NOSPR Chamber Musicians / Sałajczyk / Biegas / Krzeszowiec / Lato / Zambrzycki / Eugeniusz Knapik's Mysterious Garden

Performers
Piotr Sałajczyk - piano
Grzegorz Biegas - piano
Szymon Krzeszowiec - violin
Piotr Lato - clarinet
NOSPR Chamber Musicians
Rafał Zambrzycki - musical direction

Program
Eugeniusz Knapik
Tha' Munnot Waste No Time for 2 pianos and clarinet
Trio for violin, clarinet and piano
Islands for chamber string orchestra

Eugeniusz Knapik, celebrating his 75th birthday this year, remains in his approach to non-musical themes largely an heir to Gustav Mahler. He favours ideological content over programmatic narrative, which is evident both in Islands for string orchestra (exploring transience, solitude and the irreversible passage of time) and in Tha' Munnot Waste No Time for three (or two) pianos and clarinet.

This latter work carries a particular richness of interpretive threads: from echoes of great piano music of the past century (Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, Ligeti and his Monument, bird-like trills in Messiaen's manner) to a romantically-spirited cantilena - instrumental song reaching into the depths of the human heart. The title derives from a chapter of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a novel that carries - like Knapik's music - a universal message. The key to hidden meanings, like the key to the garden in the novel, each listener will find their own.

Bartosz Witkowski