Zarebski: Piano Works

Piotr Sałajczyk, Maria Szwajger-Kułakowska

Released on 02/02/2018 by DUX
Main artists: Piotr Sałajczyk Maria Szwajger-Kułakowska
Genre: Classical

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The premature death of Juliusz Zarębski (1853-1885) prevented this outstanding Polish composer and pianist from bringing his artistic talent to full fruition. He was not a child prodigy, and kept developing his skills step by step, demonstrating the fullness of his creative abilities in the last yeasr of his tragically short life. Zarębski was sixteen when he embarked on serious in piano and composition studies at the Vienna Conservatory. In just two years he completed the entire six-year course and then, in 1874-1877, continued his studies under the guidance of Liszt. Together with Liszt, he journeyed between Weimar and Rome. In 1880 he brought his career as a concert virtuoso to an end and for the last five years of his life worked as a professor of piano at the Brussels Conservatory. The bulk of Zarębski’s output consists of works for piano solo. They all pose very special demands on performers, which is only natural in view of the fact that he wrote them with himself in mind.

The present album of the entire body of Zarębski’s piano works with opus numbers makes it possible to trace his creative path, the main strands of his artistic interests and the evolution of his sensitivity and expressive world. Zarębski’s early works for solo piano exhibit two basic sources of inspiration : virtuoso compositions of a showy character, often described as etudes in terms of genre, and stylizations of salon dances, which enjoyed popularity across Europe, as well as Polish dances and folk melodies. Works in the virtuoso category follow in the footsteps of his great predecessors Chopin and Liszt. Another type of dance which figures prominently in Zarebski’s output is the mazurka. Even though its popularity is rooted in the Chopinesque tradition, Zarębski was keen on enriching mazurka rhythms with elements of advanced piano technique, which resulted in musical material that was far more complex. Further recordings cover his late compositions, as well as his entire output for four hands. In view of their fundamentally different character, they call for a slightly different approach, both in terms of performance practice and aesthetic assessment. This is because writing for solo piano gave the composer constant opportunities to develop the instrument’s expressive potential whereas works for four hands were functional music with lesser artistic ambition and of a distinctly salon character. Unfortunately, tuberculosis killed the 32-year old composer who had just premiered his superb Piano quintet, showing an opening of his music to a far more ambitious musical world that would have been his, had he lived the regular number of years far into the 20th Century. © SM/Qobuz

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Zarebski: Piano Works

Piotr Sałajczyk

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