Concert Krakowiak - Piano

This piece, dedicated to Stanisław Szpinalski, Paderewski's pupil and a well-known performer of his Fantastic Krakowiak, involuntarily brings to mind the work of the great master, but it has little in common with it; the compositions belong to two different epochs. In Bacewicz's output the piano has a specific sharpness of the tone emphasised by the use of extreme registers. Harmonies have a characteristic roughness and pungency, arising from various combinations of intervals of seconds, fourths and fifths. The lively musical narrative, both light and mercurial, is evolved, in this case, from motifs of popular krakowiak melodies, which the composer subjects to all kinds of motivic, harmonic and rhythmic transformations - sometimes deceptive or even grotesque (the change of major/minor modes), as if poking fun at the listener. Bacewicz's Krakowiak strikes one with the freshness of its original creative invention, full of ideas and with its effective, ''concert'' bravura in the full sense of the word.