el Derwid

el Derwid

Nov 7, 2014

El Derwid

Visions of Witold Lutosławski’s popular songs written by the composer in the 1950s and 1960s under the pen name of Derwid for Polish star singers: Mieczysław Fogg, Irena Santor, Ludmiła Jakubczak, Kalina Jędrusik, Jerzy Michotek, Sława Przybylska, Hanna Rek, Irena Rolska and Wioletta Villas.

Works

  • Cyrk jedzie  [The circus is coming] – lyr. Tadeusz Urgacz
  • W lunaparku – lyr. Jerzy Miller
  • Jeden przystanek dalej [One stop further] – lyr. Jerzy Miller
  • Złote pantofelki [Golden shoes] – lyr. Adam Hosper
  • Z lat dziecinnych [From childhood] – lyr. Jerzy Miller
  • Daleka podróż [Long journey] – lyr. Tadeusz Urgacz, Mirosław Łebkowski
  • Plamy na słońcu [Sunspots] – lyr. Jerzy Miller
  • Nie oczekuję dziś nikogo [I’m not expecting anyone today] – lyr. Zbigniew Kaszkur, Zbigniew Zapert
  • Warszawski dorożkarz – lyr. Jerzy Miller
  • Miłość i świat [Love and the world] – lyr. Eugeniusz Żytomirski
  • Znajdziesz mnie wszędzie [You’ll find me everywhere]– lyr. Zbigniew Kaszkur, Zbigniew Zapert
  • Czarownica [The witch] – lyr.Tadeusz Urgacz  
  • W lunaparku – lyr. Jerzy Miller

Dr Lutos & Mr Derwid

Half a century has passed since Witold Lutosławski ceased to write songs. He did it – as he claimed – for money, for six years. Earlier, he had written children’s and soldiers’ songs and – very occasionally – “mass” songs; he also made arrangements of folk songs.  During the occupation Lutosławski played in cafés, mostly arrangements of classics: from that period comes his popular Variations on a Theme by Paganini.He did not appreciate the world of popular entertainment – although the sex-star of Kabaret Starszych Panów [Old Gentlemen’s Cabaret], Kalina Jędrusik, was his sister-in-law.  When he became an established composer of concert music, he stopped writing popular songs for good. He never revealed his pen name, and when it was disclosed by the émigré musicologist Bogusław Maciejewski, he could not hide his irritation. For Lutosławski, with his multiple honorary doctorates, “Derwid” was almost like his Mr Hyde.

He was mistaken. Among the forty-odd songs by Derwid there are at least a few outstanding ones and most of them are very decent, on both the musical and the literary level. What is more, their wealth makes it possible to bring out values that can barely be sensed in their original versions. And this is what El-Derwid is all about. These are not arrangements, efficient vehicles for the melody and the lyrics. These are autonomous creations with their own bones and attractive flesh. The style or, rather, styles of the music are modern. Approached in such a way, the omnipresent element in the lyrics – the realism of the Gomułka era of “small stability” – reveals the hidden agenda, tragedy, nostalgia, sometimes black humour and in every case a sophisticated sense of form.

The idea came from Andrzej Bauer, who is never satisfied and constantly looks for new challenges. The work on the details was carried out by a harmonious trio: Bauer, Agata Zubel and Cezary Duchnowski. The programme was premiered on stage during the Warsaw festival “Chain 2008” exploring Lutosławski’s music in an interesting manner. Bauer, Zubel & Duchnowski have since presented it in various places in Poland (though not yet in Wrocław!) and at the prestigious South Bank Centre in London. This year CD Accord has published a recording, which, I think, will do very nicely on the market.

Rafał Augustyn

Reviews

Ewa Szczecińska Ruch Muzyczny

“(…) A similar approach to Derwid’s songs, an approach with no inhibitions, no imitations, in accordance with their own artistic temperament but also with respect for the convention of the original is followed by Agata Zubel, Andrzej Bauer and Cezary Duchnowski. A characteristic feature of the ensemble is slight distance and irony, scraps of a sense of humour, so typical of our part of Europe. How is this manifested? Popular hit songs: yes, but slightly distorted, exaggerated. Waltzes and little waltzes, foxtrots and little foxtrots, all bathed in allusions to popular music-making styles of the 1950s – this is done by the phenomenal members of the Elettrovoce duo: the brilliant actress and singer Agata Zubel, and Cezary Duchnowski, who uses computer to outline the smooth texture of the songs’ charm and who also surprises the listeners with his fiery jazzy piano playing (a bit tongue in cheek, of course!) Well, everything comes down to the subtlety of good taste – verging on kitsch and leaving kitsch aside. Admittedly, in this playing with song clichés, both maestro Lutosławski and the authors of the new arrangements demonstrate true mastery. This material must immediately be released!”

 Ewa Szczecińska Ruch Muzyczny no 15, 20.07.2008

 

Dorota Szwarcman – Polityka weekly

There have been many attempts to rehash songs written by Derwid or – as we have known for a few years – Witold Lutosławski. The composer wrote them in 1956-63 to earn some money. It is hard to believe that in the same period he composed such revolutionary pieces as Funeral Music, Venetian Games or Three Poems of Henri Michaux. Lutosławski wrote 40-odd songs, some of which became hits. For two years the ElettroVoce duo together with the cellist Andrzej Bauer have been presenting their arrangements of Derwid’s songs, artistically the most valuable programme of this kind so far. It was released on CD in the Lutosławski Year. These are no longer trivial songs but miniatures using a variety of means: from free jazz (Cyrk jedzie [The circus is coming]) to Gothic rock (Czarownica [The witch]), from references to 1960s songs to quotes from Lutosławski’s serious oeuvre: Symphony No. 3 (Z lat dziecinnych [From childhood]), the Passacaglia from Concerto for Orchestra (Plamy na słońcu [Sunspots]) or a theme from Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, through Lutosławski from the cello Grave (Znajdziesz mnie wszędzie [You’ll find me everywhere]). A sophisticated cello-percussion-piano-electronic tissue finds its counterpoint in Agata Zubel’s versatile voice.

Dorota Szwarcman – Polityka weekly , 8.10.2013

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Other projects

My concert projects. Old and new. The projects I develop and perform cover a wide stylistic spectrum. Some relate to performances of the classical repertoire, some are modern creations combining performance and composition, using digital technology and multimedia.

 

 

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Lutosphere

Lutosphere

Nov 6, 2014

Lutosphere

Andrzej Bauer, Leszek Możdżer and m.bunio.s – a musician from the creative DJ scene – came together one evening to perform their own music inspired by the works of Witold Lutosławski. The outcome was a coherent and communicative programme which, apart from jazz and improvisation, managed to incorporate elements of classical contemporary music. This was a tribute to Lutosławski, honoured by the Polish Parliament, which proclaimed 2004 “the Witold Lutosławski Year”.

Lutosphere is a project of three artists from three rather different musical milieux, brought together by the music of Witold Lutosławski, an uncompromising artist, author of his own musical idiom.

Programme

  1. Intrada
  2. 4-fingers
  3. Kantylena
  4. Chillout
  5. Concerto Loop
  6. Bukolika
  7. Passacaglia
  8. Sacher

About Lutosphere

LUTOSPHEREOne may wonder whether successful collaboration of an improvising jazzman, virtuoso classicist and avant-garde DJ is at all possible. Can musicians from such utterly different artistic backgrounds find a common ground? How to reconcile the perfectionism of classical performance with the unpredictability of jazz improvisation? How to amalgamate the refined sound of acoustic instruments with the relentless rhythm of an electronic beat? And, last but not least, how to combine them all into a palatable interpretation of Lutosławski’s music?

Nevertheless, this get-together of artists with such disparate stylistic roots, dissimilar traditions and creative experience may produce music with an original and novel sound. Andrzej Bauer is well acquainted with Witold Lutosławski’s music and has performed it under the baton of the composer himself, closely cooperating with him. Możdżer claims that he quoted Lutosławski’s piano Study in his free-jazz improvisations at the 1992 Jazz Juniors competition, from which began his foray into jazz. Coming from the young club scene, DJ Bunio, too, expresses a strong fascination with Lutosławski.

LUTOSPHERE is an attempt to create a new musical quality, within which Możdżer, Bunio and Bauer demonstrate high flexibility and considerable detachment from their earlier accomplishments. An electronically distorted cello, filtered through heavy-metal fuzz, Możdżer improvising on six notes (in Sacher Variation for solo cello), Bunio painstakingly generating asymmetrical rhythmic intervals taken from Lutosławski’s scores, and all this overlaid with the voice of the composer himself: “What was yesterday is no longer good! Only what is today can be good! And when what tomorrow brings is good – what is today will be good no longer!”

(Leszek Możdżer/Justyna Rekść-Raubo)

Other projects

My concert projects. Old and new. The projects I develop and perform cover a wide stylistic spectrum. Some relate to performances of the classical repertoire, some are modern creations combining performance and composition, using digital technology and multimedia.

 

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Chopin’ Around

Chopin’ Around

Nov 5, 2014

Chopin' Around

A modern take on Chopin’s Preludes Op. 28. The musical layer comprises the voice, computers and electronically enhanced traditional instruments – cello, piano and percussion. It is marked by freedom of improvisation as well as interaction between sound and image created live. The authors of the project juxtapose traditional piano interpretations of the cycle with a novel, personal view, creatively using state-of-the-art multimedia technology. The idea of tackling the work is not only about an attempt to give a new sound to it. It is also an attempt to provide a new aesthetic reflection on an established masterpiece. The Chopin’ Around project has many guises; it is evolving and changing its character.

 Performers

  • Agata Zubel – soprano
  • Uri Caine – piano
  • Andrzej Bauer – cello
  • Cezary Duchnowski – electronics
  • Jacek Kochan – percussion
  • Maciej Walczak – computer visualisation

From the programme book of the „Chopin and his Europe” festival

Interpretations, transcriptions, jazz arrangements, reinterpretations, deconstructions. “Historically informed performance” practices using period instruments, most faithful to the original, and “iconoclastic” gestures transgressing the hallowed boundaries of genres, kinds and styles – the two are by no means mutually exclusive. Chopin’s music, with its dialectics of a finished masterpiece and, at the same time, of a text open to subtle changes, a text with Romantic implicitness, has proved perfect inspiration for the imagination of successive generations of various types of artists. “Chopin is inspiring, because he is an integrating composer,” says Roman Berger. “A hypothetical contemporary Chopin would not be a VIP – he would be a persona non grata. Seen as a dissident, he would be regarded as salonunfähig in today’s salons.” Perhaps this is exactly what encourages musicians to use his masterpieces. From Jane Birkin humming the E minor Prelude, through the legendary band Novi Singers and their vocal transcriptionsNovi sing Chopin, Mieczysław Kosz, Włodzimierz Nahorny, and in the 1990s Andrzej Jagodziński, Leszek Możdżer, Adam Makowicz, and finally to Kuba Stankiewicz and Leszek Kołakowski – jazz arrangements of Chopin have had a long tradition in Poland.

In addition, Chopin’s music occupies a special place in the artistic worldview of contemporary Polish composers. The highest possible place. Right next to Bach. In the mid-1970s it was present in Zygmunt Krauze’s piano recitals, entitled perversely The Last Recital, in which, in a postmodernist gesture, he would place quotes from Chopin, “ironically redefining them”, alongside contemporary pieces. It was Chopin (alongside Bach) to whom Paweł Mykietyn referred in the first of his profoundly metaphysical works –Epiphora for piano and tape. Next to Szymanowski, Chopin was the most important composer for Henryk Mikołaj Górecki; he is also important (a rebours) for Tadeusz Wielecki, who says: “We feel through Chopin, we feel with Chopin. And we should free ourselves from it. Because with Chopin we’re as snug as a bug in a rug. We know it, we’re warm.” That Chopin is so intriguing today, that he touches some important strings in us, that he charms us romantically or simply delights us again and again with his genius is an opportunity not only for new artistic statements, but also for dialogue and collective action. For he is part of a universally recognised cultural code.

This is pointed out by the man behind of the Chopin’ Around project, Andrzej Bauer, who has attracted to it a group of improvising musicians and composers, tackling the cycle of Preludes Op. 28. “Fryderyk Chopin’s music constitutes unique material for reinterpretation and deconstruction through its special presence in our consciousness. A new look at it may thus draw on well-known emotions and symbols, and enter into a unique dialogue with them.

The idea of tackling the cycle of Preludes Op. 28 is an attempt to give it a new sound, and above all an attempt at a new aesthetic reflection on an established masterpiece, which still fascinates with its artistic courage, vision, poetry and wealth of ideas. The musical layer will be made up of a voice – Agata Zubel’s soprano – as well as sounds from electronic sources combined with sounds of acoustic instruments – cello, piano and percussion – transformed in real time. There will be elements of improvisation and interaction with computers as well as interactivity of sound and image. The visual sphere will be transforming all known portraits of Chopin, merging with the music into one multimedia whole.”

The structure comprises selected preludes from the cycle: no. 1 in C major, no. 2 in A minor, no. 3 in G major, no. 4 in E minor, no. 7 in A major, no. 15 in D flat major, no. 8 in F sharp minor, no. 18 in F minor, no. 6 in B minor, no. 11 in B major and no. 20 in C minor. It will be filled with original musical comments by artists with some experience in this type of projects, artists who collaborate with each other, harmoniously combining disciplined performance with freedom of creation, improvisation and arrangement. Andrzej Bauer, a cellist, eminent performer of modern music, improviser for years exploring and expanding the capabilities of his instrument thanks to electronic media, has invited several artists to join him on the project: two composers and, at the same time, extremely creative performer-improvisers – Cezary Duchnowski and Agata Zubel of the Elettrovoce duo – as well as Jacek Kochan, a percussionist, improviser and arranger with broad stylistic interests.

The computer visualisations are by Maciej Walczak, a new media artist, who creates and improvises using sound, image and computer algorithms developed especially for the project. Finally, a special guest – Uri Caine, a pianist and multi-instrumentalist, equally at home at the harpsichord, Hammond organ, toy upright piano and concert piano. A devilishly talented arranger, improviser, leader of ensembles whose members he selects from among the most outstanding jazz musicians as well as early and contemporary music artists. With the first of his renowned interpretations of classics, the 1997 Mahler recording Urlicht, Caine created an absolutely new quality – acutely contemporary, open to contexts, absorbing today’s multiple stylistic excesses and using very emotional contributions of musicians from outside the symphony orchestra. He created Mahler anew. He played music that made people want to sing, dance or cry. And not only to admire the genius of its author. Since then Uri Caine has come up with new exceptional reinterpretations of works by Schumann, Wagner, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart… Though not yet Chopin.

Joanna Grotkowska

Other projects

My concert projects. Old and new. The projects I develop and perform cover a wide stylistic spectrum. Some relate to performances of the classical repertoire, some are modern creations combining performance and composition, using digital technology and multimedia.

 

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