piece grows denser due to a more and more intense use of “foreign” sounds entwining the notes of the series, which takes the form of a cantus firmus, with an ever-expanding range of sounds. The climax, which uses the full twelve-note chromatic scale, comes in the short Apogee, a sequence of thirty-two chords. The wide ambitus of chords is then gradually diminished and the number of components is pared down before entering the final stage: the canons of the Epilogue, which follow the principle established in the Prologue, but in reverse order. The work, which has reached its climax more or less according to the “golden ratio”, i.e. after two-thirds of its length, returns to its point of departure. The four sections do not form separate movements but rather constitute phases of a single expressive curve.

The three sections of this composition were created in the years 1958-1960. In reference to it, Lutosławski has said: "My original plan was to write a large symphonic cycle made up of a series of ‘concert pieces'. I interrupted the work on the cycle at the end of 1960 for the Venetian Games and soon realized that I would never take it up again". Sketches for the fourth planned piece in this cycle were used in the second movement of the Symphony no. 2. Lutosławski frequently expressed his dislike for his cycle of Three Postludes, introducing them only incidentally into his concert programs and in reality accepting in the triptych only the first one.

However, the Postludes constitute an important document of stylistic change in Lutosławski's creative output: it is here that he tests out the harmonic concepts unveiled in the Five Songs to the words of Kazimiera Iłłakowicz and in Funeral Music, simultaneously starting an adventure in the shaping of new orchestral textures, the final technical specification for which he will soon find in his authored technique of aleatoric counterpoint. The Postludes were created between the finalization of Lutosławski's work on the Funeral Music, which is - in the words of the composer - "the first and definitely not last" step in the direction of building his creative poetics, and Venetian Games, Trois poèmes d'Henri Michaux, as well as the String Quartet - all of which constitute those ‘next steps'.

In terms of form, the first Postlude is almost poster-like in its simplicity and directness of meaning: slowly introduced enigmatic motives built out of two or three chosen intervals are gradually concentrated until the golden-section climactic point, which is created with the orchestral tutti, only to embark on a return journey to chamber-like instrumental dialogues that create a capricious fabric of ethereal sonoristic residual images. At this point Lutosławski surely wondered whether to follow the path of timbral thinking, realizing a sonoristic concept, or the path of the constructivist, which avails itself of aleatoric tricks. This Postlude can be treated both as a postlude for Lutosławski's compositional journey to-date (this is also how he explained the title of the composition), and as a prelude to the future direction which he was adopting. In any case, subsequent works seem to indicate that it is more of a prelude than a postlude.

Why is this so? The answer is that the three pieces can be interpreted as a test in the technical and expressional possibilities that serve application in future compositions. Thus, the first Postlude is a prolegomenon to the building of form as a whole that leads to a climactic point, and to the ways in which it can be ‘extinguished'.

The problems posed in Postlude II regard the use of time, rhythm, and counterpoint. While operating with melodic bundles of the same profile, the composer desynchronizes them so as to subject the built harmonies to a ‘blurring', causing them to lose their verticality in favour of horizontality, as if in an effort to introduce some type of strictly notated heterophony. The composer probably judged such an exact notation of music that is ideally supposed to draw its life from asynchronous rhythm to not serve him technically or expressively. This segment obviously becomes a ‘failed' attempt at solving the problem of micro-rhythmics. Listening in turn to John Cage's Piano Concerto became for him a type of ‘eureka' moment, although he did not use such a term. To attain the goal he set out for himself, it sufficed to abandon the synchronous notation and introduce the technique of aleatoric counterpoint, when only a few weeks later he commenced work on the Venetian Games.

While the first Postlude can be treated as a conceptual study of the form as a whole, the third and longest Postlude introduces the problem of formal division into sections. Every episode and segment that partakes in this piece is announced by a fortissimo chord that very clearly divides the form. In the span of less than nine minutes, the aforementioned chord appears several dozen times, while temporally changing its interval structure and intensifying dynamically up to a triple forte, after which its final six expositions systematically limit its dynamics: fortissimo, forte, mezzoforte, mezzopiano, piano, pianissimo. In a large timespan within this piece, the successive repetitions of the chord are followed by four-second rests. At first, the chords dividing the form create order, but with time their intensity becomes progressively brutal, aggressive, and even destructive. Thus, there ensues the attempt to section the form with the use of rests, something that occurs also in the Symphony no. 2 and in the strategy of formal ‘dividers' applied in the String Quartet and the Symphony No. 3, as well as in the conflictual form known to us primarily from the Cello Concerto.

This is how the Postludes, while summing up in a significant manner Lutosławski's output to the time of their writing, also act as sketches of compositional solutions which would soon be applied in his future works. While the artistic form of the sketches did not find favour with the composer, they are still immensely important to the development of his musical language; moreover, the artist's lack of aesthetic satisfaction in regard to this triptych need not in any way result in the same lack on the part of the listener. Lutosławski the perfectionist knew that in his subsequent compositions he obtained goals closer to his intentions than those that characterize the Three Postludes.

The idea of using chance in his creative work occurred to Witold Lutosławski when he was listening to John Cage’s Piano Concerto from 1958 on the radio. He later sent John Cage the manuscript of Venetian Games to express his gratitude for the inspiration, even though it only concerned the idea, and not specific musical consequences of its use. Venetian Games mark the beginning of playing with aleatoricism in Lutosławski’s music. The score was written for wind instruments, a harp, a piano duet and twelve stringed instruments (their number is connected to the twelve-note harmony).

The composer repeatedly stressed the fact that the title (Venetian Games) refers solely to the place of the work’s first performance – at the Venice Biennale in 1961 (Lutosławski had never visited the city before). The title is therefore not supposed to serve as a guide to understanding the internal workings of the music, nor is it meant to point to non-musical sources of inspiration. The work was commissioned by Andrzej Markowski and the Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra for part of their concert at the Biennale, in Teatro La Fenice, on April 24th. The performance was an incomplete version of the piece, minus the third movement. The entire work was first performed at the Warsaw Autumn on September 16th the same year, by the National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Witold Rowicki. In 1962 the piece was awarded first place at the International Rostrum of Composers, which has been organised since 1954 by UNESCO’s International Music Council in Paris.

The first movement of the Games is made up of eight sections, written in frames marked with letters from A to H in the score. The form of this movement is a result of using refrains and episodes, where the refrains are played aleatorically ad libitum, while the episodes are traditionally conducted (a battuta). The second movement, a short scherzo, is in traditional triple metre. In the third movement, a twelve-note series built solely from intervals of a fourth and a fifth is introduced into the piano part thirteen times; it appears in its basic form eight times in the first section, and reappears in inverted form five times in the third section, while the middle section (expressively enigmatic and made up of fragmented motifs) is free from this dodecaphonic model. It is only in the fourth movement of the Games that the narrative pattern of the whole work becomes apparent, as it reveals the formal concept of the composition, which consists of the introductory, transitory, narrative and concluding stages.

Of all Lutosławski’s works, Venetian Games can easily be called the most avant-garde. It is also undoubtedly his most innovative score. Here Lutosławski introduces yet another element (after the twelve-note harmony) into his new musical poetics: aleatory counterpoint (also known as controlled aleatoricism). In this technique (which has nothing to do with improvisation), all the orchestra’s musicians play their parts solo, non-synchronically, resulting in a new quality in musical texture, which is entirely characteristic of Lutosławski’s scores. This creates a fabric of fine, ethereal strands of contrapuntal voices with an indefinable, yet rich, shimmering microrhythm. This interplay of accidentally entangled instrumental voices is the subject of the four-movement Venetian Games. The first movement (ad libitum; the other movements are only marked metronomically: Part 2 – MM=150, Part 3 – MM=60, Part 4 – MM=60) is the most experimental of Lutosławski’s scores. Its sections are placed in frames and the layers constituting the refrain are written separately, together with performance annotation.

Another signature feature of Lutosławski’s aesthetics, used consistently from the String Quartet, written in 1964, up to the 1980s, can already be seen in Venetian Games: it is the principle of two-part form as an overriding idea. The first three movements of the work can be treated as “introductory”, together constituting the first part of the piece, while the last, fourth movement functions as the main part. The phantasmagoric sound shapes which abandon the clearly defined motifs of the instrumental voices, the drifting rhythmic blatancy, the hazy illusory nature and fluid ambiguity of sound contours – these features make Venetian Games one of the most intriguing scores of new music, evoking beauty through the surprising strangeness of its elements. The aesthetic shape of the work caused a well-known German critic, Heinz-Klaus Metzger, to suggest that the pervading theme of the piece is a certain conceptual reflection of the mannerist style of architecture and the capricious spirit of Venice (although the composer refutes this interpretation).

Trois poèmes d'Henri Michaux were created in the years 1961-1963 on commission by the director of the Radio Zagreb Choir, Slavko Zlatić, and received its world premiere at the Music Biennale Zagreb on May 9, 1963. The radio orchestra of Zagreb was conducted by the composer, while the choir sang under Slavko Zlatić. On the occasion of this concert, Witold Lutosławski returned to conducting, which he had abandoned for many years. During the Polish premiere of the composition, at the Warsaw Autumn festival in September of the same year, the composer conducted the Choir of the Polish Radio in Cracow, while the Great Symphony Orchestra of the Polish Radio was directed by Jan Krenz.

The composition is scored for a 23-person orchestra without string instruments (although one could affirm that the part of two pianos is their equivalent) with an extended percussion section for four performers, as well as a 20-voice choir (five each in the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass section). According to a note in the score, the performing orchestral ensemble should be located at the left, and the choral ensemble at the right side of the stage, and that each should be lead by a separate conductor. In large concert halls the choir's voices can be doubled or tripled, but the object is not to have two or three voices perform one part unisono; the part should be sung asynchronously (with the use of aleatoricism). The score was published in two books, separately for the orchestral part with the abbreviated notation of elements from the part of the choir, and vice versa. In the work the composer used three relatively short poems by Henri Michaux (1899-1984): the collection Plume (Paris 1938) provided him with ‘Pensées' and ‘Repos dans malheur', while the collection Qui je fus (Paris 1928) supplied ‘Le grand combat', which he placed in the middle of the cycle. Lutosławski acquainted himself with the poems from the collection Plume in a Polish translation published in 1958 by the monthly Twórczość (Creative Works).

The Trois poèmes mark the beginning of Lutosławski's adventure with French surrealist poetry, the result of which, in addition to the discussed composition (the only work in which he called for a choir, excluding his functional music and the Lacrimosa of his student years, where the choir is optional), were three cycles of orchestral songs. He found in the verses of the Belgian-French poet certain values which not only fascinated him artistically speaking, but also greatly inspired him musically. These values concern the particular combination of verse and prose, the irregular form of the pieces, and the fact that their formal variegation creates a distance from the effect of poetic rhythm, which according to Lutosławski acts as a limitation to music. In one of his interviews he said: "For me, Michaux's poems are not circumscribed to a narrow, concrete meaning, so that they are not only a skeptical reflection on human thought (Pensées), a description of a two-person combat (Le grand combat), or an act of resignation (Repos dans le malheur). The foregoing are only an external physiognomy of such poems, one under which lies an entire richness of significations, imagination, thoughts, and emotions allowing for a subjective experience of the works and their subjective interpretation. In its specific polysemy certain types of poetry approach the nature of music itself, which is the most ambiguous of all the arts, or properly speaking an art that doesn't possess definite meanings, which is one and the same".

Expressionally speaking, the second movement is the cycle's chief section, where the choir takes on the personas of a group of people commenting and experiencing the conflict between two individuals, their struggle. Lutosławski employs the human voice in various ways that exclude singing, i.e. speech, whisper, shouting, and recitation, while furnishing the performers with an approximate register of the voice instead of defined pitch. It is particularly here that he uses words as material that not only transmits content, but also as timbre that evokes the emotional climate of the poetry. In this composition Lutosławski makes particularly wide use of his controlled aleatoricism, a technique for which he often sacrifices the comprehensibility of words lost in the chatter of 20 voices, but one that also allows him to show with special intimacy the emotional content of words that may even be incomprehensible.

All things considered, only this composition may be included within a list of styles with which the Polish music from the first half of the 1960s caught the world's attention. Although Lutosławski was always extraordinarily sensitive to musical colour and texture, this is the only work that can be considered to be sonoristic, and making a foreground expressive as well as formal quality out of colours and interchanging timbral textures that relegate melodic and harmonic qualities to the background. This approach was suggested by Michaux's poetry, full of striking metaphors, a lyricism that is more intellectual than emotional, casting forth ‘abbreviated' images that collide in paradoxical ways, suggestively helping complete the original, tri-partite conception of the composition as a succession of vocal-instrumental images, from the changeable and capricious textures of ‘thoughts' in the first link of the cycle, through the feverish unrest of dramatically perturbed shapes of the ‘great struggle' in the second link, to the contemplative, emotional quiet of the ‘rest in misfortune' in the final section.

The String Quartet was commissioned by Swedish Radio for the tenth anniversary of its series of concerts entitled “Nutida Musik” (co-organised by a radio periodical bearing the same name). It was first performed in Stockholm on March 12, 1965, by the famous American LaSalle ensemble.

In a letter (printed in the score) to Walter Levin (the ensemble’s first violinist) Lutosławski wrote: “The work consists of a sequence of mobiles, which are to be performed one after another and – if there are no other directions – without any pauses. Within certain sections of time, particular performers play their parts completely independently from others. They must individually decide on the length of pauses and the way of introducing agogic changes. However, similar material in different parts should be treated in a similar way. (…) All the musicians should play as if they did not know what the others are playing, or at least as if they did not hear anything apart from their own performance. They must not worry that they are slower or faster than the others. This problem simply does not occur, as there are means at work that prevent any unwanted consequences of such freedom. If all the performers strictly adhere to the instructions included in their written parts, there cannot appear anything that the composer had not foreseen. A possible shortening or lengthening of the duration of any particular section of any instrument’s part cannot change the end result in any significant way.”

The composer sent the ensemble a notebook of separate instrumental parts. When asked by Levin to send a full score, Lutosławski replied: “if I wrote a standard score, mechanically transferring all the individual parts into it, I would be misleading you, offering a false image of my composition – it would simply be a score for a different work. For example, it would suggest that the notes appearing vertically in the same position should be played simultaneously, which contradicts my intentions. It would deprive the work of its ‘mobile’ character, which is one of its most important traits.” The problem was finally solved by the composer’s wife Danuta, who was in charge of preparing the scores of individual instruments in Lutosławski’s ensemble works. She stuck the mobiles onto paper in approximate order and separated them by frames, thus eliminating the problem of synchronisation of different instrumental parts. Still, the case of the intended lack of score shows the significance of the problem – not only in its technical aspects, but also aesthetically. For a long time the composer had considered the written score a necessary although unwanted compromise between his ideas and the practical requirements of the performers, who in their individual written parts were given instructions on how to communicate, moving from one section to another within the work.

The problem concerns the composition technique used by Lutosławski for the first time in 1961 in Venetian Games, which were spurred by John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra, accidentally heard by Lutosławski in a radio programme. The aleatoricism used by Cage aroused the composer’s great interest – not because of the introduction of chance procedures or because of the use of chance in the composing process, but because of its results for the timbre or – to be more exact – for the texture that these procedures enabled or even conditioned. In this way Lutosławski’s composition technique acquired one of its most important traits: controlled aleatoricism, also known as aleatory counterpoint. Its practical functionality was described in the above letter to the violinist of the LaSalle quartet, but it does not explain the aim of this procedure, which was completely different from that of Cage. Lutosławski’s goal was not to make music less subjective, but rather more subjective. To be precise, the aim was to achieve original and recognisable texture of the composer’s orchestral works, especially in their rhythmical aspects: the sounds of melodic phrases performed by the musicians follow one another in sequences that are not exactly unpredictable, but rather impossible to transcribe in the traditional way. What makes it impossible is their non-metric character, which results in textures that are fragile, capricious, loosely scattered and forming groups in time. It is a substance of ethereal beams of counterpointing instrumental parts with an indeterminate, but rich and shimmering microrhythm. This is what the texture of the Quartet is all about.

It might seem that this technique has little to do with harmonic language, as it should also then be governed by chance. Nothing could be further from the truth. The mobiles entrusted to four musicians use only such classes of intervals that could never result in an undesired effect (such as a major triad or a sequence of parallel fifths), even in a most unfavourable clash. In the sphere of harmonic language, Lutosławski’s Quartet follows the same path that was introduced in Funeral Music, a composition which had nothing to do with the working of chance. The harmonic plane of using chord aggregates that Lutosławski introduced in Funeral Music, was then upset by the composer in Venetian Games and in the Quartet (to mention his most outstanding achievements of the early 1960s), by introducing a harmonics that works not only “vertically”, but also “diagonally”, yet without really disturbing the overall plane.

Thus, in terms of texture, the Quartet is a continuation of Venetian Games, while in terms of harmony, it is heir to Funeral Music. There is, however, another element here, in which the work is pioneering – it is the concept of a two-movement form. The composition consists of two movements, marked simply as “Introductory movement” and “Main movement”. The concept of the two-movement form was most clearly expressed by the composer in his Symphony No. 2, whose two parts were marked Hésitant–Direct. Taking into account the listeners’ perceptive ability and looking critically at the romantic symphony, Lutosławski decided that the most convenient formal situation of a musical work is a sequence of the preparatory phase (impressionistic, encouraging, engaging, to a large extent trivial, realized through a series of episodes that are not connected by a principle of necessity and do not result from one another) and the main phase (decisive, holding attention, leading to the climax, conceived as a kind of a narrative continuum, realising the main expressive premises of the work and providing the fulfilment of the aesthetic expectations).

When constructing the form of the Quartet, Lutosławski was inspired by Alexander Calder’s principle of mobile sculptures, and started using the same term (“mobiles”) for visually marking his own sound objects, mobile not only in their internal sound, but also in the sense that in any given performance they may last for longer or shorter periods of time, may be played faster or more slowly – as if suspended in space of time and on the pages of the (nonexistent) score. For Lutosławski, the association with Calder’s mobiles also concerned the effect of texture – “flowing”, like a shimmering piece of constantly moving fabric. The first movement of the Quartet consists of thirteen such mobiles – individualised and strongly contrasted episodes, starting from the first one, where the first violin delivers its quite indifferent soliloquy “in an aside”, through pointillistically pulverized material, and static, rustling or flickering objects. The role of the refrain, a recurring motto, chorus or a regular interlude (which is a kind of trick played by Lutosławski when he wants to attract or bring back the listener’s attention by using an element as if from a different stylistics) is given to a motif of an energetic sequence of octaves realised by a harmonious succession of the quartet’s instruments.

While the form of the introductory movement has a mosaic character, the second movement develops much more fluidly towards specific goals. There is no single goal, as this movement itself can be divided into three formal sections: a furioso played pizzicato, an appassionato leading to the climax, and a funebre, played glissando and freezing in long rhythmical values. This final part may be seen as a commentary on the whole work – it is a glow of sounds played in high register.

Witold Lutosławski wrote only one String Quartet, but the number of ideas contained therein could constitute a whole collection. For this reason, it is one of the most important quartets of the twentieth century.

Witold Lutosławski found Jean-François Chabrun’s surrealist poem Quatre tapisseries pour la châtelaine de Vergi (Four Tapestries for the Châtelaine de Vergy) in the Poésie collection, which was published in Paris in 1947. The author suggested two shorter titles for the composition, and the composer chose Paroles tissées for his work. The piece is scored for tenor and string chamber orchestra with harp, piano and percussion. It was completed in 1965 and first performed on June 20th the same year by Peter Pears (to whom it is dedicated) and the Philomusica of London, conducted by the composer at the Snape Maltings Concert Hall during the Aldeburgh Festival.

The poem’s title alludes to a medieval French romance telling the tragic love story of the Châtelaine de Vergy and the Duke of Burgundy, which ends with the lovers’ death. However, apart from the title there are no further links between the content of the poem and the centuries-old romantic story. The title of the poem can be seen as a dedication to the Châtelaine, while the title chosen by Lutosławski for the composition refers rather to the formal structure of Chabrun’s work, where the same motifs reappear in the subsequent four parts, like interwoven threads. The title does not, however, reveal another quality of the poem, which was extensively used by the composer: it contains dream-like allusions to a wholly intangible, unrealistic storyline, which – apart from having purely lyrical aspects – brings a dramatic touch to Lutosławski’s work. Chabrun’s work is clearly one poem in four parts rather than a collection of four poems; similarly, Lutosławski’s composition is not a cycle of four songs, but a poetic piece in four parts, whereby purely musical means are used to tell an unrealistic story which the poet had alluded to but never mentioned explicitly. Lutosławski openly confessed that his take on the poem was “deceitful – I wrote music to a story which did not exist in Chabrun’s text”.

Lutosławski took the first section of the poem to be dispassionately informative in nature – the entire first part of his work consistently uses an aleatoric ad libitum technique. The second part in Lutosławski’s interpretation resembles a quietly murmured lullaby: the orchestra, in a collective ad libitum, accompanies the dialogue of the tenor and the harp, which hold the same, unwavering beat of semiquavers. For Lutosławski, the third part represented conflict and catastrophe, a passionate and dramatic cry. In this part it is the vocal that has aleatoric character, and where it dies out, the composer introduces conducted orchestral sections. A kind of dramatic climax to the whole work comes in a long, purely instrumental fragment and the tenor phrase mille coqs hurlent ma peine (a thousand cocks cry out my sorrow), with a long melisma on the word peine (sorrow). The fourth part brings peace to the conflict by means of a broad, lyrical cantilena, which is nocturnal in quality. Again, this is performed ad libitum, using the composer’s characteristic aleatoric counterpoint technique. The four parts which make up the piece are distinctly different in character, and the vocal part ranges from syllabic recitation on one note to melismatic cantilena. In response to the suggestion that his music probably goes far beyond the scope of Jean-François Chabrun’s “woven words”, Lutosławski quoted a famous remark by Debussy (after Paul Valéry) that “music begins where words end”, and expressed his strong belief that music has no ability to unequivocally convey any extra-musical content.

The subtle flavour of this impressionist-at-heart lyricism, the sophisticated and intricate instrumentation, the accent on the interval of a third in twelve-note harmony, the hazy dramatism of sound events which as a rule occurs outside the spotlight, and the dominant euphony of the tone – all of these aspects make Paroles tissées one of the most beautiful of Witold Lutoslawski’s works, charming without being devoid of strong expressive and dramatic elements.

Ten years have elapsed after his Symphony no. 1 (1941-47), when Lutosławski completed the Symphony no. 2, on which he worked in the years 1965-67. The composition was created following a commission by the Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg for the centenary concert of the radio series "Das neue Werk". First to be created was the second movement, "Direct", which received its premiere given in Hamburg on October 15, 1966, by the orchestra of the North German Broadcasting in Hamburg under the direction of Pierre Boulez, while the entire two-movement composition, "Hésitant - Direct", was conducted by the composer with the Great Symphonic Orchestra of the Polish Radio in Katowice on June 9, 1967. The following year the radio recording of this work received the first award at the Parisian Rostrum of Composers organized by the International Music Council of UNESCO. In an essay written for the Oklahoma University Press, the composer explained his relationship to the symphonic form:

"The term symphony, like the terms ‘sonata', ‘variations', and others, refers to the concept of closed form. Such a form owes its existence to the ability of the listener to remember the music and to integrate its individual sections in the act of listening, so that after hearing the composition (no matter how many times) he or she is able to perceive it as an idea that, like a painting or sculpture, exists outside the limits of time. But to reduce the idea of a closed form to a ‘timeless' existence would amount to simplification. When composing closed forms, we also take great advantage of the fact that music is a form of art that unfolds in time. Consequently, one of the reasons why we compose music is to evoke in the listener a series of specific reactions whose sequence and development in time is of essential importance to the final result, that is, to the perception of the composition as a whole."

An extraordinary realization was to embody the above remarks. In the Symphony no. 2, Lutosławski applies all the elements which created his compositional idiom in the span of the previous several years: 12-tone harmony, specific chordal composition, aleatoric counterpoint, strategy of bi-partite form, dialectic between an ad libitum and a battuta narrative, play with shimmering textures, the latter being sometimes treated in the manner of mobiles suspended in time. He offers in his Symphony everything he tested in Funeral Music, Venetian Games, the String Quartet, and the Three poems. The work is a witness to a metamorphosis of style and aesthetics achieved in his creative output after the composition of the Symphony no. 1.

The titles of both movements are a kind of analogy to the naming of movements in the String Quartet; the introductory movement is marked "Hésitant", i.e. ‘with hesitation', while the main movement is named "Direct". Yet the fact that the first movement acts as a mosaic-like invitation to pay attention, an enticement to become interested by something that appears but doesn't develop, is not tantamount to a sort of prelude to the main, ‘direct' movement, if only because their duration is almost equal. Although these markings are not applied by the composer in the written score, he spoke at various occasions about his use of formal units, not only in this composition. They concern interchanging episodes and refrains which differ from each other in instrumentation, texture, type of musical motion and choice of intervals in the mobiles, which are arranged as if alongside each other.

Seven episodes make up the first movement, and they are destined for different instrumental combinations. Glimmering and shimmering, the episodes are divided by short and slow refrains, played exclusively by instruments that do not participate in the performance of the episodes: the oboe, English horn, and bassoons. The last episode and last refrain become the most elaborate of all, leading to the beginning of the main movement - "Direct" - which presents a contrast in its introduction of a continuous type of narrative resulting in a climax. According to a principle often found in the symphonic and orchestral output of Lutosławski, a form leads to a single climax in the chief movement of the composition (in instances where he bases the work upon such a formal concept). Only in the second section of the Symphony are string instruments given a full voice (in the first movement they provide only a pizzicato cluster in the character of a ‘divider', or even as little as a ‘comma'). An interesting and notable detail in regard to the introduction of chain technique elements (present in many of Lutosławski's compositions and even in the Concerto for Orchestra, in addition to the so-called ‘titled' works of the eighties) is the fact that the final fragment of the first movement's refrain played by three bassoons occurs slightly later than the bassoons' beginning of the following movement.

The second movement seems to be uniform in nature, though generally speaking it is composed of five variously shaped phases, and of a ‘dialectic' of time stretching out in three varieties: 1) slow; 2) combined superimposition of fast and slow, as though the ‘chain‘ strategy marked itself out not horizontally, but vertically; and 3) fast. This movement's fourth phase exceptionally brings music notated uniquely in the traditional manner and conducted - in contrast to the remaining portions of the composition which are maintained in the technique of aleatoric counterpoint - and leads to a climax, again without conducting. As often happens in the dénouement of the final phase of Lutosławski's orchestral works, after an energetic coda the composition wanes in an ever quieter epilogue.

Livre pour orchestre was composed in 1968, on commission from the city of Hagen (Germany). The piece was dedicated to Berhold Lehmann, a conductor and the city’s musical director, who in 1962 asked Lutosławski to accept the commission, and then conducted the Hagen Philharmonic Orchestra in the first performance of the work in Hagen on November 18, 1968.

If we were to make a list of the most outstanding of Lutosławski’s symphonic works and point out those among them that simply deserve to be called masterpieces, Livre would undoubtedly be one of them. A purist might perhaps suggest one little shortcoming of the composition: the inaccuracy of its title. And the piece’s late composer would definitely agree as, in spite of his intention to do so, he was unable to change the title in time; the first performance had already been publicly announced before the work was finished, and Lutosławski’s initial intention of composing several symphonic movements loosely gathered into a collection (livre, meaning “book”) did not come to fruition. Instead, he created a work that could more aptly be entitled Symphony (which would be his third) or Concerto for Orchestra (which would be his second). The character of the work is determined by the epic scale of its two-movement, highly integrated form, consisting of four sections and using the full arsenal of symphonism. As in Venetian Games (composed seven years earlier), the first three sections constitute the first, introductory movement, and the final, fourth section functions as the main movement. In this way Lutosławski adheres to the same scenario he had introduced and revealed in his marking of the movements of the String Quartet (Introductory Movement – Main Movement) and in the Second Symphony (Hésitant – Direct),

In Livre the principles of European symphonism, which date as far back as Haydn, are not only dealt with in a thoroughly modern way, but also fully accepted. They include not only an exceptionally substantial sound matter (notwithstanding all the “dilutions” of its consistency, a characteristic feature of Lutosławski’s music), but also a masterly control over the symphonic time-space continuum through timbre, texture and general musical shape. This control means that time is accelerated and slowed down, while space is widened and narrowed. In this piece the listener’s perceptions are almost constantly being juggled by elements which either surprise or confirm expectations. The blend of returning contrasts and trifling gestures, the varying degrees of expressive heightening or supression, quasi-impressionistic textures (so fanciful that they seem improvised), and the concentration of quite expressionistic nature all create an extraordinary aesthetic adventure, put together by the composer with the precision of a cold-blooded engineer. In this work, the composer masterfully juggles auditory perception, shifts in temperature and emotion, the contrast between fleeting fluctuations and energetic culminations, the hot and cool tones, and the heightening and suppression.

The whole work is a sequence of four Chapitres (Chapters), separated by three interludes. The first three Chapters are rather short, and separated by two interludes, which are identical in character, highly ornamented and with somewhat depersonalized textures and motifs. The third interlude, unlike the previous two, overlaps with the succeeding, fourth Chapter, which is the longest movement.

The first Chapter is dominated by the strings, from which the composer isolates solo parts (for four violins, two violas, cellos and double basses). The main type of narration here is a subtle distinction between the texture of playing glissando and using the quarter-tone scale (it is worth noting that in Lutosławski’s scores quartertones are used solely to add “colour” to a piece). The first movement introduces the work’s two main conflicts: between the glissando and percussive character, and between playing metrically (a battuta) and non-metrically (ad libitum), using the aleatoric counterpoint technique. The section of aleatoric play of the contrabassoon, the tuba, the piano and the double bass used for percussive performance, as well as the part of the xylophone with only approximate notation for both rhythm and pitch (dots without the stave, which is highly unusual in Lutosławski’s scores) form a type of additional interlude. At the same time it is also one of the first manifestations of the composer’s “chain technique” – the method of introducing early on some textures and phenomena which will be developed in later sections of the form.

After the glissando technique in the first movement, the second Chapter makes extensive use of pizzicato. In a truly masterful way, the score brings together seemingly random ideas, incorporating them into a dramatic narrative. Consequently, what previously seemed a trifling incident takes the foreground in the following Chapter: the previously mentioned glissando technique is no longer used to add colour to the haze of sound, but instead to build motif shapes; the quasi punctualistic splashes of the piano acquire rhythmical vigour; what seemed a momentary intervention dividing the work into segments, becomes the dominant feature of the piece. The composer – in attempting to “suppress” the expressive power inherent in this movement – gives it a quasi-scherzo character (anticipating the fact that there will be no room for scherzo accents in the following movement). This is how Lutosławski builds the foundation for the fourth, main Chapter, where all the previously started elements continue, leading to the climax of the whole work.

While the characteristic feature of the first three Chapters was their fragmented nature, starting but never completing musical ideas, the final Chapter is different in that its elements follow specific principles and are fully developed. There is an extraordinary, fascinating melody, coming not so much from the phrases with specific motifs, but from the shapes of sound textures. The melody pushes forward and is no longer broken by the counterpointing ideas which had previously interrupted the narrative flow. The sound matter seems to focus on the most important elements. The strings give an almost rhapsodic flourish, encrusted with flashes of percussion and enveloped by the entwined phrases of the wind instruments which create the timbre and build the sound landscape. Once more we are faced with the secret of Lutosławski’s aesthetics: the succession of rapidly changing textures creating a narrative of adagio symphonism – and thus an extraordinary journey involving a shift in the physical nature of the passing of time, which is only possible in music. This movement includes not only the Lutosławski that will soon fascinate us with the “intervention” of the brass in his Cello Concerto, but also the Lutosławski that will tease our perception with the “chain-like” technique in his Chains, Partita, Piano Concerto and his Fourth Symphony, and the Lutosławski who will astonish us with metaphysical mystery in his Interlude.

The Cello Concerto was composed in the years 1969-1970 on commission by the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, it received its world premiere on October 14, 1970, at London's Royal Festival Hall, in a performance by the dedicatee and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Edward Downes.

It is odd that extra-musical, and even somewhat anecdotal associations have tied themselves in with the Cello Concerto more strongly than with any other composition by Lutosławski, despite it being furnished with a generic title devoid of any extra-musical allusions. At a certain moment Witold Lutosławski, strongly and decisively holding the stance that music, the most autonomous of the arts, expresses only itself, felt extremely perplexed and puzzled when he noticed just to what extent his Cello Concert is subject to programmatic commentary and perception. He could reproach the commentators, and even himself, for having suggested to them this type of understanding by revealing the content of his letter to Mstislav Rostropovich, who inspired him to compose the work.

The letter, which in a remarkably vivid, plastic, and picturesque manner tells the adventurous story of this work's musical form, was written by the composer at the request of the great violoncellist, who wished to obtain from him appropriate interpretive indications. In the letter, Lutosławski's metaphorically formulated content immediately opened the way to further assumptions, creating through Rostropovich and the events of his life the temptation of facile over-interpretations. So who is represented by this lonely cello, numbly resting on the indifferent note d? Whom does it symbolize, if not the individual in a totalitarian system? Doesn't it refer to the drama of the individual refusing to accept its tyranny? Isn't its subject the fate of the dissident in the Soviet State? The lot of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, to whom Rostropovich gave shelter in his home in the suburbs of Moscow? And the fate of Rostropovich himself, as well as his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, the great singer, who both chose to flee the country of the communist utopia?

Lutosławski defended himself from this poster-like political interpretation. It is worth remembering that it was a time in which nearly every masterwork of drama and literature on the world arena could be read on in the communist block as a type of allusion: in reality, each of Shakespeare's dramas, not to mention the Polish Romantic literature, included content which the regime considered to be inappropriate. However, Lutosławski was not a dissident, even though his father Józef and his paternal uncle Marian were executed in Moscow by the Bolsheviks on September 5, 1918, while his brother Henryk died in a Soviet Gulag in the Kolyma region on October 7, 1940.

In his description of the musical adventures of the Cello Concerto one may point to a kind of theatricalization of musical narrative, a theatricalization that is nonetheless abstract and immensely suited to music treated as an autonomous art employing means proper only to itself. The time of the work's world premiere was not without influence on the unusually strong temptation to ‘fictionalize' this composition (for which, in any case, the latter is suited for reasons of musical timbre alone). Only two weeks earlier, on October 14 to be exact, the discussed artist, recognized in the USSR as an authority similar to that of Sviatoslav Richter and David Oistrakh, defended Alexander Solzhenitsyn in a public statement, a writer condemned to banishment and deported from the country against his wishes, subjected to slander by the Soviet propaganda, which became furious when several weeks earlier he was honoured by the Nobel Prize for The Gulag Archipelago. It is in those days, the time of the Cello Concerto's world premiere, when Rostropovich came into open conflict with Soviet authorities, which ended with the emigration of the violoncellist from the country. Less than six weeks later, there occurred the drama of the bloody suppression of labour strikes in Lutosławski's home, Poland.

What is worth adding is that at the occasion of the world premiere of the Concerto, Mstislav Rostropovitch was decorated with the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, commemorating the London-based Society's commission of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony no. 9. This fact - as well as that of the Nobel Prize for Solzhenitsyn - was also judged by the Soviet authorities to be an "invasion into internal matters" of the communist superpower, which among other outcomes resulted in the censorship's prohibition of transmitting the Concerto in its performance by Rostropowich, a prohibition aimed at the radio broadcasters of the communist camp, including the Polish Radio, making it impossible for the Poles to invite him to perform the work at the Warsaw Autumn festival.

If the discussed Concerto indeed realizes the genre's tradition, then it is in the sense that its main lyric-dramatic-epic subject is embodied in the solo instrument: it is a concerto for cello and orchestra, not for orchestra and cello. The partners do not hold equal rights, as the cello is the obvious hero of the work - a cello that is virtuosic and lyrical, indifferent and brilliant, rhapsodic and impressional, aggressive and compliant, melodic and percussive, playing pizzicatos and glissandos, energetic and faint, grotesque and molto espressivo, vicious and ethereal, timbrally thick and airy in its nebulae of harmonics, simper with its grazioso and jeering in poco buffo, charming with its con eleganza and strict in marciale. During introductory discussions about the conception of the piece, Rostropovich suggested to Lutosławski that he not mind any problems of technical nature whatsoever, leaving them to the performer, and that he concentrate his invention exclusively on purely musical problems. The composer made considerable use of this allowance, though he did not neglect to propose his own fingering for the quarter-tone cello passages. No technical consultations with the violoncellist were made in the composition of the work, and only with its publishing were Mstislav Rostropovich's editorial fingerings for the solo part added.

As we have noted, we are dealing here with the dominant part of the cello. However, the genre of the instrumental concert sui generis presupposes such a relation between the concertante solo instrument and the orchestra, as to make the latter also a rightful subject. The fact is that if we put the solo voice of this Concerto on the pulpit, we are faced with a fascinating, and in terms of form and expression, fully satisfying fantasia for solo cello. However, the Concerto is very much a symphonic work. Its formal and expressional principle is that of conflict, and even battle. When the material of the orchestra interferes with the narrative of the soloist, and when it (often brutally) interrupts the ‘rational flow' of the cello, finally when the particular instruments and their groups come with it into dialogue and even an emotionally harmonized agreement, a different quality of its individual narrative is born, resulting in the very concertante quality which we have mentioned.

The composition begins with a nearly four-minute solo introduction, which evolves from the indifferently repeated note of d. One could compare the cello's introductory point to the very characteristic beginning of Lutosławski's String Quartet, i.e. the first violin's monologue as an ‘aside'. The introduction contains almost the entire ‘philosophy' of the solo voice and everything which it will use in the more than twenty-three minute duration of the composition to influence the orchestral instruments (especially the strings and the woodwinds) in the process of ‘winning them over'. Paradoxically, this introduction is not a monologue. Rather, it is a discourse of the cello with itself, a kind of internal monologue in which clash various musical rationales; it is a sort of psychological study that extends from phrases sounding like firm expressions of faith, to figures which seem to engage in imitating these rationales and even mocking them. Expressively speaking, this is not a linear cello; in this respect as well as in the used technique, it is as polyphonic as the solo violin of Bach and Bartók in their multi-voiced, fully contrapuntal Sonatas. The polyphony of voices in those Sonatas is replaced here by a polyphony of textures, atmospheres, and types of expression. And before the fourth minute of this solo fantasia elapses, the conflictual form of the Concerto begins with the first intervention of the brass instruments, in this case the trumpets. From this moment on it is clear that the battle has begun; the main contestants are the solo cello and the brass instruments, while the remaining groups of instruments take one or the other conflicting hero's side.

The described formal and expressional conflict unfolds in four phases. First comes an introduction of the cello interrupted by the aforementioned intervention of brass instruments. The second phase is made up of four episodes, each interrupted again by the brass. Third in sequence is the cello and string orchestra's cantilena broken off with the most intensive of the interventions, after which the fourth phase brings the climax of the entire composition - first in a tutti, and then in the part of the solo instrument, which finally ‘gets its own way' - and ends with the repeated note of a², which in the context of the beginning's repeated d creates a symbolic framework for the whole. In its essayistic and hermeneutically brilliant book, Lutosławski a wartość muzyki (Lutosławski and the Value of Music), Bohdan Pociej referred to the particular phases as: 1. First Clash; 2. Temptations and Attacks; 3. Climax, or the Thickest Amount of Hits; 4. Pursuit and Flight.

The first intervention of the trumpets is somewhat premature, and - in the context of the introductory solo fantasia - amusing and surprising. The ensuing dialogue of the cello with the group of woodwinds brings in an atmosphere that is lyrical to the point where after the entrance of the strings' pizzicato accompaniment, the part of the cello can be perceived almost as an erotic courtship. This ‘flirting' is firmly interrupted by an intervention of the brass. In spite of the existence of segments maintained in fast tempos and phrases of ornamental character, the discussed formal phase can be understood as an attempt at song, the first (and there will be a second, more intensive) adagio section. In the second segment there follows an initiated dialogue between the cello and the strings. Their pizzicato mocking of each other introduces in the next formal episode the musical category of a scherzo.

Another resumption of the phrase by the cello playing pizzicatto initiates a remarkable formal phase within the Concerto: finally (!) a cantilena unison passage in the strings beginning in the low register of the orchestra introduces the main phase of the entire composition, maintained in the adagio, cantabile breadth of typically Romantic provenance. This adagio songfulness constitutes in Lutosławski's manuscripts the first foreshadowing of the beginning phrases of the Symphony no. 4, composed 20 years earlier. The melodic nature of this phase of the composition is tied in with an extraordinary lighting up of this linearly treated passage with a careful choice of harmonic means. However, the Idyll cannot last forever, as this very moment causes the most aggressive intervention of the brass instruments, which leads the piece to its last phase. In the latter, a tutti comes to a moment of harmonic fullness based on a nine-note chord, followed by a virtuosic culmination in the part of the cello. This duel in climaxes becomes a remarkable crowning of the entire composition, a work the adventures of which are tracked by the listener with fascination like a sensational, abstract-action film full of bravado, realized exclusively with sonic means.

In 1972 Witold Lutosławski completed the Preludes and a Fugue, which was commissioned by Mario di Bonaventura. Their world premiere was given in the same year by the chamber orchestra of the Zagreb Radio-Television Chamber Orchestra, directed by Mario di Bonaventura himself, while the Polish premiere was given a year later at Warsaw Autumn by the Chamber Ensemble of the National Philharmonic, conducted by the composer.

The title suggests a reference to traditional Baroque form, but in reality it is deceptive (confirming the suspicion, due to the plural number of preludes, that it will not be the form expected by the listener),. In its first version the composition was to be called x+1 (to underline its polyversional form), or possibly Thirteen (to signify the number of string instruments in the score), titles which would indeed have come closer to the work's main idea. This is because while significant justification can be made for calling the seven introductory sections ‘preludes', the term ‘fugue' as used in regard to the second section is purely symbolic. Lutosławski wrote that "[...] [it] is certainly more of an allusion to the Baroque fugue, than a fugue in the strict meaning of the term. Nonetheless, there exist obvious analogies [between the two]. For example, the division into aleatoric sections, performed ad libitum, i.e. ones that present a rather static type of music, and sections that are strictly defined in time and performed a battuta, thus more active harmonically speaking, corresponds to the classic organization of sections maintained in one key and sections that are modulatory. The first of these constitute the exposition of subjects, while the second serve as passages between expositions".

Thirty-five minutes in length (when played in its entirety, which is only one of the possible presentations), the piece is composed of seven dovetailing preludes followed by an elaborate ‘fugue'. The work's novelty lies in the mentioned polyversional aspect, in this case referring to the possibility of performing it either in whole (with preludes played according to their order in the score), or in various abbreviated configurations (with free choice in the selection and order of the preludes, and even the possibility of a shortened version of the ‘fugue', which can be completely done away with). When asked whether this makes the composition realize a type of open form, in which chance (here, the conductor's decision) is allowed not only into the aleatoric performance of the musicians, but also to the formal shape of the piece, he did not abhor such a perception of the problem; thus strategies such as that of Kazimierz Serocki, applied by the latter in his orchestral piece titled Ad libitum (admittedly composed somewhat later than the Preludes and a Fugue), but also in A piacere, were alien to him. His view was that the freedom conferred upon the conductor stems from purely practical reasons, since having it take up the entire half of the concert could be inconvenient for the organization of a program consisting of a greater number of pieces. Moreover - to retain the example of to Kazimierz Serocki's Ad libitum - in contrast to the latter, Lutosławski did not require the performance of many versions of the work in one concert, and did not even mention such a possibility. However, no matter whether the variable form arose from purely practical reasons or constituted an idea of greater significance, this is the only composition by Lutosławski which on the formal plane can be treated as an open work. Another consideration is that in Lutosławski's music this strategy appeared only once and in none of his comments did he think of it as significant.

In an obvious manner the succession of pieces in Preludes and a Fugue is the next (and not last) realization of bi-partite form, which - starting with the String Quartet and the Symphony no. 2 -occupies an especially important place in the music of Lutosławski, and can also be noticed in earlier works, but without such an idea-based accentuation.

If we were to speak here of ‘preludes', then surely not those from the lines of Liszt, doubtfully those of Bach, but Debussy and Chopin - ‘yes'. And here, ‘yes' as a point of reference. Chopin placed his Preludes in a desired order while constructing his programs, and it is only the twentieth century that introduced the custom of ‘integral' performances of full compositional cycles. If we were to talk about the ‘fugue', then surely not that of Bach and not even the much admired late Beethoven.

Where one prelude ends, another begins; thus, a clear germ of the chain form particular to the 80s is to be discerned. Each of the preludes has a different ‘physiognomy': the first is a fanfare-like opening of the cycle, in the second one the pizzicato brings to mind the character of a scherzo, the third leads to associations with songfulness on account of its melody being played molto cantabile e espressivo, and a still further one exhibits a rather regular rhythm connected with a chorale-like expression, while the penultimate two seem like solo cadences of the contrabass and duet of cellos with the background of other instruments. The final prelude is a presto - furioso. It is also the longest, and one that opens directly into the fugue. If the idea of a classic fugue presupposes the existence of subjects and counterpoints, then what constitutes the subjects in this piece? Not the melodic lines, but bundles of individualized sonic ideas layered in heterophonic fashion. The subjects are connected with a certain kind of links or episodes, and the climax of the whole is created by all thirteen musicians playing ad libitum.

In Paroles tissées (based on a poem by Jean-François Chabrun) and Les espaces du sommeil (based on a poem by Robert Desnos) it is worth noting how Witold Lutosławski’s music reacts to poetic descriptions of sounds. In the first section of Chabrun’s work, there is le cri du bateleurr et elui de la caille celui de la perdrix celui du ramoneur celui de l’arbre mort celui de bêtes prises (“the cry of a juggler and a quail, a pheasant and a chimney sweep, a dead tree and captured animals”). The text is accompanied by twelve-note chords played pianissimo. When analyzing Desnos’s work, Lutosławski asked himself the following question: what is a composer to do with expressions such as “a song”, “a little piano aria”, “the sound of the voice”, “the slam of a door”, “a clock”? The simplest approach, that of illustration, leads to the abyss of banality. This text is sung, or rather recited on a single short note, and particular sentences are separated by fermatas. The soloist is accompanied by a sustained chord, which forms a kind of uneventful musical background. We alternately hear the recited text and silence. The interpretation is as follows: the performer tells the audience his dream. The recited text is therefore an account, an expression of what is going on in the performer’s mind, whereas the fermata, the silence, is the moment when he listens to sounds which are inaudible to others. However, in reality neither he nor the audience can hear anything – it is, after all, just a dream – so the sustained chord becomes a symbol of “the inaudible”.

Witold Lutosławski composed Les espaces du sommeil for baritone and symphony orchestra in 1975, ten years after Paroles tissées. It was written to the words of a poem by Robert Desnos (bearing the same title), first published in 1926 in a collection of surrealist poetry entitled A la mysterieuse, and then in Corps et Biens (Paris, 1930). The poem comes from a time when Desnos – who was close to such figures as André Breton, Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard – took part in hypnosis sessions which aimed to reveal the subconscious in sleep. During the Second World War, Desnos – a member of the French Resistance movement – was arrested by the Gestapo and died of typhus in the Theresienstadt (Terezín) concentration camp shortly after its liberation. Lutosławski’s work was first performed on 12th April 1978 in Berlin, by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (to whom it was dedicated) and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the composer.

Unlike Paroles tissées, Les espaces du sommeil is in one movement, but its inner structure reveals a three-part scheme, though without clearly marked caesuras. Like Chabrun’s “woven words”, Denos’s dream-like images contain recurring key expressions, which impose a refrain order upon the dream visions, surreal images and subconscious afterimages: dans la nuit (in the night) and il y a toi (there is you). The composer was attracted by the poetry of feelings, images and impressions, as opposed to the poetry of ideas; he was also attracted by the rhythmic freedom of the verse, in which he saw a place for his music – rather than metric rigidity which left no room for anything else. He explained that Les espaces is neither a song nor a set of songs, but a symphonic poem with a baritone solo.

The first part of the composition is the introduction and four episodes, a kind of gentle Allegro sung as if in a whisper – against a background of forest visions, a female silhouette appears, and dream images connote the sounds of someone’s steps, a murderer, a policeman and the light of a streetlamp – and her; where trains and boats pass by, and fantasies involve unknown lands – and her; where doors bang, the piano plays, the clock ticks and voices can be heard. The second part of the composition is Adagio, the third returns to Allegro, in which, after various descriptions and enumerations of the female figure (the dream’s heroine), the climax of the work appears with the words des poumons de millions et millions d’êtres (the lungs of millions and millions of beings) and the final Dans la nuit il y a toi / Dans le jour aussi (In the night there is you / In the day, too); as if in the final words and bars, the night – with its often horrid visions – was giving rise to an optimistic day.

Almost throughout the entire work the baritone part is syllabic, which forms the narrative of a recitative emerging from the expression of the spoken voice. This narrative is normally told in fast recitative sections and slower, reflective cantilena sections. Another lyrical subject of this musical poem is the orchestral part, the colour of which delights with a sensual beauty emerging from the combination of the abstract twelve-note harmonic material and the sensual instrumental material.

Rostropovich was himself the originator of the idea for the composition, and in the course of the evening also performed works-dedications written for the occasion by Conrad Beck, Lucian Berio, Pierre Boulez, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Wolfgang Fortner, Alberto Ginastera, Christobaldo Halfter, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, and Klaus Huber.

In Lutosławski's miniature governed by the principle of an interchange of refrains and episodes, the refrains rest upon the ‘sonification' of the name eS-A-C-H-E-Re (according to Northern European note names - Translator's note), while the episodes avail themselves only of those notes which do not participate in this ‘refrain' structure.

Mi-parti was composed in the years 1975-1976 on a city of Amsterdam commission for the orchestra Concertgebouw, which also gave its world premiere, first on October 22 in Rotterdam, 1976, and two days later in Amsterdam, both under the direction of the composer. Lutosławski has said that "The title Mi-parti (according to Quillet's Dictionary: ‘composé de deux parties égales mais différentes' - composed of two equal but non-identical parts) does not refer to the form of the piece, but rather to the manner of musical idea development. Here, the musical phrases are often made up of two sections, and the repetition of the second one includes a new element. The beginning module of the piece is based on a cycle of eight vertical 12-tone aggregates. In the course of the musical action's development this cycle advances upwards in semitone steps. The next module, characterized by increasing motion, leads to a climactic point. Its motion stops at an ‘icy' chord played pianissimo by brass instruments. Slowly, the ‘iciness' transforms itself into ‘warmth' with the gradual entrance of three solo violins. A cantilena of twelve violins ad libitum leads up the scale and stops at the note c unisono".

The composition is written in one movement, which is made up of successive segments, each built from a series of various phrases. Expositions of the phrases introduced by the bass clarinet and paired French horns, clarinets, oboes, and flutes, take up the first three segments. The three subsequent segments create a thickening sonic material by polyphonically exposing the musical material's variants shown heretofore in a guise that is more chamber-like than symphonic. Here, the sonic material grows to a symphonic tutti in fortissimo dynamics, relieved in a codal cantilena played by the strings and closed off with a final, 12-tone chord.

The music begins once, and then another time, to start developing at the third attempt. What strikes the listener in the three connected sections is a greater melodiousness of the line than before, as well as the euphony of the harmony. It seems that in this work in particular there develops in Lutosławski a nostalgia for creating a new melodiousness for the twentieth century's third quarter, a thought which will become more pronounced in his idea of ‘supple textures' applied in, for example, his Epitaph, as well as the almost Romanticizing portions of compositions such as the Symphony no. 3, Partita, and Symphony no. 4. What is interesting, though not unusual in Lutosławski's output, is that the orchestra is rather frequently divided into chamber-like groups, in which an often-used procedure is the combining of instruments that are treated in solo fashion into duos (as if ‘mi parti'...). The discussed composition also realizes the idea of bi-partite form with the first movement introducing three episodes that feature a special, well-exposed role of wind instruments; and the second movement, composed of three phases, being suffused with the vital force of textural changes based on a 12-tone series, after which "the motion stops on an ‘icy' chord of the wind instruments playing pianissimo". However, the entire work closes with a ‘warm' and remarkably beautiful sonority.

The composition, sometimes referred to as a ‘masterwork' and placed among Lutosławski's most prominent achievements, contains elements which would soon reveal themselves to be the beginning of new aesthetic qualities in his music from the 80s. Repeating the same figures but modifying them so as to contain the beginning of subsequent figures makes Lutosławski approach the development of his so-called ‘chain' technique. Marking off melodic motives from the harmonic background foreshadows the later crystallization of the so-called ‘supple textures' technique, from which dates Lutosławski's ‘rehabilitation' of the role of melody in a wish to turn it into one of his chief expressional means. Special attention in this composition, and particularly in the long coda that follows the climax, is called for by the euphonic sonority. The climactic point in Mi-parti occurs rather early in the context of Lutosławski's music as a whole - as early as in the two-thirds of its duration. In the soft gentleness of the coda (in the words of the composer: "warmth", as the opposite of "iciness") one can see a foreshadowing of the adagio and euphonic portions of works such as the Symphony no. 3 and no. 4, as well as the Partita.

In spite of Epitaph’s small scale of under six minutes, this composition for oboe and piano was for Witold Lutosławski extraordinarily significant. He had even said that it constituted a turning point on his path of creative explorations.

After 20 years of building an authored harmonic system whose basis was formed by permutations of chords composed of twelve tones, or "aggregates", Lutosławski felt nostalgic for a less expanded texture. A texture, in which the harmonic suffusion would give way to melodic linearity. He simultaneously recognized that the best field for such experiments would be small-scale compositions scored for a limited combination of instruments.

A commission by the oboist Janet Craxton, co-founder of the famed London Sinfonietta, who wanted to celebrate the memory of her late husband Alan Richardson, was the perfect occasion for Lutosławski to work on ‘thin textures’. Thus, we do not hear in Epitaph as much as one developed vertical sonority, while the part of the piano, which could very well bear the harmonic weight of the work, is rather limited. The whole is composed of a sequence of five refrains and episodes, which clearly refers to the form of a rondo. Slow refrains, well-set on the triadic base and strictly composed, undergo a gradual shortening. In juxtaposition with longer episodes, either subjected to a masterful transformation or shaped ad libitum, intensifies the impression of dramaturgical suspense.

The melodic line of the oboe stretches in the episodes on the succession of a semitone and a tritone. An interesting fact is that in the other compositions bearing the note “In memoriam”, i.e. Funeral Music and Grave, Lutosławski used the same succession of intervals, believing that it best conveys a mournful atmosphere.

This neat miniature was heard for the first time on January 3, 1980, in London’s Wigmore Hall. The premiere was given by Janet Craxton, with Ian Brown at the piano.

Witold Lutosławski wrote Novelette in the years 1978-1979 and dedicated it to Mstislav Rostropovich and the Washington National Symphony Orchestra, which gave the piece its first performance in Washington on January 29, 1980, conducted by the composer. The programme of the concert also included the Cello Concerto, with the participation of Mstislav Rostropovich.

The formal concept of Novelette is to a large extent analogous to that of Livre pour orchestra, although – as always with Lutosławski – apart from significant similarities there are also many important differences. On the one hand it could be claimed that over decades the composer worked on one principal idea, as if he were constantly creating a single work. On the other hand, it is clear that Lutosławski never repeats himself: the reappearing elements of his musical language take a different shape each time. In Novelette, like in Livre and Venetian Games, the last movement is also the most significant in content and the most expansive, but it is preceded by four, not three, movements of introductory character. Looking at the formal structure of this piece in a different way, it may also be concluded that apart from following the principle of two movements (where the introductory sections function as the main movement), it is also an arch form: between the first movement (Announcement) and the last one (Conclusion), with analogous intriguing sequences of almost brutally dissonant seven-part wind instruments, there are three Events. Only the First Event follows a traditional, conducted metrical technique as a whole; all the other movements include alternate ad libitum and a battuta sections. In spite of this formal analogy with Livre, it would be a mistake to treat Novelette as a kind of symphony with a different name (which often happens in the case of Livre), as the expressive character of the whole work, including the final Conclusion, is definitely lighter in style.

Novelette introduces an aesthetic quality that was absent from Lutosławski’s scores for over twenty years, and which will appear more conspicuously (but not more intensely) in the third movement of the Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp and Chamber Orchestra, the composer’s next orchestral work. It is a tonal aesthetic rooted in neoclassicism, and is most distinct in the First Event. Although Lutosławski never admitted such intentions (on the contrary, he contradicted them), a certain frivolous ambience, an almost dance-like cheerfulness, “bird-song” motifs of the clarinet (rather un-Messiaen in nature), the grotesque part of the bass clarinet at the end of this section, a variety of musical humour, and pastoral-scherzo moods are reminiscent of French neoclassicism, with a hint of sensualism. This association comes first and foremost from the instrumentation, but also from the shape of melodic motifs, usually in semitones and tritones, coming from a twelve-note series (which seems paradoxical here, as the dodecaphonic system is generally far from the idea of neoclassicism). It is in this piece that the choice of intervals from which Lutosławski builds his chords, i.e. the harmonic shape of the composition, more and more often allows for very superficial (completely external, totally non-systemic) associations with the major-minor scale. When asked about this, Lutosławski used to say that such associations appear in the minds of listeners who are unable to free themselves from the features of functional harmony, which to him are entirely alien and in no way intended by him in the perception of his music. Nevertheless, this aspect is worthy of attention and – in the context of what happened in Lutosławski’s work in the eighties, especially with Partita, the Third and Fourth Symphony, the Piano Concerto and the cycle of orchestral soprano songs Songflowers and Songfables – records how even this last classic of modernism responded to the aesthetic shock of postmodernism.

It is also worth noting a very characteristic element of Lutosławski’s symphonism, namely his extremely sparing use of the full orchestral tutti and his rich and fanciful use of chamber-like sound material. The core of the orchestra is made up of solo voices treated individually and combined in duets, trios, quartets and chamber ensembles with an ever-exchangeable, mobile number of performers. In Lutosławski’s scores the bulk of the symphony constantly breaks down into individual lines, which then form beams, bands or streaks – layered, expanding or disappearing, increasingly vigorous or gradually fading away. The lines of the clarinet, the marimba, the cor anglais, the bassoon, both harps, the piano, the piccolo, the xylophone, which emanate from the groups of solo woodwind, brass and string instruments, relentlessly hold the listener’s attention in the alternate solo and chamber episodes. In this way Lutosławski’s symphonism becomes a festival of symphony orchestra instruments playing concertante. Paradoxically, through this technique the impression of orchestral wholeness is stronger than it would have been had the composer simply used the complete orchestra dynamically. Above all, Lutosławski requires the tutti for the climactic moments of his symphonic forms.

“Despite its atonal features, the third movement’s grotesquely banal rhythmic motif goes so much against my musical taste that I cannot listen to it without distress. It doesn’t convince me, it leaves a certain distaste, especially as it so brutally (without a moment for even the slightest reflection – attacca) destroys the impression created by the wonderful second movement,” wrote Tadeusz A. Zieliński in the biweekly “Ruch Muzyczny” after the piece’s first Polish performance.

The Double Concerto for oboe, harp and chamber orchestra was commissioned in the seventies by Paul Sacher, who had Heinz Holliger and his own chamber orchestra (the Zurich-based Collegium Musicum) in mind. On Holliger’s suggestion, the composer included a part for harp in the piece. The Concerto was finished in 1980, and its first performance took place on August 24th during the annual festival in Lucerne. The soloists were Heinz and Ursula Holliger, and the Collegium Musicum Zürich orchestra was conducted by Paul Sacher, to whom the score is dedicated. Almost a month later, on September 23rd, the same soloists performed the piece with the Polish Chamber Orchestra (conducted by the composer) at the Polish National Philharmonic during the Warsaw Autumn festival.

Of all Witold Lutosławski’s pieces, only the Double Concerto can be described as constituting a “critical moment” in his oeuvre. Originally intended as a radicalized continuation of the aleatoric technique, it is ultimately the first piece in which this element, so characteristic of Lutosławski’s “middle period”, while still intensely present, begins to be reduced in its functions. As a whole, it is very much a serial piece, the subsequent three parts of which present the twelve- and nine-tone series in different ways (e.g. by dividing the sounds among solo instruments), acquiring a flavour of melodic motif hitherto unknown in the composer’s work.

There is, however, another new element. Instead of the previously used structure of two-movement pieces with an introductory and main part, there appears an almost classical order of three parts, albeit marked by quite expressive directions: Rapsodico – Appassionato, Dolente, Marciale e grotesco. This little detail is significant, and quite characteristic of later pieces. Even though the composer never confessed to a lack of faith in his oft-expressed conviction about the asemantic nature of his music, his use of such expressive directions does seem to suggest that he has somewhat dispensed with this conviction.

Perhaps like no other piece in Lutosławski’s oeuvre, this work is pervaded by reminiscences from his previous scores (yet not intended as deliberate allusions or quotations), and is therefore a seemingly-complete continuation of them; however, it also shows a tinge of stylistic resignation. The “strangeness” of the composition can be most clearly heard in the third movement, which was originally intended as a kind of kaleidoscope of march styles – from the grotesque to the funeral march. In the end only the grotesque remained, the form of which suggests Lutosławski may have been attempting to revive neoclassical stylistics. In all probability this is what bothered Tadeusz A. Zieliński so much about the piece. When asked in a radio interview whether the third movement of the Concerto should be treated as some kind of play on neoclassical convention, Lutosławski said that it should not, adding that he could not agree with such an interpretation.

In exceptional cases, the composer allowed the oboe to be exchanged for the flute, yet he did not include this option in the score or in authorized publications of his work.

Grave, with the title note "Metamorphoses for Cello and Piano", was composed in 1981. The world premiere of the composition took place during an evening devoted to reminiscences about Stefan Jarociński (August 16, 1912 - May 8, 1980) organized on April 22, 1981, at the National Museum in Warsaw.

Lutosławki has said: "I wrote Grave or cello and piano to honour the memory of Stefan Jarociński. As is known, he devoted a great part of his activity to Debussy's music. So I considered it appropriate to use the first four notes from Pelléas et Mélisande at the beginning of my piece, the four notes becoming the point of departure for the melody in the cello part. The composition takes the form of metamorphoses, in the course of which - as in my Funeral Music - the rhythmic values undergo a gradual breakup, which creates the illusion of an ever faster tempo. Before the very end of the composition, the four notes from Pelléas return".

We are dealing here with a composition for cello solo with the dominant role of melody. The piano fulfills the role of the harmonic accompaniment in the first version. In the orchestral version the stringed nature of the solo instrument is amplified by the stringed nature of the ensemble, which on one hand exhibits a specific, non-conflictual and non-contrasting aura achieved through a homogenous sonority, while on the other hand completing the solo part with a sort of luminous pastel colour, with a timbral ‘shine' resulting from the used harmony. If there is a funebre tone in this composition, it is to be expected at the beginning and end of the work in a comforting guise of the quotation from Debussy. However, neither the cello, nor the accompaniment fall into sadness. In the series of metamorphoses constituting the composition, the elegiac nature is transformed into the motivic eloquence of the cello, with which the accompaniment chimes in through agreeable statements expressed as if in a ‘supplement'. Pensiveness - emotionality - consolation. Should we be detecting in this emotionality some type of embedded metaphor of intellectual brilliance which characterizes great minds?

The work begins with the ‘forest motive' from Debussy's drama: the four-note phrase d - a - g - a. In Grave, Debussy's quoted 4-note succession with the interval material of a major second and perfect fifth is completed by Lutosławski with a half-tone-and-tritone structure, so that the quotation does not appear as an object taken from outside, but is integrated with the unfolding of the entire composition. The intervals derived from the quotation become the basis of a 12-tone series, while the second arrangement of intervals introduced by Lutosławski (tritone and minor second) extends this material, creating the basis for a 24-tone series. The subtitle Metamorphoses possesses a very concrete significance: it recalls memories of Funeral Music's second movement. While it is true that the metamorphoses in Grave have a slightly different function - which in the former concerns the transformation of the series (also 24-tone in nature!), and here relates to rhythm - the affinity of both works is clear. In the subsequent, 12 dovetailing metamorphoses the rhythmic values are diminished (from a half note to a sixteenth note), creating the effect of acceleration (which is not achieved through the tempo of the rhythmic values, but their concentration in time), leading to the work's climax, which makes the expression of Grave approach that of the "Metamorphoses" from Funeral Music. The succession of metamorphoses in Grave is governed by the transposition of pitch material, which consistently moves up the circle of fifths.

References made in this work to Funeral Music constitute a significant expressional device, since both compositions were written in memoriam: the Funeral Music with the intention of commemorating the tenth anniversary of the death of Béla Bartók, who remained close to Lutosławski in the artistic sense, and Grave in the consequence of a departure of a friend - a musicologist. What becomes clear, however, is that the reference to the composition from 20 years before is not only surface-based. It is worth mentioning that Grave was created between the Epitaph for oboe and piano and the finalization of work on the Symphony no. 3. At this time the style of Lutosławski's music undergoes rather significant change. From among the characteristics of this change one can enumerate the creation of a new melodic shaping (in Grave it is possible to see the foreshadowing of the middle Largo from the Partita for violin and piano), the minimalization of aleatoric counterpoint (which is completely absent in the discussed composition), and the intensification of the elements of chain technique (although Chain I will be composed two years later, in Grave it is this technique that governs the metamorphoses).

Connections between Lutosławski and Jarociński stem from similar mutual or convergent musical reflections, and the musicologist's theoretic-historical divagations on the subject of Debussy's harmony overlapped with the procedures which Lutosławski created for his own creative needs. This is a significant detail, and it would be difficult to judge whether the variety of musical analysis applied by Stefan Jarociński to the works of this great French composer was significantly influenced by Witold Lutosławski's practical considerations as to his own compositional technique, or vice versa.

Tombeau

Mini Overture for brass quintet of two trumpets, French horn, trombone, and tuba, belongs to a series of small chamber works written by Witold Lutosławski after the Sacher Variation, i.e. between 1979 (Epitaph for oboe and piano) and 1992 (Subito for violin and piano). The importance of these works varies substantially. Some are functional in nature, while it is important to note that others are of significance to Witold Lutosławski's output as a whole. We may posit that it is beginning with Epitaph that the ‘late Lutosławski' begins, along with an intensive ‘reactivation' of melody due to the so-called ‘supple textures'. This opens the way to the Partita, Chantefleurs et chantefables, and Symphony no. 4.

The Mini Overture was originally to be the first piece in a suite ending in a Galop. The impulse for the creation of the Mini Overture (defined by Witold Lutosławski as a "small caricature of an overture") was provided by the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Ursula Jones, wife of Philip Jones.

The barely three-minute composition, dedicated to Walter Strebi, who was the initiator of a project for a collection of pieces for this type of ensemble, does not occupy in Lutosławski's output a place as important as the Epitaph for oboe or Grave for cello. Rather, its rank could perhaps be compared to that of Slides or the two Fanfares - one for Cambridge University and the other for Lancaster University. Yet it has an irresistible charm, which clearly points to the Neoclassical aesthetic of a grotesque scherzo. Short ‘pugnacious' motives seem to resound with the pastiche idioms of Stravinsky from the Histoire du soldat, and where the instruments play unisono or where they resound with lively and regular chords, it would be difficult to recognize the hand of Lutosławski if not told what is being played. Why is that so? This is because here Lutosławski does not apply his special earmark - the technique of aleatoric counterpoint, which in his music from the 80s plays an ever lesser role. A special characteristic of this work is also the fact that it exhibits a particular contrariness: the sunny shine left by the French Neoclassicism is obtained with a construction based on two markedly contrasting 12-tone series which create the outline of sonata form. Thus, in the score composed of three continuously played segments we are dealing with something that is trifling and even entertaining, but also full of finesse and intelligence, like a smartly constructed toy.

Symphony No. 3 – between division and integration

Symphony No. 3 (1981–1983) holds a very special position in Witold Lutosławski’s oeuvre. It can be seen as both a masterpiece and the climax of his work.

After its first performance (in Chicago on September 29, 1983, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti, to whom the work is dedicated) one critic wrote: “this piece is exactly what might be expected from a Polish composer at the moment”. Clearly, this was a reference to martial law in Poland (which lasted from December 1981 to July 1983). Symphony No. 3 earned the composer the 1983 underground award from Solidarity’s Committee for Independent Culture. Lutosławski, who, after December 1981, no longer participated in official life in Poland, commented on this critical remark several months later, at a meeting of musicologists in Warsaw. Standing by his artistic principles, he did not confirm the supposition that he may have tried to render the feelings of the Polish people. He added, however, that “even if we agree that music can signify anything extra-musical, we at least have to consider it to be an art full of ambiguity. Nevertheless, man has a single soul and whatever he goes through must have some influence on him. If man has a single psyche, then the world of sounds, despite its autonomy, is still a function of that psyche. That is why I would only like to suggest something rather vague here: if the last movement of the Symphony makes this kind of impression and keeps the listener in suspense, it is certainly not by chance. I can admit that I would feel honoured if I managed to express something that might be connected not only to my personal experience but also to that of other people” (Witold Lutosławski, 1983).

The Symphony’s four opening E notes – a simple but expressively strong motif, like the four knocks at the door in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – promise a dramatic development of the work. The same four-note chord will close the Symphony (as a conclusion to its Coda), and will form a basis for the development of the second movement and also organise the form of the first. Individual parts are not named in the score and in performance the transition from one to another is smooth, without caesuras, in accordance with the “chain” technique.

The Introduction last a little over a minute and develops from the strings’ E note, and is divided and then closed by a “brass” punching of the four-note main motif. The parts of the woodwind section, the piano and the harp, are somewhat casual in their expressive shape, and reveal forms and textures that will give life to fragments of the first movement (which still maintains its introductory, opening character, while drawing the listener further into the composition).

The first movement consists of three Episodes – longer sections made up of shifting textural events that do not form a narrative straight away. These are rather states of the musical material than its developmental path. Each of the Episodes is slower than the previous one: the first one in quavers, which is flickering and quivering in character; the second in crotchets, where the dreamlike motifs solidify into more concrete shapes; the third one in minims, where the sound material opens up to create a continuous line, a cantilena. This development into cantilena grows more intense in the Adagio, which follows the third Episode. It is an ethereal, formally distinct entity that completes the idea of this section – the idea of music decelerating all the way into adagio.

The Episodes are separated by Refrains – slow dialogues by the clarinets and the bassoon, in small melodic figures of lyrical character. The main motif of the four Es in the trumpets and trombones announces each time the end of the Refrain and the beginning of the next Episode – and the beginning of the second movement after the third Refrain. We may be unaware that this capricious music, with its somewhat insignificant emerging and disappearing shapes, its seemingly anaemic forms which are barely commenced yet left unfinished – through all this Lutosławski is preparing us for the second movement of his Symphony. We do not know – and need not know – that in the first movement the composer has sketched the main idea of the whole symphony, its basic elements – subconsciously directing the listener’s expectations.

The second movement is fundamental to the entire work. It is governed by the sonata allegro, in the sense that here one may talk about the dualism of two basic thematic groups: to repeat them in stretto before the great climax at the end of this movement would be a reprise. The development is present from beginning to end, as a principle and not just a formal section separated from the rest according to classical patterns. The “first thematic group” consists of multiple repetitions of the note E as the main motif and a broadly extended fugato section in the strings with the harps. The “second theme” begins with the polyphony of the strings, mostly playing pizzicato. The second movement of the symphony is already a dramatic narrative, whose numerous shapes and eruptions, chamberesque details and explosions of symphonic tutti would require a much more thorough analysis. This, however, is not necessary. An attentive listener, as if “tuned” by the composer in the first movement, is now already “seized” by the form of the symphony and no longer needs to be guided through it.

In his commentary, Lutosławski wrote that the second movement ends with an extended Epilogue. This part, however, could easily be considered a third movement – slow and given the form and expression of a broad recitative in unison on strings and a rhythmic cantilena. It reintroduces some melodic shapes from the Refrains of the first movement, and the expression of its final Adagio reappears here – no longer ethereal now, but full of passion. In fact, the third movement turns out to be an alternative main movement, a consolidation and completion of the whole work. The final Coda, which stems from the second movement, is in form analogous to that of the Introduction, yet expressively different in its solemnity, despite its having the character of a “pure” cadence. The last bar is a tutti of four forte fortissimo E quavers. All is fulfilled.

The formal principle of “chain-form”, which had been present in many of Lutosławski’s previous works (including the Concerto for Orchestra, as representative of the “past period”), is elevated to the title role, where it will appear twice more in the composer’s oeuvre. The idea is simple: one strand begins before the previous one has ended. It is worth observing this simple principle in Lutosławski’s music, not only with regards to the successive movements or stages of his compositions, but also in far more detailed elements, e.g. when certain sound forms or objects initially appear as if accidentally, but later in the piece become the basis for more elaborate forms. This work – which is for fourteen instrumentalists – although it can be formally divided into three stages, according to use of instruments and the choice of (especially harmonic) techniques, proceeds as if under one arc, with a narration invoking aleatoric ideas, mobiles suspended in space, a distinctive feature of the String Quartet. On the one hand, it is reminiscent of Lutosławski’s symphonic scores, especially those geared towards chamber music. On the other hand (especially because of the use of the harpsichord, a characteristic feature in this piece, yet unique in the composer’s music), this piece rests on the border of symphonic and chamber music, with the chamber element seemingly more prominent than the symphonic one.

Chain 1 was first performed by Michael Vyner and his London Sinfonietta ensemble (to whom the piece was dedicated), conducted by the composer, at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in October 1983, as a part of the Lutosławski Concert. The following year, the composition was performed for the first time in Poland, at the Warsaw Autumn festival, by the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, directed by Heinz Holliger.

The programme for the Warsaw Autumn performance included the following comment by the composer: “The title Chain 1 suggests both the form used in this work and the intention of composing more ‘chains’ in the future. In a work composed in ‘chain’ form the music is divided into two strands. Particular sections do not begin at the same moment in each strand, nor do they end together. In other words, in the middle of a section in one strand a new section begins in the other. This principle has already been used in my previous compositions as a base for particular stages of the form or in whole movements, as in the Passacaglia of my Concerto for Orchestra. In Chain 1 the principle of chain-form serves to construct the greater part of the piece. Towards the end the texture becomes more complex and consists of several individual parts played ‘ad libitum’, which form a network of melodies to be played ‘cantabile’.”

In the 1980s, chain-form became another of Lutosławski’s formal strategies, like hesitant/direct opposition (seen in his Second Symphony), and introductory movement/main movement (in his String Quartet). Not only do parts overlap (i.e. one part continues, as the next begins), but the material used in one “strand” of the composition is absent in the next, and when it does appear there, it is discontinued in the previous strand. This creates a “dialectic” of sounds, textures, tones, intervals and harmonies. Lutosławski was a master of controlling his “ideal” listeners’ perception, directing their reception and, as it were, “conducting” their imagination. Chain 1, written after the Third Symphony, at a stage when Lutosławski’s ambition was to create a new melodics that would be fitting for the end of the twentieth century (a creative attempt is present in this piece). This three-stage composition, written for chamber orchestra, is an example of the development of Lutosławski’s “late style”. It can be seen as the classic Polish modernist composer’s nostalgic farewell to twentieth-century modernism itself, as he moves forward with an increasing interest in postmodernist expression and aesthetics.

Witold Lutosławski played the violin till the age of nineteen and continued to perform as a concert pianist after the war. Interestingly, even though he had planned to compose a piano concerto for many years and had even begun work on it, it was late on in his career (after completing his Third Symphony) that he turned his attention to concerto forms of these instruments. This significant creative impulse came with a chamber work – a duo for violin and piano – which can be seen as the signature piece of Lutosławski’s music of the 1980s and one of the most important in his oeuvre. The composer then transcribed the chamber Partita for violin and orchestra with an obligato piano part. This became Chain 2: Dialogue for Violin and Orchestra, which is in fact a violin concerto. It is worth noting that the composer’s drafts include initial work on another violin concerto.

Commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (in St. Paul, Minnesota), Lutosławski wrote the Partita for Violin and Piano for Pinchas Zukerman and Marc Neikrug in 1984. The orchestral version was created in 1988 and dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter; its first performance took place on January 10, 1990 in Munich. Anne-Sophie Mutter was accompanied by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Lutosławski himself.

The three main movements, serving as “pillars” of the work (Allegro giusto, Largo and Presto), are separated by two short movements ad libitum, which function as linking passages. In these movements it is the notation that determines the aleatoric non-synchronization of the parts of the two instruments, which – just as in Lutosławski’s Venetian Games and String Quartet from the early 1960s – are written in separate boxes.

The Partita is one of the compositions in which Lutosławski attempts a synthesis of his previous works, turning to, among other things, the sound gestures from the period before Funeral Music. They appear, however, in a new space, different from before. An expansive melodic line replaces the usually short, recurrent motifs of previous works. In the harmonic image of the music, chords comprised of thirds and fifths replace the more saturated secundal and tertian chords of former pieces, and frequently create an accompaniment for the melody. If such qualitative changes did not really spring from Lutosławski’s previous musical language, if they could be proved to be an attempted revival of some historical context, the major-minor system for example, then one could suppose a stylistic turning-point in the composer’s work. Perhaps an attempt to reactivate the past, a characteristic feature of European and American music in the 1980s. This, however, is not the case here (or, indeed, in Lutosławski’s later works); there is a shift of accents, but no significant change in the composer’s musical language. The above-mentioned melodic and harmonic traits simply become liberated and regain their long-lost sovereignty. In Partita we recognize not only the phrases and expressions that played a vital part in the Third Symphony and will continue to do so in the Fourth, but also the lyrical phrases, including birdsong motifs, which will appear in the orchestral songs Chantefleurs et chantefables.

“The name Partita, used by Bach with reference to some of his suite works, appears here to suggest a few allusions to baroque music, for example at the beginning of the first movement, in the main theme of the Largo and in the finale, which resembles a gigue” (Witold Lutosławski, 1988). The first, introductory movement (Allegro giusto) and the third, central Largo (extensive and carrying a particularly powerful emotional charge) each consist of four sections, the last of which contains the climax of each movement. This also happens in the penultimate, fourth section of the last movement (Presto), to be played ad libitum, forming the climax of the entire piece and is followed by a final section which functions as a coda.

Between 1983 and 1986, Lutosławski wrote three pieces with the title Chain (Chain 1 for Chamber Orchestra, 1983; Chain 2: Dialogue for Violin and Orchestra, 1984-85; Chain 3 for Orchestra, 1986); yet these are independent pieces and do not form a cycle in any way The title refers to the composer’s technique, and particularly the form in which different strands overlap – one section continues as the next one begins.

The details of the technique involve the non-simultaneous commencement and cessation of parallel layers, the goal being to break the convention that requires the composer to move from one section to another, finishing each one with a cadence. In the Chains, musical ideas overlap and sometimes coexist, which is somewhat reminiscent of medieval motets.

Chain 2 is a piece in four movements, with alternate ad libitum and a battuta sections. It was first performed in Zurich on January 31, 1986, by Anne-Sophie Mutter with the Collegium Musicum ensemble, directed by Paul Sacher, to whom the composition was dedicated. The first Polish performance took place several months later, by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Kazimierz Kord, with the solo part played by Krzysztof Jakowicz.

The technical, formal and aesthetic practice that became almost a principle in the Chains, was already evident in Lutosławski’s work in the 1960s, with its non-conducted (ad libitum) sections shifting to conducted ones, with metric notation (a battuta), where gradually diminishing aleatoric segments are interrupted with increasing frequency as they inconspicuously morph into non-aleatoric segments. Another similar technique was to introduce a rough-draft motif, phrase or segment during the early stages of a piece and later develop it into a full narrative quality, significant both in form and expression. The complementary nature of sounds – where sounds are assigned to specific registers, instruments or sections when they are absent in adjacent or contrapuntal registers, instruments or sections – can also be seen as characteristic of the “chain” technique, despite its being used by Lutosławski in the majority of his earlier pieces.

That is the case in Partita, where, from the very first segment of the first movement (Allegro giusto), the six notes assigned to the violin, which constitute the melody, are complemented by the remaining six notes of the full twelve-note spectrum, to create the harmonic orchestral accompaniment. Such is also the case in Interlude, where the eight-voice string part, which creates a dreamlike and progressively shifting harmonic landscape, is encrusted with four-note melodic arabesques played by wind instruments – always in such a way, so as to complement the twelve-note spectrum of a given segment. This is also the case in Chain 2, where the principle of overlapping linkage applies to the dialogue of the solo violin and the orchestra, the integration of adjacent movements, and to the complementary relationship between pitch and intervals. Even in the first movement of the composition, Ad libitum, with its introductory, undecided, hesitant character – so typical of the composer’s strategy of construction in cyclic forms – the violin part seems formally to have nothing in common with the orchestral part. However, whereas four tones are consistently assigned to the orchestra to create a harmonic background, the remaining eight are used for the violin’s melodic figuration. The second movement, the metrically notated A battuta, consists of three segments and leads to the first climax, developing from the opposition of denser intervals (marked ruce in the score) and less dense intervals (marked soave). The third movement, again Ad libitum, with its dominant violin part, constitutes a break in the narrative, as if to take a breath before starting the narrative again in the next, fourth movement, which is the climax of the whole piece and consists of subsequent sections: A battuta – Ad libitum – A battuta.

Interlude was written as a kind of orchestral link between two other compositions, with a stylistically emphasized violin part (the composer’s intention was to create a certain meta-form allowing each piece to be incorporated into a whole during concert performance). The end result is a triptych of independent pieces for violin and chamber orchestra, which may form a cycle: Partita – Interlude – Chain 2. These were written after several chamber compositions – a version of Partita for violin and piano, Epitaph for oboe and piano (1979) and Grave for cello and piano (1981). Lutosławski’s interest in chamber forms brought about a qualitative change in the overall stylistics of his music, including his symphonic works, such as the Third Symphony, and especially the Fourth Symphony. This change forms the characteristic melodic language which emerged in the final stages of Lutosławski’s career, and which combined all of his creative techniques, resulting in a poetics that can be seen as his own, independent “late style” musical system.

In this piece it is possible to discern the traces of thought in terms of a twelve-note series, which had its beginnings in Funeral Music, but which was then “functioning” in a different aesthetic sphere. Yet despite its use in Chain 2, one of the piece’s most important elements is unquestionably the rich, varied and emotional melody, suggestive of the romantic idiom in its expression, which consigns the twelve-note technique to a secondary role – not only for building expression of a piece, but also in its strictly technical aspects

This piece was written in 1986, and its premiere was given by the Louisville Orchestra under the direction of Lawrence Leighton Smith on September 19 of the same year. It is set for triple woodwinds, four French horns and trumpets, tuba, timpani, and one percussion set.

Functional in nature, it was composed in connection with the composer's participation in the Grawemeyer Award deliberations, resulting in György Ligeti receiving the honour for a book of six Études for piano. Lutosławski's energetic mini-piece, which begins and ends with a unison on the note a, is a succession of chordal roots that create the perfect cadence e - a. A performance of the Fanfare closed the special Award presentation ceremony.

The piece belongs to the genre of miniatures intended for ensembles and institutions to be premiered at special occasions, such as the one in Louisville, and the composer's visit in the Guildhall School in London (Prelude for G.S.M.D.), or his receiving the title of doctor honoris causa at Cambridge University (Fanfare for CUBE for wind quintet).

Composed in 1986, Chain 3 was first performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lutosławski, on December 10th 1986 at the Davies Hall.

The piece, which can be seen as a uniquely crafted form of symphonic overture, comprises three parts and does not, therefore, fit easily into the usual category of Lutosławski’s two-movement grand symphonic form. On the contrary, the last section of this rather brief, twelve-minute work is half the duration of the preceding sections, yet it is set in slow tempo – somewhat paradoxically, as it clashes with its length. The first two presto sections are followed by the cantabile–cantando, which should denote a longer, broader expressive breath, and require a longer performance time. The fact that it does not do so, and yet the idea is still carried to its conclusion, makes this piece particularly interesting.

As far as the title term Chain is concerned, the first section is the most characteristic. Following an introduction comprising chimes, woodwind and string instruments, the first section consists of overlapping links played ad libitum by individualized and contrastive chamber ensembles. This section can be described as a Livre of chamber miniatures. The order of the twelve links and twelve chamber ensembles is as follows: 1. three flutes; 2. four double basses; 3. three violins and xylophone; 4. three clarinets; 5. three cellos; 6. celesta, harp and piano; 7. two trumpets and two trombones; 8. bass clarinet and three bassoons; 9. four violins; 10. three trumpets; 11. three violins; 12. harp and three flutes. The entire orchestra comes together for the tutti at the end of the section.

After the second part of the composition, with its alternate conducted and non-conducted forms, the climax of the whole piece comes in the third section – in a manner quite surprising for those familiar with Lutosławski’s earlier orchestral works, especially the Cello Concerto. In his orchestral scores, the composer has given distinctive expressive preference to particular sections of the orchestra, such as the brass section’s shrill, interventional quality – this dissonant, bruitistic quality stands in diametric opposition to the concept of melody, cantabile, euphony and lyricism. However, the idea behind Chain 3 is a certain rehabilitation and de-brutalization of the brass section: trumpets, trombones, horns and the tuba. It is to them, and not the usual string or woodwind instruments, that the swansong of the composition is given. The aim was to emphasize the melodious quality of the brass, and this aim is achieved in the third, and shortest, section of the score – adagio. There is no contradiction in the fact that, as in previous works, the final section of the piece is performed by an orchestral tutti, and not a chamber ensemble; the climax – based on a seven-note chord – goes against the adagio character of this section and is conducted at tempo presto.

In this piece the harmonic language of twelve-note chords ostentatiously gives preference to the consonance of minor thirds, perfect fourths and fifths, octaves and major seconds. Believing that there is no return to the major-minor system, in his scores from the 1980s Witold Lutosławski began to emancipate consonance, which – as if repressed because of the glorious position it held in previous centuries – was marginalized in the twentieth century, both as a means of expression and as a structurally significant form. This feature of Chain 3 can be seen as symptomatic of the modernistic Lutosławski, who was creating at a time of postmodernist pressure. Lutosławski did not use the terms ‘consonance’ and ‘dissonance'. Instead of this dialectic pair, he preferred to talk about assonances, which differ from one another in saturation in a linear, as opposed to a leaping, manner. The ending of Chain 3 might be interpreted as a kind of aesthetic commentary on the times of its composition, the 1980s. After a bright chord of fifths, octaves and seconds, the work ends with a cello glissando sliding into a dull, dark tone of resignation. Despite the exclusive, self-significant nature of Lutosławski’s abstract music, it continues to provoke an abundance of interpretations.

The Piano Concerto received its premiere on August 19, 1988, in Kleines Festspielhaus in Salzburg, in a performance by Krystian Zimerman to whom it is dedicated, and the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer; it was commissioned by the Salzburger Festspiele. In Poland it was first heard the same year at the closing concert of the Warsaw Autumn festival.

The piano possesses a significant role in Witold Lutosławski's oeuvre, in particular his solo works and songs composed in the 40s and 50s, but also an important role in his chamber works, while in compositions where it forms part of orchestral texture the composer bestows upon it - more than upon other instruments - specially featured tasks. Devoting the most significant role to the piano, i.e. composing the Piano Concerto, is an idea that reaches back to the 40s, but also one that was realized by Lutosławski only in the last, especially prolific period of creativity - the last decade brimming with masterly works.

Written in 1987-1988, the Concerto follows after the Symphony no. 3, the three Chains, and Partita, and comes before the Interlude, Chantefleurs et chantefables, and Symphony no. 4, thus it belongs to a late group of works that hold a similar significance in Lutosławski's entire oeuvre to Béla Bartók's music from the last decade of his life. The fact that Lutosławski took this much time before undertaking a project in this genre, whose vitality was frequently being questioned in the second half of the twentieth century, can be explained in several ways.

Certainly, a great creative excitement was created with the appearance of a pianist as superb as Krystian Zimerman for whom Lutosławski wrote the work, although numerous other interpreters testify to its extraordinary stage attractiveness. The next reason is the fact that in the 80s Witold Lutosławski's compositional technique, while still in flux and undergoing transformations, became in his self-critical judgement immaculate. Lutosławski realized that he had finished struggling with technical problems, finally breaking through constraints and becoming free to look for better compositional solutions than before; he recognized that he is able to use the language he created in an entirely unfettered manner.

It is symptomatic are that at this very time the role of aleatoric counterpoint in his scores becomes markedly diminished, the role of melody - surely a very personal and particular one - is decidedly strengthened, and the bi-partite formal model, spectacularly exhibited in the titling of the movements in the Symphony no. 2 Hésitant - Direct, ceases to be treated dogmatically. A trait characteristic of Lutosławski's late output is that its clear synthetic, Classicizing, and even Apollonian perfection allows for the existence of past idioms, but is free from postmodernist traits such as collage, multiple coding of non-congruent elements, poly-cultural and cross-over manipulations or outright plunderphonic sampling, as well as the mixing of ideas adopted from different levels of musical cultures. The Piano Concerto may be considered an example of a proud and simultaneously tolerant modernism which on one hand seems to say that there is no returning to the traditional form of the piano concerto, and on the other hand pays tribute to that tradition.

The Concerto is composed of four movements played attacca, but each possessing its own clear ending. To a significant extent, but by no means completely, the composer limits the ‘chain' principle, according to which one section of the composition still lasts, while another begins. The first movement makes a clear reference to Classical thematic dualism, particularly characteristic of the traditional sonata allegro which used to open this type of form in the past; however, this does not mean that it is realized with a literal approach to form. Each of the phases, which can be considered as analogous to traditional themes, self-divides into two sections. The second movement is marked moto perpetuo. It contains a virtuosic solo show realized with the background of orchestral instruments and occurs in counterpoint with them. If we were to make a comparison to the classical form of concerto (symphony, quartet, sonata, etc.), then we could claim that the ‘sonata allegro' first movement is followed by a scherzo full of bravado and exhibiting an almost brillant style, after which the third movement presents a type of ‘song' form with a beginning recitativo of the solo piano, and a cantilena largo theme. Usually, song form (just as the form of the symphonic scherzo with a trio in the middle) is cast in an A-B-A architecture. Here also one finds the contrast of the ‘singing' piano and the intense, and even dramatic character of the orchestral part. We arrive at the finale. A rondo? Variations?

Lutosławski has said: "The fourth movement, thanks to its architecture, is an allusion to the Baroque form of ciaccona. Its subject (always played by the orchestra) consists of short notes divided by rests, and not of chords, as in the traditional ciaccona. This often repeated subject creates only one layer of the musical discourse. With it as background, the piano forms ever new episodes. These two layers interact with each other on the principle of chain form, i.e. the beginnings and endings of the piano episodes do not overlap with the beginnings and endings of the subject. They meet only one time, near the end of the composition. Next comes a short recitativo of the piano played fortissimo with the background of the orchestra, and a short Coda (presto) which ends the work".

The above analogy with the traditional form of the genre is extraordinarily simplified, and to an extent even banalized. In the Piano Concerto the music remains Lutosławski's own, but as we have observed, more than in any other composition by him it ‘mingles' with musical tradition, which stands in contrast to the uses of tradition found in his other works. He was conscious of the fact that there is no place for any revolution in the concerto at the end of the twentieth century, a fact that also made him its creative continuator. What is striking is that although the trace of the Baroque widens the perspective, Lutosławski becomes a continuator of Romanticism with Chopin, Liszt, and Brahms at the forefront, and perhaps with the (unloved) Rachmaninoff; moreover, with Debussy, Ravel, Bartók, Prokofiev, and Messiaen. But not Cage. Apart from discernible mini-quotations from Fryderyk Chopin's Concerto in f-minor there are no direct references to be found; instead, the references are to conventions. A super-conventional composition?

Slides came into being in 1988 as a gift to the American avant-garde’s luminary, Elliott Carter, who was celebrating his 80th birthday (he died on December 5, 2012 at the age of 104). Written for 11 soloists, the score carries all the earmarks of Lutosławski’s late masterly style: a legible dramaturgy (unfolding here in six concise phases), a high command of instrumentation, and a well thought-out harmonic language. Although the work constitutes a Webernian aphorism (its duration is four minutes!) and is situated on the border between chamber music and symphonic writing, it was based on Lutosławski’s consistently developed concept of controlled aleatoricism. (Here, the particular signals for beginning or ending quasi-improvised fragments are given by the percussionist, who functions as a conductor throughout, but not for a moment does he conduct in a traditional manner.)

In strong contrast with those two compositions, the aesthetic of the Interlude makes this piece almost a mystery. The slowly shifting plane of contrapuntal strings is not a process, but a certain state of sonic material maintained consistently in the dynamic level of piano - a non-conflictual ‘time-stopped' state. This plane created by the strings is accompanied by motives in the wind instruments, percussion, and harp, piano, and celesta, which encrust this seemingly immobile state with delicate, arabesque drawings that create the impression of having been taken from a different sonic space. The metaphysical pensiveness of this piece brings to mind on one hand Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question, and on the other hand, the scores of some minimalists.

The composition's world premiere was given in Munich on January 10, 1990, together with the concert world premiere of the orchestral version of the Partita performed within the entire triptych: Partita - Interlude - Chain II. The soloist of the evening was Anne-Sophie Mutter, and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by the composer.

Composed in 1989, this work received its world premiere on May 11 of the same year at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London in a performance by the Guildhall School Symphony Orchestra, directed by the composer. The Prelude's instrumentation is for double winds, timpani, percussion, and strings, and its duration is about 4 minutes. The Prelude was conceived as a gift for the School, of which Witold Lutosławski was an honorary member beginning in 1978.

Chantefleurs et chantefables (Songflowers and songfables) is a cycle of nine songs for soprano and orchestra with a single set of wind instruments, composed in 1989-1990 to the poetry of the French surrealist Robert Desnos (1900-1945). It is Lutosławski’s second piece, after Les espaces du sommeil, written to words by this poet. The song lyrics were chosen from a collection of eighty poems about flowers, birds, insects and animals, published in Paris in 1955 under the same title as Lutosławski’s composition. The poems are intended for children. “I cannot say the same about the music I wrote,” said the composer, “although it does reflect their ‘childish’ character”. The piece was first performed on August 8, 1991, by Norwegian vocalist Solveig Kringlebotn during the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The composition was played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer. On September 29 the same year, the work was performed for the first time in Poland, at a concert concluding the Warsaw Autumn festival. Solveig Kringlebotn performed with the Sinfonia Varsovia orchestra, conducted by the composer. The work then entered the repertoire of many singers, e.g. Gwendolyn Bradley and Olga Pasiecznik. The piece was adapted for soprano and piano by Eugeniusz Knapik in 2007, on commission from the Witold Lutosławski Society.

Chantefleurs et chantefables is a cycle of orchestral soprano songs that belongs to the last stage of Witold Lutosławski’s creative work. It appeared after the Piano Concerto, just as the composer was beginning work on his last orchestral work, the Fourth Symphony, which he began in 1988 and completed in 1992. After that, only Subito for violin and piano (1992) was added to the catalogue of Lutosławski’s completed works; the unfinished Violin Concerto remains among the composer’s papers.

Chantefleurs et chantefables consists of poetic sound scenes drawn with extraordinary subtlety; it is a masterfully crafted, seductive collection of musical moods, feelings and emotions. The sequence of the songs is as follows:

La belle-de-nuit (The Marvel of Peru) describes a mysterious plant that blooms after dusk.

La sauterelle (The Grasshopper) is a hilarious illustration of the grasshopper’s leaps, reminiscent of children’s counting-out rhymes.

La véronique (The Speedwell) depicts the mutually marvellous encounter of a bull and a flower (genus Veronica, or Speedwell).

L’Eglantine, l’aubépine et la glycine (The Wild Rose, the Hawthorn and the Wisteria) – the fourth song is about a singing bird which flies over three plants of intense colours and scents: a wild rose, a hawthorn and a wisteria.

La tortue (The Tortoise) is a portrait of a tortoise which is half-grotesquely, half-lyrically narcissistic.

La rose (The Rose) is a portrait of a sweet-scented rose.

L’alligator (The Alligator) is a humorous scene about an alligator and a little Black boy’s meeting on a bank of the Mississippi river; but in the end the alligator goes without dinner.

L’angélique (The Angelica) is a charming picture of a tit which is touchingly delighted with the angelica plant.

Le papillon (The Butterfly) – an invasion by a swarm of butterflies hungry for the beads of fat on a broth that the citizens of Châtillon would like to consume is not – as it may seem – an apocalyptic vision.

Lutosławski’s music, which from Funeral Music to the Fourth Symphony is often treated as homogenous, at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s crossed the threshold of aesthetic change as far as the division of stylistic accents goes. At that time there was a minimization of those elements of composing technique which had become distinctive features of Lutosławski’s poetics. This was especially true of controlled aleatoricism, the expressive function of the twelve-note harmony, the characteristically airy orchestral textures and – last but not least – the dogma of the two-movement form. None of these stylistic features can be found in the soprano songs to the poems of Desnos. On the contrary, it seems that towards the end of his late creativity Lutosławski does justice, as it were, to his own work from the mid-50s – as if confirming, after forty years, the artistic honesty of attempting to create works portraying the sensitivity of the child. As if wishing to prove that this world was not exactly a surrogate one, and that his past decisions had not been purely opportunistic. One may suppose that for Lutosławski this song cycle may have served as a kind of preamble to his idea of writing an opera, along the lines of Maurice Ravel’s surrealist opera L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells).

Symphony No. 4 – the swansong of modernism

The adagio episode of the Third Symphony can be perceived as the source of the Fourth’s singing character. The singing, the melodics, the cantilena – the broad narrative phrase is another trait of this work which is connected to its harmonic quality. Such wonderful melodic phrases, which seem to be making up for years of asceticism, were unknown in Lutosławski’s previous scores. The gesture that opens the Symphony and reoccurs throughout takes up an idiom by Mahler – despite the large mental distance which existed between Lutosławski and that composer.

The fifteen-bar episode that opens the first movement of the Symphony deserves a place in the history of music as a symbolic theme. It is a melody of the clarinet (towards the end supported by flute), accompanied by a string quintet playing con sordino, coloured by the harp. The phenomenal beauty of these bars, to a large extent projected over the whole symphony, is rooted in the masterful power of simplicity. The rhythmical repetition of the bass E in the harmonic aura of minor thirds that surround it provides the accompaniment – a forgotten phenomenon in new music. The cantilena of the clarinet, where motifs seem to result from one another as if divided into antecedent and consequent, forms the melody – a quality that is most difficult to find in new music. And then the harp, with the sound droplets that add colour to the strings and, together with the violins and violas, form the melodic line. It is the harp – singing and adding opalescent colour to the entire work – that gives the basic E its metaphysical dimension. This symphony may be seen as a continuation of the previous one in that it develops what had only been hinted at before. In the harmonic system the consonance and the combinations of thirds have become fully emancipated, which brings to mind tonal associations much more often than in any other Lutosławski’s work after Funeral Music – especially as it does not avoid tensions reminiscent of dominant-tonic sequences (although it still does not make the symphony even partly tonal).

The work comprises two movements. After the Introduction comes an extended allegro, where the section marked cantando in the score could be ascribed the role of the second theme (in accordance with historical symphonic form). The character of the first movement is a special feature of the composition. Although built according to the principle of conducted sections rounded off with aleatory sections, by no means could it be called preliminary or hesitant. The formal sequence which is characteristic of Lutosławski’s music, for example in his Symphony No. 2 (hésitant–direct) and Symphony No. 3 (hésitant–direct–direct), is absent here. If the terms used by the composer for his Symphony No. 2 were to be applied here, Symphony No. 4 would be a sequence of direct–direct movements. The English musicologist and composer (and Lutosławski’s biographer) Charles Bodman Rae noted in The Music of Lutosławski (London, 1994) that the impression the symphony makes is that the first movement is missing and the work only consists of the second and third movement.

The unrestrained element of linear thinking (in terms of cantilena, recitative, melodics) affects the majority of the orchestra, turning the work into an expanse of instrumental songs. Because of the prominent role of solo instruments (the clarinet, the flute, the harp, the violin, the viola, the cello, the trumpets, the horns, the trombones, the piano, the vibraphone with the marimba, and even the bongo drums) the element of chamber music enters the composition on a much larger scale than in Symphony No. 3. This in no way implies that the collective symphonic element has withdrawn and given way to the surge of individual shapes or that the dominance of clear and distinct melody and expressive and unambiguous (as opposed to aleatory) harmony has marginalized the collective playing ad libitum – even though its role in Lutosławski’s later work would become significantly limited.

In Symphony No. 4 the composer does not abandon anything that had hitherto constituted his symphonic language and which could be described according to the principle of the “chain technique” – including both the exchange of material between different structures, the technique of combining and disassembling chord aggregates, the opposition of conducted and non-conducted music, and finally the idea of the dialectic form as a whole. The world of Lutosławski’s later works (the triptych Partita–Interlude–Chain 2, the Piano Concerto, Chantefleurs et Chantefables and Chain 3, as well as the last two symphonies) more than ever before opens up to the tradition of European music, fully assimilating into it on the one hand, yet on the other hand not losing any of its individual character. These scores redeem the meaning of the word “synthesis”, which has become hackneyed over the last quarter-century.

Symphony No. 4 was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, which gave the piece its first performance on February 5, 1993, conducted by the composer.

Subito for violin and piano was composed in 1992. It was commissioned by the World Life and Accident Corporation in Richmond, Indiana, as a compulsory piece in the program of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, at which it was first performed in September 1994 in succession by the 16 semi-finalists of the Competition on the principle of a multiple world premiere. The director of the competition, Joseph Gingold, turned to Witold Lutosławski with the suggestion of writing this composition. Although this series of world premieres took place after the death of the composer, the latter had acquainted himself with the real sound of this work through a recording made in 1993 by Krzysztof Jakowicz and Krystyna Borucińska for the Polish Radio.

This recording became the first factual performance of the composition, but it was made with the restriction that its public emission not be made before the end of the Competition in Indianapolis. The condition was respected by the Polish Radio, and the "embargo" imposed upon the making of the recording was not broken.

The place of Subito can be seen as a particular cross between a functional intention (the goal of which being a competition, it includes virtuosic elements and vigorous expressive gestures as show material) and a continued relationship with conceptions for other compositional projects, both past and (perhaps) present. In this lighthearted scherzo we have a type of "playful tease of the listener's expectations effected through sudden, unexpected twists and turns. The title ("suddenly") is suggestive of the mood of changeability that results from the frequent, abrupt changes of rhythm, dynamic, and mode of attack". We may also be dealing here with the first idea for the planned Violin Concerto, which remained a concept in the form of compositional sketches. As if in "standard" manner, the composer uses in this work his strategy of interchanging refrains and episodes; in reference to the idea of chain form, the lengthened episodes "consume" the time given to the refrains. In the fourth episode the upper-level form of the piece reaches a climactic point in an "ecstatic" (in the words of Charles Bodman Rae) or even "diabolical-Tartinian" trill.

• Fifty Contrapuntal Studies (1943-1944)
• Autumn - children's songs for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra (1951)
• Comrade - a mass song for voice and piano (1952)
• Spring Week for voice and piano (1952)
• Who can say for male choir (1982)