Nowowiejski: Symphonic Works

Album review

No-one is more Polish than the composer Feliks Nowowiejski; but during his childhood in East Prussia, he spoke more German than Polish. His studies brought him to Berlin and to Max Bruch; and then, when he had won the Meyerbeer Prize, he made his great voyage around Europe, where he met Mahler, Saint-Saëns, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and got to know all the modernisms of the day. A second Meyerbeer Prize brought him rather more material comfort in the German-speaking world, but he had already taken an interest in the history of Polish culture, as shown in his early-20th-century works like Żałobny pochód Kościuszki na Wawel (Funeral Procession of Kościuszko to Wawel) and, shortly after, Legenda Bałtyku (The Legend of the Baltic). He moved to Krakow in 1909 and mixed increasingly with Polish patriots. But his old links to Germany made him persona non grata in his homeland, to the point that he went to war... as a soldier for the Kaiser. He conducted a military orchestra: not a very martial activity, it must be said. At the end of the Great War he returned to Poland and finally became a Polish citizen, which cost him the esteem of the German musical establishment: his works, which had previously often been played in Germany, were now boycotted – Bruch would play a reluctant role in this ostracism. After a stroke in 1941, Nowowiejski put down his pen and died, finally Polish but sadly largely forgotten, in 1946. He worked many Polish turns of phrase into his music, using an orchestral language much closer to Mahler than to Bruch, something no-one is going to complain about. The works recorded here, rediscovered after having spent far too long in obscure libraries, reveal an original composer and a daring orchestrator, gifted with a great sense of melody. This is one to discover, especially as Polish composers from this period are few in number...© SM/Qobuz