The KLARAFESTIVAL presents Karol SZYMANOWSKI’s Stabat Mater alongside its collaboration with the Wroclaw National Forum of Music (Narodowe Forum Muzyki we Wrocławiu, NFM). 
Stabat Mater, composed by SZYMANOWSKI and prompted by the grief suffered by the composer’s sister, who had just lost her little girl Ala, will be played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the Russian Vladimir JUROWSKI, with three Polish soloists, soprano Elżbieta SZMYTKA, mezzo-soprano Agnieszka REHLIS and baritone Andrzej DOBBER.

After spending 123 years absent from the map of Europe, Poland regained its independence under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. The Second Polish Republic had been born. Everything needed to be shaken up, socially and culturally speaking. Within this debate, Karol SZYMANOWSKI played an active role in the field of music, notably in his reflections on national style and the way in which he combined modernity and tradition. The musicologist Zofia HELMAN remarks that Szymanowski’s conception of national style ‘was a response to his own work as a composer and those who followed in his footsteps. In his conception, popular music, especially that of the Tatras, which is marked by its archaism, needed to become the archtype of Polishness. (…) In the Stabat Mater for soloists, choir and orchestra opus 53, the composer created a Polish atmosphere by marrying popular elements with modern harmonic and tonal means’ but without ‘citing’ the music of the mountains, found in Zakopane which he made his permanent home in 1930, suffering from tuberculosis. That same year, Liège hosted the Festival de la Société Internationale de Musique Contemporaine (SMIC); this was when Belgian audiences discovered the Stabat Mater, on 6 September 1930, directed by the composer’s friend Grzegorz FITELBERG. Joëlle Van Hyfte points out that ‘the concert resonated beyond Belgium, as, in the pages of La Revue Musicale in Paris, Henry Prunières, who had attended the festival, described the Stabat Mater as an ‘admirable page of sacred music, the most moving that has ever been written.’  

Two other compositions will be played alongside Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater: Sieben Worte by Sofia GUBAIDULINA and Psalm 23 by Alexander von ZEMLINSKY.

Vladimir Jurowski – direction
Elżbieta Szmytka – soprano
Agnieszka Rehlis – mezzo-soprano
Andrzej Dobber – baritone
Kristina Blaumane – cello
Elsbeth Moser – bayan

PROGRAMME
Sofia GOUBAÏDOULINA, Sieben Worte
Karol SZYMANOWSKI, Stabat Mater, op. 53 
Alexander von ZEMLINSKY, Psalm XXIII, op. 14

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
>>> Center for Fine Arts – BOZAR (Rue Ravensteinstraat 23, 1000 Brussels), Henry Le Bœuf Hall – see map
>>> Friday 11 March 2016 – 20:00 
>>> €92 | €68 | €48 | €22
online box office

+++ find out more about this concert on the Klarafestival’s website and on the Bozar’s website 

A Klarafestival and Bozar coproduction, organised il collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the Polska Music project, with the support of the Polish Institute in Brussels.