Stojowski Piano Concerto No. 3

[FBerwald]

Stojowski's Piano Concerto No. 3 was mentioned as "performable" somewhere in this forum. I would like to know if the score exists! I had written to Mr. Jonathan Plowrith asking him if he would consider taking up the 3rd concerto and the Rhapsody. I just received an email from him. He says: "According to Stojowski's official biographer and cataloguer of works Joseph Herter,the 3rd Concerto was never published and has unfortunately been lost – along with many other works. []  know otherwise, that would be very interesting." Hopefully someone can shed some light....

It seems that Mr. Plowrith recorded the Rhapsody with the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Lukasz Borowicz about 18 months ago. The same CD also contains the Symphony!!!!

[eschiss1]

It does seem to be listed, but incomplete (68 pages, missing pages 31-32), here, true.  But Mr. Plowright's information is probably more current, at a guess, than a list at a site where many composers' lists are maintained... especially since that's just an excerpt from issue 5.2.02 of their journal...

(though if his only source is the biographer, I'm surprised since he otherwise does know of the ... well.. hrm. Could always ask him, or the PolishMusicJournal, about the discrepancy? The archives have been, I gather, moved to USC as thalbergmad said; they could presumably just check there, yes.

[edurban]

My own list of the Stojowski mss (drawn up in 1986 iirc at the request of the composer's son Henry) makes no mention of the 3rd concerto ms.  It was certainly not among the composer's papers left at the 96th street apartment after the death of Henry's brother...  Mary Louise Boehm (a former pupil of Mme. Stojowska) and I went through the place very thoroughly over the course of several weeks.  Perhaps the biographer took the description from Grove's 1937?

David 

[eschiss1]

They did, according to the link. That'd explain... Mystery regrettably solved, then. Thanks.  I'm glad to hear the symphony has been recorded, though. I hope that's a beginning/continuation, rather and not an end!

[Gareth Vaughan]

The 3rd PC of Stojowski is supposed to be in the Zygmunt and Luisa Stojowski Collection (Family Archive), cited in the PMJ article and I believe this is housed in the University of South Carolina. There is an e-mail address to the PMJ which might produce an answer: polmusic@email.usc.edu
I believe this does exist and should be investigated.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Apparently the ZLSC is housed in the Doheny Library on the campus of USC.  The Polish Music Journal is still being published and the new e-mail address is: polmusic@thornton.usc.edu
I have fired off an enquiry.  Perhaps if a couple of other members - maybe, Eric (because he's in the States and used to dealing with academic institutions) - could make similar enquiries it may help in locating this MS. If there are only two or three pages missing it might be possible to produce a playable edition. Mr Plowright would surely be interested.

[JimL]

Excuse me, but USC is the University of Southern California.  Although USC is also the University of South Carolina, I'm betting that it's Southern Cal because there are several streets in Los Angeles, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills named after Doheny (Edward L. Doheny, the oil tycoon who first drilled the Los Angeles City Oil Field).  He was twice acquitted of offering the bribe that Albert Fall, Secretary of the Interior during the Harding administration, was convicted of taking in the infamous Teapot Dome scandal.

[eschiss1]

I don't see much hope of it, since the whole reason the work is in the list is not some independent description of the contents of the archive but rather- quoting -"from Grove 1937", which according to edurban, who actually did the inventory, got it wrong- this was rehashed and more or less resolved just a few comments ago, of course. I'm not sure which part of that was unambiguous.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Well, Jim, that's what I thought - I only changed it to University of South Carolina because a US friend of mine said that it wasn't the U. of South California. For a Brit these acronyms are a bit confusing.  Let's see if I get any reply from the PMJ. That might clear things up.  I do remember being told a while ago by someone (can't now remember who, of course - that's what happens when you get past 60) that this MS exists - doesn't mean to say he was right, of course.

[Gareth Vaughan]

You are definitely right, Jim. My apologies. I'm checking the site out now.

[Gareth Vaughan]

It seems that Mr. Plowrith recorded the Rhapsody with the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Lukasz Borowicz about 18 months ago. The same CD also contains the Symphony!!!!

The record company, you will not be surprised to learn, is Hyperion.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Perhaps the biographer took the description from Grove's 1937?

If that were the case why would he divide the list of unpublished mss into those that are "Lost" and those that are in the "ZLSC"? Moreover, he refers to references in Grove and other sources of many of the works in the "Lost" section.  He clearly doesn't think they exist just because they are mentioned in Grove.  Again, the fact that he states which pages are missing in the piano concerto MS suggests that he has either seen it, or seen a descriptive catalogue of the contents of the ZLSC. If the latter, the MS may, of course, no longer exist - but he is definitely not basing his list of supposedly preserved MSS simply on the fact that the works received a mention in an edition of Grove.

[edurban]

"....he is definitely not basing his list of supposedly preserved MSS simply on the fact that the works received a mention in an edition of Grove..."

Doucement, I know nothing about what the biographer definitely did, which is why I offered a 'perhaps'.  I may add that, not having thought much about the Stojowski nachlass over the last 25 years, I am basing my suppositions entirely on my old notes.  It seems likely that the piles of mss I went through as a grad student formed the basis of the USC collection, but even that doesn't mean that the ms of a 3rd concerto isn't at USC, but only that it was not in the 96th Street apartment when I was there.  Henry Stojowski had been shopping certain items around town (anything with potential $$$$ value) for a while before I came on the scene, notably the Stojowski fan and its autographs, and a score of a Tchaikovsky symphony--autographed by the composer and with his rehearsal marks--given to young Stojowski in appreciation for his help as translator and assistant during the preparation of the Symphony for a performance under the composer's direction in London.  I remember that around this time (mid-1980's) there was a pianist interested in the concertos (though I can't remember who it was)... perhaps the 3rd concerto had been lent to him?  Believe me, Henry played everything close to the vest: if he was pursuing 'other avenues' he would not have felt the need to confide in me. 

David

PS. My catalogue for Henry, done pretty much just to show him what he had, seems to have been entirely redone at a later date by Stojowski's subsequent biographer.  I learned this when recent threads interested me in the post-1980's history of the collection.  I'm glad the mss eventually made it out of Henry's basement (where I heard it languished while it was shopped around, perhaps an apocryphal story) and into the hands of scholars.

[eschiss1]

... !!!
Now this reminds me of the correspondence I would have with a now late and much missed friend of mine who had met or even was good friends with some moderately known (well, to us, anyway) 20th-century English composers etc. (correspondence I really need to copy and find someone who can... erm... right. Anyway. One hates to lose any such things (stories, documents, etc. etc. &c!)... anyhow, even if a biographer merely considers it source material- or precisely because , remove, triple-strike, the "merely"!...)

[Gareth Vaughan]

Dear David,
Thank you for your further recollections re. Stojowski's mss. I wasn't intending to chide you for suggesting the 3rd PC no longer existed, but rather anyone who might think from the article that the biographer was basing his knowledge of Stojowski's extant mss merely on a mention in Grove.  We all know how dangerous that can be (Tausig piano concerto, 2nd Piano Concerto by Bronsart, etc)!

We all hope that the 3rd PC ms exists in the ZLSC.  But I guess we won't know for sure unless or until I receive a response to my enquiries.