Paderewski – Piesni/Songs
Anna Radziejewska; Karol Kozlowski; Agnieszka Hoszowska-Jablonska
Dux 1246 (dux.pl)
Not many composers can honestly say that they have changed the world. Ignacy Jan Paderewski has that distinction. Not through his music, but rather through his political and diplomatic activities. He was instrumental in persuading President Wilson to take up the cause of an independent Poland at the Versailles Conference. Quick historical recap: the once-mighty Poland fell to the surrounding empires of Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary and disappeared from the map of Europe in 1795. No small feat, then, was the recreation of the Republic of Poland after the Great War. Paderewski was also well-known and regarded in the United States as a virtuoso pianist and his lobbying efforts paid off. He also served briefly as the Polish prime minister, before returning for good to North America in 1922.
It is small wonder that in this larger context, his compositional output has been overlooked. This disc is a part of a series attempting to correct that oversight by publishing all of his music. He was not a groundbreaking musician. Rather, he worked happily within an established idiom, adding to the catalogue of Polish songs so monumentally established by Chopin and Szymanowski. Here, the settings of poems by the “Polish Bard” Adam Mickiewicz, and the works of Théophile Gautier and of his son-in-law, Catulle Mendès, are rendered brilliantly (emphasis mine!) by the tremendous tenor Karol Kozlowski and equally formidable mezzo, Anna Radziejewska. A long-overdue tribute to the “Father of modern Poland.”
