Lutoslawski: Preludes And Fugue For Solo Strings / Postludes / Fanfares

Description

The Three Postludes occupy a pivotal position in Lutoslawski's output. The serially-influenced harmonic language of Musique funèbre is taken further, resulting in an orchestral complexity that the composer was unable to clarify to his satisfaction. Begun in 1958 and abandoned during 1960, only the First Postlude was realised at a concert celebrating the centenary of the Red Cross, by the Suisse Romande Orchestra and Ernest Ansermet, on 1st September 1963. All three were heard on 8th October 1965, with Henryk Czyz conducting the Krakow Philharmonic. Lutoslawski never encouraged performances of the set, however, and they remain the least played of his major works.A play of disconnected woodwind and brass motifs against a static harmonic back-drop on strings, the First Postlude is among the simplest of all his pieces in construction, moving to a clearly sign-posted and very definite climax almost at the exact point of the Golden Section, the Pythagorean formal principle employed by many earlier composers, not least Bartók.The scurrying string and woodwind figures which open the Second Postlude look back to the second movement of the Concerto for Orchestra and forward to the second chapter of the Livre pour orchestre (Naxos 8.553625). Despite the uniformity of material, the musical lines are written so that they sound blurred in their identities. Shimmering hazes of metallic percussion provoke increases in activity, which remains at a low dynamic level until fading out on the ghostly timbres of side drum and tambourine.The single fortissimo chord which launches the Third Postlude will recur no less than 52 times in the course of the seven-minute piece, punctuating the music in a dramatic though ultimately negative way as it inhibits resulting momentum. The musical content is highly varied in manner and sonority, almost a primer for Lutoslawski's thinking over the following decade. The appearances of the chord merge closer and closer together, then, after a climactic pause, taking over the piece entirely, only to run down, from fortissimo to pianissimo, to an ending both provisional and unexpected. Indeed, what was intended to be the culminating 'fourth postlude' was realised some years later as the magnificent second movement of the Second Symphony (Naxos 8.553169), a sure instance of the composer triumphing over initial adversity..Written during 1970 and 1972, and first performed by the Zagreb Radio and TV Chamber Orchestra in Graz on 12th October 1972, the Preludes and Fugue for 13 solo strings brings to a culmination both the format of an 'introductory movement' followed by a 'main movement', evident since the String Quartet of 1964, and the limited but flexible use of chance procedures. Regarding the latter, the composer explains in the score that the work can be performed whole or in various shortened versions. In the case of performances of the whole, the indicated order of the Preludes is obligatory. Any number of Preludes in any