Reviews:

THE NEW YORK TIMES

March 25, 2007

Anna Kijanowska, pianist. Dux 0417; CD.

ONE of the comforts of listening for a living is, after many years, still to come upon music one ought to know and doesn’t. Karol Szymanowski’s mazurkas for the piano bring the past forward more fluently than most 20th-century composition. Chopin’s legacy is served. Polish folk dance is honored. But this remains piano music that speaks in the present tense as well as the past. The recording, from the Dux label, is played by Anna Kijanowska, an excellent young Polish pianist now teaching at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

Mazurkas move basically at three beats to the measure, the first divided evenly or by dotted rhythms or triplets. The form served as Chopin’s experimental laboratory, and his 50-odd examples survive as some of his freshest music: fresh in their originality but also fresh because, being less than look-at-me showpieces, they have not been done to death through public overkill.

Twenty of Szymanowski’s mazurkas are from the mid-1920s, the last two from three years before his death in 1937. Like Chopin he is loyal to sacrosanct notions of musical patriotism but unintimidated by them. Unlike the mazurkas of Chopin, who had the four-measure phrase all but written into his DNA, Szymanowski’s defy dance symmetry and expand and contract. The longest are just over three minutes, and a few are under two. Whether meditative, wistful, acidic or just plain noisy, they dance as the past would have them dance, often reinforced by hurdy-gurdy bass notes.

The two late mazurkas push folk music deeper beneath the surface. There is less grit and more luxury to the tone and gestures. Both are less close to the earth but very beautiful. The last, though dark in tone, ends with a major chord.

Bernard Holland

FANFARE MAGAZINE

April 2007

SZYMANOWSKI Mazurkas: op. 50; op. 62 • Anna Kijanowska (pn) • DUX 0417 (56:10)

Hillbilly hoedown, Polish style, heard through the ears of a sophisticated European, the Mazurkas are a musical Janus. Given Szymanowski’s sempre rubato writing, the pianist can take it either way. Marc-André Hamelin’s superb account (Hyperion CDA 67399, Fanfare 27:2)—the primary and indispensable comparison—playing to their art music side, is complemented by Kijanowska’s drier, more sharply inflected readings that veer from laconic crackle to suave seductiveness to awaken the chthonic vigor, strangeness, and occasional rawness of native woodnotes wild. If Hamelin is often brisker, Kijanowska is more pointed, more intensely relaxed, you might say. Both evince the requisite flash and bizarrerie to animate the Mazurkas compellingly—a supremely lucky throw for fare long deemed caviar to the general—but in kaleidoscopically different ways, as if watching the changing light over a lurid, bristling, and weirdly beguiling landscape. Kijanowska is a pianist I look forward to hearing again—and again. The artist’s extensive, detailed notes, drawn from her doctoral dissertation, provide an invaluably fascinating, ear-opening introduction—a rare instance of scholarship hand-in-hand with interpretive power. Dux’s sound is immediate, detailed, and open—with the biting transparency of Alpine cold. Forced to choose, it would be this one.

Adrian Corleonis

ALL MUSIC GUIDE

CLASSICS TODAY

Beyond question, Karol Szymanowski wrote the greatest piano Mazurkas since Chopin's. They capture all the elemental passion of the traditional Mazurka rhythms in a pungent and pianistically idiomatic language that sounds fresher with each passing year. It's good to see these works turn up more frequently on CD, especially when they're played with Anna Kijonowska's stylistic perception and technical mastery. Like Martin Jones, she's not afraid to rough up rolled left-hand chords in order to give them more rhythmic kick. Some of her tempo choices are unusual, such as a more measured and inward take on Op. 50 No. 12, as opposed to Marc-André Hamelin's more volatile, skittish account. Yet if her touch doesn't quite match Hamelin's supple shadings, her rubatos often speak more organically (Op. 50 No. 18, for example). Unlike Hamelin and Jones, Kijonowska does not include Szymanowski's four Polish Dances and Valse Romantique. This highly distinctive release is a worthy addition to the Szymanowski discography.

Jed Distler

CLASSIK REVIEWS

Atlanta Audio Society                                                                                                                         
January, 2006         

Marvelous mazurkas

Dux 0417

From Dux, a quality label in Warsaw devoted to the best in the Polish musical heritage, comes an outstanding release of the complete Mazurkas, Opp. 50 & 62 by Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937). The artist is pianist Anna Kijanowska, a native pole who has studied in the U.S. with, among others, Byron Janis at the Manhattan School of Music and Madeleine Forte at Boise State University. I am happy to say that, compared with my previous acquaintance with these pieces on record, Kijanowska's performances are a revelation that should make new friends for the neglected piano music of this composer, known as the father of modern Polish music.

Like his contemporaries Enescu in Romania and Bartok and Kodaly in Hungary, Szymanowski aimed at creating a new nationalism in music by going back to the folk traditions of his country and imbuing them with classical principles, thus making them universally accessible. In the case of his Mazurkas, he took his inspiration from the older form of the dance that was found in the high country of Poland and was unknown to Chopin. As opposed to the lowland form, the highland form of the Mazurka features a distinct harmonic language, a diversity of rhythmic patterns and phrase lengths, and a tendency to accent short and weak beats. Like Chopin, Szymanowski makes much use of slurs to influence metrical and rhythmic patterns, as well as symmetry of proportions.

So much for the composer's technical approach to his music. The effect on the listener is one of considerable charm and persuasiveness. Although the twenty mazurkas of Opus 50 are miniature gems that can stand by themselves as individual pieces in recital or as encores, there is something to be said for hearing them in the context of the whole, especially since Szymanowski tends to alternate vigorous, more vivacious mazurkas with quieter, more intimate and introspective ones. Though they have no descriptive titles and are not program music in any sense of the word, these pieces will evoke visual or sensory impressions, varying from one listener to the next. For sheer loveliness, they repay repeated listening. 

Phil Muse 

STEROPHILE FORUM

March, 2007

(http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=17716&Main=17716) 
A follow-up of sorts. No, Sinae Lee has not recorded the Fourth Symphony or violin and piano works yet – though I hope she does – but I found another superb disc of Szymanowski’s piano music that should be brought to light. I write of Anna Kijanowska’s 2004 recording of the complete Op 50 and Op 62 Mazurkas on Dux. Ms Lee and Ms Kijanowska share a few things in common. First, they appear to be around the same age (early to mid 30s); second, they’re both academics who focused on Szymanowski – in Kijanowska’s case her PhD topic was the Mazurkas; third, they’ve both recorded some sparkling Szymanowski. Indeed, as much as I love Ms Lee’s take of the Mazurkas, I think Ms Kijanowska’s is better. Not night and day better, but better. Where Lee plays with drive and crisp incisiveness and a comparatively lean sonority, Kijanowska adds more color and nuance and flexibility. Her rhythmic inflections make the music flow and, well, dance better, too. The music sounds more specific, less general. These traits more or less permeate the disc. And the whole disc is one big highlight. Kijanowska can play with notable vitality (like 50/10) or with abundant subtlety and nuance (either Op 62), or anything in between. Throw in excellent sound, and for those who like or love this music, this disc is a must.

TODD

TELEWIZJA INTERAKTYWNA

http://v1.itvp.pl/szymanowski/index.php?page_id=9&plyta_id=16

DUX 0417

Medialna siła Anny Kijanowskiej nijak ma się do autorytetu Simone’a Rattla, jednak przysłużyła się ona muzyce Szymanowskiego nie mniej niż angielski dżentelmen, prezentując w Europie i Ameryce entuzjastycznie przyjmowane recitale. Nie przez przypadek debiutancką płytę artystki wypełniły dwa późne cykle Mazurków. Niepozorne miniatury dają pianistce okazję do oddania idiomatycznego charakteru dojrzałej twórczości Szymanowskiego.

Gra Kijanowskiej wolna jest od, ciążącej nad polskimi odczytaniami, romantycznej egzaltacji, tudzież interpretacyjnego „folkloryzmu”, polegającego na pieczołowitym wyłuskiwaniu tego, co kompozytor starał się ukryć i wysublimować. Góralską motorykę eksponuje ona tylko tam, gdzie pozwala na to Szymanowski, choć we wszystkich szybkich ogniwach op. 50 daje się wyczuć ów „podhalański” pęd, złudzenie ciągłego narastania. Pianistka nie popada zarazem w pułapkę schematycznie pojmowanego fowizmu i pozwala wybrzmieć właściwym Szymanowskiemu subtelnościom. Staccatową ruchliwość łączy z płynnością frazy; w niemal impresjonistycznej manierze kreśli delikatne ornamenty i dozuje dynamiczne cieniowania; a gdy wymagają tego zawiłości przebiegu harmonicznego, śmiało uelastycznia tempo. Intuicyjny żywioł i chirurgiczna precyzja.

Michał Mendyk