From the Podium (27th June 2004)
At our last concert we experimented with art form combinations. The arts of music and painting were integrated, and, I believe, very successfully. The Sinfonia's Resident Artist, Teri Hiley, exhibited about thirty of her paintings on the walls of our performance hall and also in the foyer. Not coincidentally, the music we were performing was Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
The audience was encouraged to continue viewing the paintings after the concert with the added incentive of complimentary wine and cheese. The paintings were for sale and Balmain Sinfonia received a commission. Ten paintings were sold, which was considered very successful.
Many people expressed the opinion that a combined art show and concert should be held every now and then, perhaps exhibiting three artists' diverse works. I personally don't mind as long as there is no distraction from the music. We are, after all, a performing orchestra.
If you would like to express your views to me on this or any other matter, please email the Sinfonia at info@balmainsinfonia.com
For the next concert I've chosen mainly romantic music, but from the geographically diverse areas of Norway, France and Russia.
From Norway we have the extremely popular Grieg Piano Concerto. It surprises me that the Sinfonia has entered its thirteenth year before performing this perennial favorite. We shall be introducing you to the 22 year old Polish pianist Krzysztof Malek. Tall, thin and with a hand span of half a metre, this man was destined to play the piano. It helped, of course that he had as his teacher that legendary piano pedagogue Victor Makarov. You may remember that Professor Makarov provided the Sinfonia with five of his students for our Beethoven Festival where we performed all five piano concertos in one day.
From France we have the wonderful symphony of Cesar Frank (he only wrote one).
I know the pedants out there will remind me that Franck is Belgian. But he lived and worked in Paris for most of his life and I am prepared to call this work a French symphony. Franck was a wonderful organist and this symphony is often reminiscent of an organ.
From Russia we have Glinka's Kamarinskaja (Wedding Song). I bet you haven't heard that performed for a while. Glinka's pioneering work with Russian folk songs has been highly regarded by many Russian composers who followed him.
Gary Stavrou
The Artist (27th June 2004)
Krzysztof Malek, piano
Krzysztof Malek was born in 1981 in the Polish city of Stalowa Wola. He graduated with the highest distinction for extraordinary achievements from the ‘Special Talents School', the Zenon Brzewski State Music High School in Warsaw in the class of Professor Teresa Mamasterska. In 2000 he became her student at the Frederic Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, where he studied until 2002.
He was then invited for full scholarship studies with Professor Victor Makarov at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney. He has also studied with such distinguished pianists-pedagogues as Victor Merzhanov and Vladimir Viardo (Moscow Conservatory), Oxana Yablonskaya (Julliard School), Alexey Orlovetzky (St. Petersburg Conservatory), Anatoli Cardashov (Odessa Conservatory) and others.
His first performance was in 1990. In 1991 he received the second prize at the Competition for Young Pianists, which was soon followed by his first performance with an orchestra. In 1997 he was a prize winner at the I.J. Paderewski Competition. In 1999 he received the second prize at the Frederic Chopin International Competition in Vilnus and in 2001 he was awarded the first prize at the K. Bacewicz International Competition in Lodz, Poland.
Krzysztof Malek has given recitals, concerts with orchestras and chamber music performances in many cities in Poland. He is also known to audiences in Germany, France, Austria, Australia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Japan. In 2000 he was invited to perform a Beethoven Concerto in the renowned Polish concert hall, the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw. He was also invited by the International Frederic Chopin Federation to represent Poland at the festival ‘Youth plays Chopin and his Contemporaries' in Vienna (2000). He was invited to perform during the European Piano Forum in Berlin in 2001 and the International Piano Campus in Paris (2002). In 2002 he received invitations to perform Chopin recitals in Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, New York and Moscow.
Krzysztof Malek has made recordings for Polish television. He has also played a major role in a movie about Frederic Chopin. In 2000 he was awarded the prestigious scholarship prize by the Polish Ministry of Culture.
The Music (27th June 2004)
- Glinka : Kamarinskaya
- Grieg : Piano concerto in A minor, Op. 16
- Franck : Symphony no. 1 in D minor
Glinka : Kamarinskaya
Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) is regarded as the founding father of Russian nationalism in music. A contemporary of the Romantic poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), he spent his early childhood with his grandmother, in whose care he first came into contact with the real music of Russia - the folk songs, pealing bells and ecclesiastical chants which would later influence his music. His first encounter with Western music came in his teens when he was sent to school in St Petersburg, where he studied violin and piano. On leaving school he became a civil servant in a job which left him plenty of time to indulge his passion for music as an enthusiastic amateur singer and pianist.
He began to compose songs and chamber music in the 1820s, but a prolonged trip to Italy in the early 1830s gave him a passionate interest in opera. He composed his own first opera, A Life for the Tsar, in 1836 on his return to Russia; it was a huge success. Glinka found himself acclaimed as Russia's leading composer and encouraged by his first success embarked on his next opera, Russlan and Ludmilla , based on Pushkin's fairy tale. Its musical content, a blend of Russian folk tunes and exotic orientalism, proved a rich legacy for all later Russian composers.
A trip to Paris followed and, while he composed no music during the visit, his creative future became clear to him as he came into contact with Berlioz and Parisian musical tastes. He decided to expand his repertoire with a few concert pieces for orchestra under the genre of fantaisies pittoresques, an intention that did not come to fruition until he travelled to Spain and developed an enthusiasm for the music of Spain which later resulted in his two Spanish Overtures. The second of these was composed in Warsaw during an extended stay of nine months in 1848, when Glinka had access to the Governor's orchestra.
Following its success he started work immediately on Kamarinskya , another orchestral fantasy that he had attempted years earlier as a piano composition. This work is a combination of a wedding tune and a Russian folk tune and is based entirely on variation procedures. The rhythm has a Russian exuberance and its colourful chromaticism is quite distinct from conventional Western practices. Like Russlan and Ludmilla it had a profound influence. From it, Tchaikovsky said, “all later Russian composers to the present day (and I, of course, among them) draw, in the most obvious fashion, contrapuntal and harmonic combinations as soon as they have to develop a Russian dance-tune”.
Grieg : Piano concerto in A minor, Op. 16
Grieg's Piano Concerto was written at a happy and rewarding time in his life. In March 1868 his wife gave birth to a daughter and the concerto, written in that year, is undoubtedly an expression of his joy in parenthood. Also at this time Grieg was involved in the formation of a society for the propagation of Scandinavian music. A co-founder of the society, the composer Rikard Nordraak, who died tragically at the early age of 23, fervently believed that the future of Norwegian music lay in a study of its folk traditions. He made a profound impression on Grieg who wrote of their first meeting: “I will never forget it. Suddenly a mist fell from my eyes and I knew the way I had to take. It was not precisely Nordraak's way, but I realised that the way for me passed through him.” From then on, Grieg became a nationalist composer and the Piano Concerto is evidence of his new-found awareness of his national heritage.
One of the Romantic period's most frequently performed concertos, it is strongly characterised by a sprightly rhythmic, melodic and harmonic imagination. It shows the influence of Liszt, Chopin and most especially Schumann, whose piano concerto made an "unforgettable impression" on him the first time he heard it, played by Clara Schumann, in Leipzig in 1858. Both concertos belong in the tradition of German Romanticism, but in Grieg's work a specifically national element, with strong associations to Norwegian folk music, is evident.
Franck : Symphony no. 1 in D minor
Franco-Belgian composer Cesar Franck was born in Liege in 1822. As a young boy he made many public appearances as a pianist, and when the family moved to Paris in 1835 he was enrolled at the Conservatoire. He astonished his teachers with his virtuosity at the piano but could not make much headway as a composer. He turned his attention seriously to the organ and in 1858 he became organist at the church of Sainte-Clotilde and began to write music for the organ, with an understanding of the instrument that had not been evident since the time of Bach. Still his compositions received little recognition. It was not until he was in his sixties that his compositional style reached its maturity and he began to write his greatest music.
The Symphony in D minor was composed in 1888 and first performed in 1889 to a very cool reception. Only after Franck's death, one year later, did the work come to receive the popular affection in which it is now held whenever it is played. Today it is regarded as one of the peaks of French symphonies in the nineteenth century and along with Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique the most often performed French symphony.