Stefan Kisielewski was a man of many talents. His adventure with music began in childhood with piano lessons. “The black box”, as he fondly called his favourite instrument, would accompany him throughout his life, till the very last bars of his Piano Concerto written just a few months before his death. He studied at Warsaw Conservatory when Karol Szymanowski was (for some time) its vice-chancellor. Despite his respect for the author of the Song of the Night, Kisielewski named Sergei Prokofiev, whom he admired ever since his youth, as his favourite composer. “Personally I was never fond of programmatic ecstasy or exhibitionist lyricism, or the murmuring and rustling impressionism. I loved the Prokofiev of The Scythian Suite and the Stravinsky of The Rite of Spring. I was (and still am) enthused by ruthless motoric rhythmic ‘hack-up’,” he recalled. It does not mean, however, that the compositions selected for this CD by the outstanding pianist Magdalena Lisak can be dismissed as “ruthless motoric hack-up”. Arranged chronologically, they illustrate the development and changes in the style of a composer who never aimed to discover new worlds in music, but still left a lasting musical legacy worthy of his own extraordinary personality. His music betrays the same spirit of contrariness that inspired his numerous feature articles, papers and novels. One example is Danse vive – a barbaro-style apotheosis of the Galician dance of krakowiak, commissioned by the pianist, teacher, journalist and composer Lech Miklaszewski. The manuscript perished in a fire during the Warsaw Uprising, together with other works by Stefan Kisielewski. After the war, however, Miklaszewski reconstructed the piece from memory. The composition has a free, nearly improvisational form, borderline between a prelude and a toccata. It begins with a prelude-like passage, and the 8-bar krakowiak theme appears in the left hand after about a dozen bars. Bits and pieces of this theme return several times in various guises, both secco and cantabile. The finale is bombastic – true to the contrary character of its author.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier is an unrivalled musical model that has inspired many 20th-century composers, including Paul Hindemith, Dmitri Shostakovich, Andrzej Panufnik, Krzysztof Meyer and… Stefan Kisielewski. Under the German occupation, he composed Six Preludes and Fugues for piano, of which only one such pair, dated 1943, was rescued from the ravages of war. The ethereal figuration prelude is followed by a four-part fugue built upon Bach’s models, with a distinctive theme in E minor and a real answer a fifth higher. In the course of the piece, however, harmony and texture grow much more complicated, betraying their 20th-century origins. After a brief two-voice stretto played in an accelerated tempo (doppio movimento) there comes a highly emphatic figuration coda, ending with ‘garish’ chords in extreme registers. The final note of the piece is an e, multiplied in octaves.
In the same year (1943), the composer wrote a virtuoso Toccata drawing again on the baroque – this time, on the form of ostinato variations based on a recurring though constantly changing theme in the bass. The reprise form of the composition does not simply mean a repetition of the initial phrases in the end – that would be too ‘polite’. The whole ends with bombastic double octaves played fff, and culminating in the note e, again - enhanced in octaves.
“Music ought to be national in form…” – this was the first commandment of the obligatory doctrine of socialist realism, which was officially decreed in Poland in 1949. Composers clutched at this slogan as the last straw that could save them from drowning in “socialist-realist content” – which was the second component of the same doctrine. Folklore stylisations – sometimes of the highest order, to mention only Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra – were the hallmark of Polish music in the early 1950s. Stefan Kisielewski eagerly joined this popularising campaign, writing for various bands or ensembles. He also composed a piece that was, in a sense, the opposite of his own prewar Danse vive – the Rustic Caprice of 1951, in which he used motifs from his lost prewar Mazur for piano. But what a mazur it was! It enters in its full splendour after a long introduction, which initially resembles a Debussy prelude that has strayed into the Mazovian landscape. These enchanting figures gradually get transformed into vigorous mazur-like “foot-stamping”, and eventually break out into a dance of changeable character, ending with an optimistic stamp typical of the mazur.
The incessant rhythmic flow of sound was Stefan Kisielewski’s favourite formula, permeating his musical visions. Even though only two of his titles directly refer to the idea of “eternal movement” - Moto perpetuo for piano of 1953 (1954?) and Perpetuum mobile for orchestra of 1954 – rapid motoric progressions are a characteristic feature of many of his works. According to the composer’s note, Moto perpetuo for piano is to be performed presto energico. Mechanistic by definition, almost like a barrel organ, the musical flow changes its appearance all the time, while maintaining the incessant forward drive, which comes to a halt only with the very last chord.
In 1936, Stefan Kisielewski composed his Sonata No. 1 for piano, whose manuscript perished along with other scores in the conflagration of the Warsaw Uprising. In mid-1945, Stefan Kisielewski added to his output a Sonata No. 2, revised ten years later. This Sonata consists of three parts following the classical model of fast-slow-fast movement. The “classical” quality is evident in Part 1 (Allegro) based on two contrasted themes, the first of which plays a fundamental role in the piece. It is presented canonically in the exposition. Despite its simple melodic contour, it is supported by a truly Brahmsesque chordal structure which endows the theme with an exalted, emphatic quality. The first movement stands in sharp contrast to Part Two – Andantino con moto, which the composer published in 1973 as an independent composition entitled Serenade. This puzzling, mysterious music could well be used as soundtrack for a film scene of nocturnal Cracow – the city where the composer then resided. The opening and closing sections, with sequences of single notes in the left hand descending down the scale – like receding and returning footsteps – are extremely suggestive. Against this background, we hear motifs developed in the central section, introducing a climate akin to Debussy’s Preludes. Delphic dancers in Cracow’s Main Square? Why not?! The fast third movement (Presto) can be described as a motoric rondo or – as the composer himself suggested in the context of the world premiere at Poznań Music Spring 1985 – as a “stylised Bach prelude”.
Suite for piano of 1955 comprises six parts: Prelude - Prelude -Minuet- Gavotte - Aria –Toccata. In both Preludes, the composer remains faithful to the principle of moto perpetuo – eternal movement, which in the first part manifests itself in a stream of semiquavers passing from the right to the left hand, and accompanying a very simple theme, repeated with minor modifications. Prelude II, to be performed sempre staccato, is a series of four-note quaver passages with the initial motif recurring as a refrain. The Minuet that follows has nothing in common with an elegant courtly dance. It is ‘rough’ (except for the trio) and full of ‘coarse’ dissonances. Though the composer could hardly omit a Gavotte – a favourite dance - in his Suite, it too is presented in the manner of a pastiche such as that known from Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony. Despite the veritable cacophony of sound, ‘Kisiel’’s gavotte is full of near-baroque charm, similarly as the lyrical Aria that follows (with a ‘menacing’ chordal section in the middle) and the virtuoso Toccata with which the cycle comes to an end.
The story of the Berceuse (Lullaby) for piano is curious and more political than musical in nature. Published by PWM Edition in 1971 under its composer’s real name - Stefan Kisielewski – it had first been publicly presented as a composition by… Jerzy Mrugacz! This was one of the pen names with which Kisielewski signed his novels and political articles in the period when his name was blacklisted by the regime. Also as a piece by Jerzy Mrugacz, the work received an honourable mention in a competition for composers that accompanied the Nationwide Piano Festival in Słupsk in 1968. True to its author’s contrary character, the Berceuse contains fragments akin to a reveille rather than quietly lulling the audience to sleep. Still, on the whole, the rocking rhythm of its figuration fioriture breathes a calm, even somewhat mysterious atmosphere into the piece.
Three Stormy Scenes of 1983 was Stefan Kisielewski’s last composition for solo piano. Like no other piece of music, this one confirms Gustaw Herling-Grudziński’s intuition that the mask of a clown was a self-imposed camouflage concealing a ‘tragic note’ in the composer’s personality. The drama of Three Stormy Scenes becomes so dramatic in some passages that it seems to border on parody – with the possible exception of the final scene – Marciale maestoso, a kind of funeral march distinctly alluding to Chopin’s march from Sonata in B-Flat Minor. The central section hints, in turn, at the finale of Chopin’s Sonata. The opening part is a very grave, chordally constructed Maestoso, but already the long Allegro energico demonstrates how a spectacular toccata with a breathtaking tempo can be built upon several repeated figures resembling a spinning top. The central part (Presto) has the thinnest texture, but even here there are plenty of saturated, oscillating harmonies, often consisting of five notes.
In agreement with the composer’s own declaration quoted at the beginning, Kisielewski’s piano music leaves little space for the lyrical. Still, his programmatic barbarism, the ‘cubistically twisted melodies’, as the author called them, combined with excellent technique and a sense of piano texture (he was a pianist himself!) – endow his compositions for that noble instrument with great freshness, and entertain us with a free interplay of conventions and musical styles brought to life by a real master of that style.
Małgorzata Gąsiorowska