Pomeranian rhapsody

Pomeranian rhapsody (2017) unites Viennese serialism, traditional Polish songs, Romantic notions and Baroque dances in an oneiric work for oboe d’amore and harpsichord. In 2016, I returned to Poland to attend the premiere of my work Ania jest..., performed by clarinetist Michal Górczynski at the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music. I then visited Kraków, where years ago I had studied composition with Krzysztof Penderecki after leaving Vienna, and met again with harpsichordist Anna Huszczo, a member of Il Vento Ensemble. She proposed to me to compose a work to be performed during a concert focused on the confrontation between Baroque and contemporary classical music, and to be played on a copy of the 1584 Hans Moermans harpsichord built by Witold Gertner in the studio of the Pianoforte Foundation of Kraków, which organized an event called Between Bach and Abras. Given my previous relationship with both city and performer, I gladly accepted the commission and started the compositional process.

My love for Baroque music kept on growing during my education as a classical music composer, conductor, musicologist and historian who also studied harpsichord. Thus, when composing Pomeranian rhapsody, I tried to build bridges between early and contemporary music, especially after thinking about the context of its premiere. When conceiving this work, the moments I had shared with Anna Huszczo while living in Kraków emerged from my mind as a symbolic succession of sounds and images of her playing the harpsichord in a dreamlike way. That led me to structure this work in several contrasting sections of rapturous and improvised character while bearing in mind two facts: she was born in the Pomeranian city of Gdynia and “Ania” is one of the hypocoristic forms of her name. All this explains the double play of words contained in the title of this piece and also why I used, as related sources of inspiration, traditional Polish songs (Usnijze mi, usnij, a lullaby), Baroque dances (such as the sarabande and the minuet), Romantic concepts (found in works by Liszt, Dvorák, etc.) and pieces of art music that make use of vertical hemiola. After creating new motivic material, I inserted it into a framework based on the tradition of Viennese serialism, to which I incorporated different scales (whole-tone, pentatonic, etc.). Finally, I added to this piece quotes from Horace and Virgil (linked to personal anecdotes and Cracovian places) to be whispered by the performers.

Commissioned by Il Vento Ensemble and dedicated to Anna Huszczo, my work Pomeranian rhapsody was premiered in Kraków (Poland) by her (harpsichord) and Katarzyna Pilipiuk (oboe d’amore), as members of that group, on 14 October 2017. This first performance took place at the Bishop Erazm Ciolek Palace during an event called Between Bach and Abras (Miedzy Bachem a Abrasem), organized by the Pianoforte Foundation of Kraków. Since its premiere, this piece has also been performed in other Polish venues, such as the Fortepianarium (Zabrze) and the Aula Florianka (Kraków), and played at other Polish events like the Bach Days Festival. Pomeranian rhapsody, performed by Il Vento Ensemble, was included on the CD In Focus 5 (2021), released by RMN Classical (CLS210901), London (United Kingdom).

Dr. Jan Emanuel Abras, Ph.D. (born 1 February 1975 in Stockholm, Sweden)

www.janemanuelabras.com