Polish music | Julia Kociuban

Four cyclical piano works by Polish artists, from Chopin through Szymanowski and Bacewicz to Lutosławski. Julia Kociuban has reached for such an ambitious repertoire. She is an accomplished pianist of the young generation, graduating from the piano class of professor Piotr Paleczny. During her solo recital, three sonatas representing extremely different styles and a cycle of variations will sound.

Variations in B flat minor Op. 3 by Karol Szymanowski is the work of a student, written between 1901 and 1903, while studying with Zygmunt Noskowski. And yet complex harmonics, strong widening of scales and breaking the major-minor system, as well as the stylization of folk dance appearing in one of the variations, announce the further development and innovative style of the composer.

Almost every artist met at least once with the sonata cycle, although the genre had clearly changed over the years since classicism. Written in 1934, Piano Sonata by Witold Lutosławski also comes from the time of the composer's college years and it is his only work from that period that survived the war turmoil. On one hand, the composition exhibits Lutosławski's compositional inspiration with Impressionism from that period – the work of Ravel, Debussy. On the other, it testifies to his excellent piano technique. Although premiered in 1935 by the composer himself during a performance by conservatory students, the sonata gained favorable reviews, including one by the famous critic Piotr Rytel, yet Lutosławski himself never decided to publish it. It was released in a paper version only ten years after the composer’s death.

Piano sonata No. 2 by was created in 1953 by Grażyna Bacewicz, and it was she who performed it for the very first time. The work is maintained in a style directed towards avant-garde sonic explorations. The composer herself described her music as predatory and lyrical at the same time.

Sonata in B minor, Op. 58 by Fryderyk Chopin is the last and the most mature of his three piano sonatas, written in 1844. Music researcher Mieczysław Tomaszewski described it as the essence of Romantic music, while in its subsequent movements noticing other genres known to us from Chopin's output: ballads (in the extreme links of the work), scherzo (second movement) and nocturne (in the third).