Despite the silence

All three works on this evening’s program were composed in the shadow of historical events that gave artists little room for illusion. History moves at its own pace-music finds its own ways of responding. Tansman, Weinberg, and Lutosławski did not write political manifestos. But they didn’t escape into pure abstraction either. Each faced the same dilemma: should one remain silent, or speak-and if so, how?


Aleksander Tansman, born in Łódź and living in Paris since the 1920s, was already an internationally recognized composer in 1937. He played with Ravel, recorded in the United States, and was published by Universal Edition. But Europe was changing. Just months after composing the Variations on a Theme of Girolamo Frescobaldi, Mussolini’s Italy passed racial laws. In Nazi Germany, books by “non-Aryan” authors were being burned.

Tansman chose a 17th-century Baroque theme-seemingly a neutral choice. But his Variations are more than stylistic homage: they form a dialogue with the European tradition that long sought order and meaning, and was now on the brink of losing it.

Mieczysław Weinberg also came from Poland but wrote in Russian after fleeing to the Soviet Union following the Nazi invasion in 1939. Though his entire family perished in the Holocaust, Weinberg himself was arrested in 1953 for “Jewish nationalism”-and only Dmitri Shostakovich’s intervention saved him from a labor camp. In 1970, after everything, Weinberg composed his Clarinet Concerto.

It’s not a piece that calls for battle-it does the opposite. It’s hushed, cautious, chamber-like in tone. The composer harbored no illusions about what could be said openly in the USSR-but he said what he could, in a language that could not be censored.

Witold Lutosławski had more artistic freedom-and more to lose. He composed his Third Symphony over a period of more than a decade, from 1972 to 1983. He began it shortly after the bloody protests of December 1970 on the Baltic coast. He finished it after the imposition of martial law. He refused to perform in official venues of communist Poland but also chose not to emigrate. Instead of manifestos, he wrote music.

The symphony was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and premiered under the baton of Georg Solti. Lutosławski described its opening-one sudden, interrupted chord-as representing “an act of individual initiative.” From there, the music struggles: for space, for structure, for the right to endure. Although it may not be a programmatic work, it undeniably carries a powerful stance and deep historical resonance.

This concert reminds us that music does not always need words to evoke a response. If there is a thread linking these three works, it is this: the understanding that sometimes silence is not an option, and that one must find a way to speak clearly enough to be heard.

Excerpt from Lutosławski's Symphony No. 3 performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle:

During this evening, the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra will perform under the baton of Paweł Przytocki, a conductor with rich symphonic and operatic experience, known for the intensity and commitment of his interpretations. They will be joined on this musical journey by Belgian clarinetist Annelien Van Wauwe whose expressive and captivating playing delights audiences all over the world.