This extraordinary program will feature Japanese pianist Yusuke Ishii, whose career exemplifies an artistic and scientific model. A virtuoso pianist, composer and musicologist, a graduate of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris, he dedicates his work to uncovering forgotten pages of modern music history.

Join us for a piano concert as part of the Eufonie Festival, which will bring together three visions of new music of the first half of the 20th century. For the Polish-Lithuanian siblings, Vytautas Bacevičius (1905-1970) and Grazyna Bacevicz (1909-1969), Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) was an icon of new music. His Masques, Op. 34, belonging to the Impressionist-Expressionist phase, put in quotation marks characters established in the culture. The three grotesques Bacewiczówna are part of the current of comic-dance vituperation. Bacevičius’ works, on the other hand, represent cosmological ideas. Poème mystique Op. 6 and Méditaton Op. 29, from Kovno’s modernist years, anticipate them. Trois pensées musicales Op. 75 of the American years, embody them. Cosmic music was an expression of the artist’s inner universe identified with the general universe. Piano Suite No. 3, Op. 60 crowns the earlier period, which is a “compromise” with the listener. Sixième mot Op. 72 (1963) belongs to a collection of seven compositions with the character of a “spoken” in sounds “word”.

November 22nd, 2025 | 6:00 pm | Royal Castle in Warsaw – Museum, Great Hall

For the concert program, see the description: Masks: Szymanowski / Bacevich / Bacevičius

In the poetics of the mask

In the piano triptych Masques, Op. 34 (1915/1916) Szymanowski referred to literary characters embedded in culture, depicted in the light of costume – a carnival or a clown one. The extra-musical connotations are related to the poetics of the title mask, with its hidden meanings and complex metaphor. In the first movement of the cycle, the evocation of the figure of Scheherazade from the Arabic collection of tales One Thousand and One Nights corresponded to the composer’s interests in Oriental culture and Sufism. In the second movement, Szymanowski recalled Tristan from a tale based on Ernst Hardt’s drama Tantris der Narr. The protagonist, disguised as a jester, sneaked into the castle of his beloved, but she did not recognise him. The motif of recognising the subject of love and personal identity, which was one of the key topoi in the composer’s novel Ephebos and in the opera King Roger, is shown here in ironic and grotesque distortion. Masques are a texturally advanced composition, belonging to the Impressionist/Expressionist phase in Szymanowski’s oeuvre. The pieces reveal the composer’s sensual approach to the nature of sound, although he himself would often emphasise that his works originated from melodic ideas.

Two colors

Grażyna Bacewicz and Vytautas Bacevičius grew up in an atmosphere of love for their dual homeland, Poland and Lithuania, surrounded by music, inspired by the musical interests of their parents: Polish, Maria née Modlińska, and Lithuanian, Vincas Bacevičius. Bacewicz was known as a violinist and a neoclassical composer, and in her late oeuvre – as a colourist (pre-sonorist). Three Grotesques (1935) fit into the trend of comic and playful vitalism, characterised by parody and wit.

Unlike his sister, Bacevičius – a composer and pianist – does not have his own distinct position in culture yet. He made a conscious decision of spending many years in Lithuania, in Kaunas (from 1926), during which he was developing his creative personality. In 1939, the artist was on a concert tour in South America, where he received news about the outbreak of World War II. He chose the fate of an emigrant; he went to the USA, where he lived (in New York and Bridgeport, Connecticut) until his death in 1970. To him, living in exile meant a difficult fight for survival – both as a human being (he was facing deportation for many years) and an artist. The composer had a clear worldview, supported by a spiritual and moral foundation, which he implemented in his work. His oeuvre evolved towards cosmic music, represented by, among others, his last opus – Trois pensées musicales for piano, Op. 75 (1966). 75 (1966). The cosmological trend was embodied by the sources of inspiration including parapsychological and occult experiments and yoga, which resulted in the initial artistic concepts being graphically “recorded” in the form of a visualised “film/score”. On long pieces of paper, Bacevičius “registered” his first ideas in the shape of charts, which, according to him, secured the thought arising in the artist’s imagination and opened way to new constructivism in music. Poème mystique, Op. 6 (1926) and Méditaton, Op. 29 (1936/37) – composed in the Kaunas, modernist and avant-garde years – anticipate these cosmic ideas. The Piano Suite No. 3, Op. 60 (1956) culminates the classicist phase, consisting in a creative compromise and in practicing the “communicative” style with the recipient. In turn, Sixième mot, Op. 72 (1963) belongs to a collection of seven original and personal pieces: a word conveyed through sounds – distinct and “eloquently” expressive music, but not in the programmatic sense.

Bacevičius’ music is – in accordance with his assumptions – atonal (or “semi-atonal”), athematic and absolute. The music flow is structured on the basis of various sound segments and piano texture patterns in a creatively shaped dramaturgy of tension and relaxation. “Every sound is an emotion, not an effect,” used to say the composer. He also emphasised that music without philosophy, without going deeply into one’s own universe – through meditation – has no purpose. And it is meant to symbolise the light of wisdom.

Małgorzata Janicka-Słysz

The same concert will be performed November 23rd at at the 6:00 pm, at the Academy of Music in Lodz (free admission) and November 24th at 7:00pm at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology (Ticket sales will start soon).