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Program III Program Notes for the Website
WITOLD LUTOSŁAWSKI
Born on January 25, 1913 in Warsaw, Poland (then governed as part of the Russian Empire),
where he died on February 7, 1994.
Lutosławski composed the Concerto for Orchestra between 1950 and 1954 at the suggestion of
Witold Rowicki, to whom he dedicated the work and who led the Warsaw National Philharmonic
Orchestra in the premiere on November 26, 1954. Duration: approximately 28 minutes.
The Concerto for Orchestra is Witold Lutosławski’s best-known achievement and a milestone of
the postwar European concert repertory. Its instant success in 1954 won the composer favor in
his native Poland and recognition internationally. And in a period of widespread alienation
between contemporary composers and audiences, the Concerto earned a rare status as an
acknowledged masterwork from the second half of the 20th century that actually got
programmed with some frequency.
This music marked Lutosławski’s triumph in adjusting to the explicit aesthetic demands of his
new context — though he later denied feeling “pressure” to compose in a particular way,
expressing his resentment of program notes asserting he was forced to use folk material. Cast
in the three movements associated with a concerto, Lutosławski’s work nevertheless — quite
un-classically — locates its center of gravity in the third movement, a multipartite structure
longer than the duration of the first two movements combined. The work also references formal
models from the Baroque.
The composer wrote that the folk motifs he used served “only as ‘bricks’ for building a large form
which, considered on its own, has nothing in common with folklore. A colorful orchestration rich
in various combinations gives the orchestral ensemble the occasion for a versatile display. The
name concerto is justified by this fact.”
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born on December 16, 1770, in Bonn, Germany (then part of the Holy Roman Empire); died on
March 26, 1827, in Vienna. Ludwig van Beethoven composed the last of his five piano
concertos between 1809 and 1811.
First performance: November 28, 1811, in Leipzig, with Friedrich Schneider as the soloist and
Johann Schulz conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Duration: approximately 40 minutes.
Beethoven composed his Piano Concerto No. 5, Op. 73 at a crossroads in his career (1809 to
1811) and was deeply immersed in its creation at the very moment when Napoleon’s armies
were bombarding Vienna in the spring of 1809 — and causing the composer misery beyond the
general chaos and economic disorder suffered by his fellow citizens.
Its outer movements, set in the composer’s signature key for evoking a larger-than-life, heroic
posture of striving, pointedly draw on an assertively “militaristic” rhetoric within the larger scope
of this profoundly inventive and influential score. The elegiac slow movement counterbalances
the energetic exertions of these movements with a spirit of serene contemplation. The last piano
concerto Beethoven completed, the “Emperor” synthesizes extraordinarily imaginative virtuosity
for the soloist with symphonic grandeur and expansiveness.