WITOLD LUTOSŁAWSKI SELF-PORTRAIT

Transcription

1 Joanna Grotkowska WITOLD LUTOSŁAWSKI SELF-PORTRAIT The feature marks the 90th anniversary of Witold Lutosławski s birth and is part of the Composers Portraits series, an EBU project aimed at creating all-round profiles of the life and work, as well as aesthetic concepts of the most prominent 20th-century composers, using archival interviews and music recordings. Witold Lutosławski Self-portrait consists of the conversations recorded by Irina Nikolska* in the unique, intimate atmosphere of the composer s Warsaw home, his statements for Polish Radio, SSR, SDR, and CBC, as well as excerpts from the interview with Lutosławski recorded during the 1993 Warsaw Autumn Festival which featured his Fourth Symphony under the composer s baton (Lutosławski s last public performance). The feature presents the less familar face of Lutosławski, unknown to the general public, a man of great warmth and a sense of humour. * Irina Nikolska Conversations with Witold Lutosławski; published in Sweden in 1994, the excerpts included in the feature are taken from the Polish Radio archives. 1

2 Witold Lutosławski: The memories of my father consist of a very brief moment at home and the subsequent visits to a prison, because he and his brother Marian were arrested. It s difficult to say what the Bolsheviks accused them of. At any rate, on Dzierzhynski s order they were both sentenced to death and executed on 5 September I didn t realize what kind of tragedy I had gone through, in fact which I and my family were still going through. Such an awareness came years later. The lack of a father certainly exerted an influence on my life, my upbringing, particularly if you take into account that my father was a pianist, not a professional pianist but he had studied the piano. For a short while he even took lessons from Eugen d Albert. He is said to have played the piano very beautifully, notably the sonatas by Beethoven and some pieces by Chopin, but I don t remember anything. They told me I used to listen to him seated under the piano. That s all I know. First of all I asked my mother, very early on, to organize music lessons for me. Irina Nikolska: Was this your idea? W.L.: Yes. I was six at the time. I started playing the piano and then, within a very short space of time, when I was nine, I wrote my first piece or even several pieces. I was eleven when I composed a piano piece which was properly notated, one could say, correctly laid out. I never thought I could become anything else but a composer - I can t recall myself thinking differently. Lidia Kmitowa advised my mother to turn to Witold Maliszewski, who was then, I think, Director of the Chopin Music School. It was kind of a rival conservatory in Warsaw, with its home in the Philharmonic Hall. It was a small school but very prestigious, offering high-level training. 2

3 Among the professors were Żurawlew, Śmidowicz... These were outstanding teachers. Maliszewski listened to my pieces - I was fourteen at the time - and decided to teach me. First of all, he gave me a crash course in harmony, counterpoint and fugue, at the same time teaching me composition because he didn t want me to give it up. He wanted me to compose freely, as I had done until then Maliszewski charged a lot for the lessons. Things got so bad that I had to tell him: "Professor, I can t come to the lessons any longer". I explained to him the whole situation, in which we found ourselves, despite the country estate, which didn t bring in any income because it had been ruined during the First World War, and there was nobody who could take care of it. Having listened to me, he said: "Master Witold..." It s funny, but that s the way he always addressed me, ever since I was fourteen. "Master Witold, you will come to the lessons and I will not demand or expect anything from you". So I said: "Professor, this is very embarassing for me. I don t know if I can". To which he responded: When you already become a mature composer and you meet someone who will want to learn something from you and he has no money, you will teach him". That s beautiful. Now, when I give grants to my younger colleagues my memory goes back to people such as Maliszewski. As I do not teach, I am not able to offer instruction. Anyway, I think there s no sense for me to teach because I simply don t know how to do it; but I think I can help in other ways and that s what I do Anyway, I first completed my piano studies and then composition. But this isn t to say that I ever thought of making a professional career as a pianist. It was always an ancillary craft. In later years it came in very useful because during the war I made my living and supported my mother from playing the piano. After all, I played in a duo with Panufnik in Warsaw cafes for five years or more and in this way provided for my living. It wasn t a bad living, either. 3

4 I.N.: I would like you to dwell on the post-war years, the Forties, the political situation, the situation of musicians and so on. So little has been written about it... W.L.: Indeed, nothing was written about it, people virtually didn t talk about it. It was rather dangerous too, though perhaps not so dangerous as in Russia. In Poland the situation was somewhat different. Pressure began to make itself felt as early as in 1945, when Zofia Lissa became Director of the Department of Music in the Ministry of Culture and the Arts. She went out of her way to establish friendly relations with Warsaw s musical elite. She used to organize parties for composers and expected each of us to invite her to our homes. This lasted for a short while. But soon gloom in the proper sense of the word set in with the advent of Until then people were able to travel abroad. I for one went to France twice, in 1946 and In 1946 a series of concerts took place in Paris under the aegis of UNESCO, with each member of the organization, including Poland, presenting a national concert. The Polish concert, with Grzegorz Fitelberg conducting the National Orchestra of France, featured my Symphonic Variations. Unfortunately I had to go to Paris all by myself. I wouldn t have been given a passport if I had wanted to go with my wife. Anyhow, in the Forties one was still allowed to maintain contact with the world. But in 1949 the ill-fated Congress of the Polish Composers Union took place in Łagów, where Sokorski spoke for four and a half hours... I.N.: And what about Prague? W.L.: We didn t go to Prague. Lissa and Khrennikov were there; I ve got the documents from that event. And then they organized the Polish answer to Prague the Łagów Congress, for Polish composers only It was the burial of Polish music. The Polish pianist Drzewiecki came up to me and 4

5 said: What do you think about all this. This is the end. That s what he said. I thought that what we then experienced was here to stay for ever, and that I will want to write for my bottom drawer, that there were no prospects for my music to be performed, save for what is called applied music. I didn t write applied music because I was forced to do so, or because of the pressure exerted by the authorities. Nothing of the sort. First of all, in 1945 Polish Music Publishers requested me to write easy piano pieces on folk themes for beginners. I composed the piano cycle Folk Melodies, my first cycle of this kind. In later years I wrote other things of similar kind, such as accompaniments to Polish Christmas carols, many children s songs (for Polish Radio). I also composed easy pieces for chamber ensembles, such as Little Suite, in its first version for a Polish Radio band, led by Stanisław Nawrot, a conductor of easy-listening music. These pieces, as well as the Silesian Triptych belonged to consumer music, or to what Hindemith called Gebrauchsmusik. I considered my activity in this field to be useful, because after the years of war, utterly destructive for Polish culture, there was a great need for good applied music designed for amateurs, for children I thought this was not only my duty. I also derived some pleasure from it. I have to say I wrote this kind of music with great pleasure. W.L.: And so 1949 came. It was the fatal year. I thought things would always be like this and that only my applied music would be performed and the rest would be for the bottom drawer. At that time I didn t have anything to put into the drawer. I wasn t ready to use the results of my work before the late Fifties was only the beginning. But the situation in which we lived was terrible. I was not persecuted but the performance of my First Symphony during the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1949 caused a scandal. Sokorski said that such a composer should be run over by a tram. He said this in the conductor s room, in the presence of a dozen or so witnesses, as Raczkowski, the artistic director of the Philharmonic, told me. He described my symphony as formalistic. The meaning of the term 5

6 has been incomprehensible to me ever since. In a word, I was persecuted in a way. The malicious joke of my destiny was that my consumer music was described as music written to please the regime. This was totally untrue as I had no ambitions to appeal to anyone with my music. It never crossed my mind that it might be interpreted as anything but applied, utilitarian music. The Little Suite, for instance, was written with amateurs and Nawrot s Polish Radio ensemble in mind. Meanwhile, Fitelberg started to perform the piece and insisted on my re-writing it for large orchestra. As a result, this type of music was recognized as something of the first order in aesthetic terms. Naturally this took me by surprise. I did not expect things would develop this way ands it is bitterly painful to me that there are some commentators, especially in America, Britain and Germany, who write that I had been forced by the regime to take up folklore in my music. This is not true. The tradition of employing folk material in Polish music goes back to the pre-chopin period. Szymanowski used folk motifs for the best part of his life. And in other countries, Bartok wrote on folk themes all his life, or, rather, on themes modelled on folk material. It was, as Serge Moreau put it, folklore imaginaire. W.L.: It wasn t that I was writing music for the bottom drawer. I started working on my musical idiom. I tried various things, such as scales, and then I rejected them because I knew it would lead me nowhere and so I focused on harmony. I started with extreme cases, with consonances consisting of 12 different notes. The work on twelve notes lasted for years; its initial results were the Five Songs and Apogeum from Funeral Music. W.L.: Of course I knew perfectly well that it was not enough, that it could prove useful to me in creating large mass of sound and this lasted for years, until the Epitaph. 6

7 Epitaph is the first piece which is not based on twelve notes, but on something that was new to me, something for which I had been searching for a long time and eventually I found... W.L.: This little secret, which I then discovered, and about which I never speak because it would require careful wording, something I don t need, has remained valid until today and its elements are to be found in all my works, the symphonies, the Piano Concerto, everything. Without this principle I wouldn t have been able to write any of those works, starting with Epitaph. None of these pieces would have seen the light of day without this little invention, which proved not so little... W.L.: A particular role in my life is played by Marcin. He is the son of Danuta and her first husband, Jan Bogusławski, a renowned architect. By the time I became Marcin s foster-father, he was seven years old and so he can be said to have been brought up by me and Danuta. After Danuta he is my closest family. As he has been living in Oslo for twenty years, we also decided to buy a house there, and often go there, sometimes for several months. Marcin also talked us into buying a summer cottage not far from Oslo. It s an old farmer s lodge, isolated from the outside world, beautifully located, close to the water and the woods, in a rocky country very beautiful. We often spend a month or two there, particularly in spring which is very long there. Marcin has three daughters. The second of them, who s fourteen today, is my god-daughter. Her name is Agata and she moves me greatly because of her great resemblance to Danuta, not only in looks but also in character. Danusia says Agata is like a replica of her at the age of fourteen; it s an 7

8 interesting case of taking after one s grandmother. Small wonder they get on very well together. I can say I m fond of Agata. During the summer holidays, when we spend two or three weeks with Marcin s family, I can see her every day which gives me great pleasure. Of course I love her two sisters too but Agata is special perhaps because of her likeness to Danusia and the fact that she has all the features of the Dygat family, which is also of special importance to me. W.L.: I am strongly attached to tradition. One day Boulez, he was young at the time, said that all music of the past should be completely obliterated in order that new music might develop. Such an attitude is absolutely alien to me. Perhaps in the past the situation was entirely different from the times we are living in. We are all aware of the fact that the Baroque period did not know any other music but contemporary music. Nobody performed the music of earlier periods. Bach fell into oblivion for many decades and it wasn t until 1829, when Mendelssohn had arranged for the performance of St Matthew Passion at the Gewandhaus, that Bach s music came back to life. Our time is entirely different: what dates back to the remote past is our daily bread. I don t want to break off contact with all those great spirits of the past. I simply can t live without listening to a piece by Chopin, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven or Ockeghem once in a while. I simply feel I belong to this music. And I think Nadia Boulanger was right when she said that modern music extends from Perotinus to our time, that this is one period and I feel a part of it. Hence, all the allusions to the past in my music reflect a very deep need. It is not that I search for something new or original. It reflects my inner need. I wouldn t be able to live without the music of the past. 8