Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831) – Complete Piano Works

[Alan Howe]

As Mark says, Jim, your observations seem needlessly negative and unwelcoming. Perhaps you could offer Marianna some encouragement in her enterprise?

[marianna]

Hello all together!
I was really happy reading your observations and opinions! You are all right, because it's obvious that everyone has his own approach, his intellectual sensibility and his "dose" of patience concerning this kind of web-page...
I would like just to specify that I didn't want to "steal" the result of research from some musicologists and historians, but I wanted to make possible its discovery by the people who don't speak Polish or Russian... There are some interesting texts about Szymanowska, her life and work written in these languages, since about 10 years – also in English, but practically nothing in French or Italian...

If you want to obtain in English the list of her works, I advise you to find the book of Anna Kijas http://www.amazon.com/Maria-Szymanowska-1789-1831-A-Bio-Bibliography/dp/0810876841

If you want to listen to her music, you can find some CD with her piano works or with her Songs. I don't want to advise you any, because it's a question of personal preferences... But it's very important to underline that the final impression concerning this music depends of the creativity and the art of its performers, because:
1) A lot of her works are often just like outlines...  She was – inevitably! – an autodidact composer;
2) There are no "models" to play this kind of music;
3) She had an incredible musical imagination, she was one of these pianists who wanted to make from the piano a "singing instrument", she loved all kind of "artistic truth" and good theatricality , but – limited in her knowledge of the composer's "métier" - she preferred to reduce her musical language to the piano' and voice' pieces (a very intelligent woman, n'est-ce pas?!)

Some of musicologists are calling her "Chopin before Chopin"... I think, she was a "Liszt before Liszt"!

You can discover interesting ideas about her work reading some critics concerning the CD with her Ballads & Romances (AP 0260):
a) By Steve Arloff  in MusicWeb International :  http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2012/June12/Szymanowska_Ballads_AP0260.htm
b) By Pierre Degott, who is speaking about a "female composer of genius" in ResMusica : http://www.resmusica.com/2012/10/08/maria-szymanowska-une-compositrice-de-genie/

Regarding anecdotal subjects such as the association of Maria Szymanowska (born Wolowska) with Karol Szymanowski, I can reply asking you if you know only one family with the name Schubert or Ravel...

As for Jozef Oleszkiewicz ("Artist, nihilist, mystic and prophet, hero of the third part of the drama Dziady ...), I only translated the first words of the long text written in Polish by Alwida A. Bajor. I can't reply in her name...

Maria Szymanowska is for me much more than a talented composer and an outstanding female professional pianist (one of the first in Europe) : The story of her life and carrier reflects some very important facts in the Polish and European culture.
Her modernity consists foremost in wanting to live her own choice and not to disperse her vital energy in conflicts devoted in advance to failure.

[JimL]

Thanks!  A reference to a catalogue works for me!