Saxophone quartet:
Paweł Gusnar soprano saxophone
Oskar Rzążewski alto saxophone
Krzysztof Koszowski tenor saxophone
Wojciech Chałupka baritone saxophone
Sinfonia Varsovia
Aleksandar Marković conductor
Mariusz Gradowski host
Claude Debussy Prelude to ‘The Afternoon of a Faun’
Arthur Honegger Pacific 231
Philip Glass Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra
Maurice Ravel Bolero
The first concert of the festival will begin with the dreamy Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the “Afternoon of a Faun” (1894). This piece marked the beginning of musical impressionism and formed the basis for the first choreography in the career of Vaslav Nijinsky (1912). The stifling, static, and erotic atmosphere of the mythological costume of the Prelude is invaded by civilization in the form of a steam locomotive. Arthur Honegger’s piece from 1923 is a sound image of a locomotive slowly and heavily rolling into motion and then accelerating. The orchestra works rhythmically, like a well-oiled machine, and the motorics and broken utterances of the instruments are reminiscent of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Philip Glass’s Concerto written for an unusual but interesting group of soloists – a saxophone quartet – and orchestra (1995) in a way reconciles Debussy with Honegger. The extreme movements of the concert present beautiful lyrical melodies based on constantly repeating and shimmering orchestral sequences, while the second movement brings sharper rhythms alluding to Stravinsky and his Ebony Concerto. The evening will close with an orchestral evergreen that can be viewed as a study of orchestral instrumentation conceived as ballet music. The recurring rhythmic pattern of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero (1928) links all the compositions of the program and returns to the beginning – to music intended for ballet.
