ANA 019
RELIEFS
The Stalowa Wola composers, also known as Generation ’51, hold a separate place in Polish contemporary music, one that justly deserves to be remembered. What Aleksander Lasoń, Andrzej Krzanowski, and Eugeniusz Knapik have in common is that they first came to public attention at the 1970s’ ‘Young Musicians for the Young City’ festival in Stalowa Wola, but also that they presented an ambivalent attitude to the avant-garde, drawing on its achievements but avoiding a rigid doctrinaire approach, and they let their music sound at least a note of romanticism. Krzanowski, who was Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s pupil, stands out in this group owing to his fascination with the accordion – an instrument he elevated from the sphere of popular and folk music, considered imperfect, into the realm of high culture, and which he established as the protagonist of his compositions. His Reliefs, likewise born of inspirations and ambitions that extended well beyond the philharmonic, are a 1980s cycle of musical sculpture pieces, usually ‘cut out’ of one chunk of sound or sometimes out of the blend of sounds generated by two instruments.
CD1
[1] Relief I for accordion
[2] Relief II for accordion
[3] Relief III for organ
[4] Relief IV for soprano and tubular bells
[5] Relief V for cello
[6] Relief VI for amplified bass accordion
[7] Relief VII for accordion and percussion
CD2
[1] Relief VIII for tape and accordion
[2] Relief IX ‘Scottish’ for string quartet and tape