Another CPO album that whisks us away to discover unknown musical country, a way of getting off the much-travelled motorways of classical music, and onto the B- roads and country lanes. The journey isn't in vain: there are plenty of good surprises along the way. While Stanisław Moniuszko is a national hero in Poland, where 100,000 people followed his funeral cortège in 1872, he is relatively obscure outside his homeland. Apart from, that is, his opera The Haunted Manor, a masterpiece shot through with a proud patriotism, and full of folk song and dance. Often compared to Chopin, though nine years his junior, Moniuszko was in fact nothing like his elder countryman. After successful studies in Berlin, he returned to Poland, where he composed intensely. We are indebted to him for more than twenty lyrical works which made him the founder of opera in his country, a position similar to that of Smetana in Czechia or Glinka in Russian opera.
His two quartets, probably written as a diptych for the end of his studies in 1839, are written in a classical language that owes more to Hayden than to the wonderful inventive madness of Beethoven, whose revolutionary language was taking some time to make its presence felt. 2019 has seen a certain revival of Moniuszko's music, in light of the celebrations for the bicentenary of his birth.
Juliusz Zarębski is from a later generation. Born in 1853 in what is now Ukraine, he was a talented pianist, very much appreciated by one Franz Liszt, who took him under his wing. His career as a virtuoso pianist was cut short by tuberculosis, which carried him away at the age of 32. The Piano Quintet in G Minor that features on this recording is one of his major works, the last that he completed. Dedicated to Franz Liszt, who thought it "perfect", this quintet with its sumptuous romanticism and originality of tone would deserves to be played much more widely in concerts. © François Hudry/Qobuz