the Silesian String Quartet. Photograph: Karolina Salajczyk
The Silesian String Quartet add to their outstanding survey on Chandos of the chamber music of Grażyna Bacewicz, this time pairing it with that of her little-known contemporary Joachim Mendelson. Both composers found their feet in Warsaw before plunging into the creative whirlwind of Paris. Both returned to Poland in the 1930s to help establish a modern music movement in their home country. Bacewicz survived the Nazi occupation. Mendelson, who was Jewish and had a form of dwarfism, did not – he was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto, shot by a member of the Gestapo.
Only five of Mendelson’s works are known to have escaped wartime destruction. The Quartet wears the influence of Debussy and Ravel proudly but on its own terms, with a beautifully balanced, almost mischievous combination of gossamer lightness and purposeful melodic sweep. The Quintet, for strings plus oboe and piano (provided by oboist Karolina Stalmachowska and pianist Piotr Salajczyk), contrasts a perky, angular first movement with a slow-treading central one that feels both ancient and modern – a feeling reinforced by the chant-like episodes that punctuate the freewheeling finale. It’s an engaging piece that suffers only from a slightly underwhelming ending.
The Silesians’ ebullient performance of Mendelson’s Quartet was previously released on a German label in 2010, and their version of his Quintet for strings, oboe and piano was recorded in 2015. It was well worth Chandos reusing or saving them: they make good foils for two uncatalogued works by the more experimental Bacewicz, one a taut student piece that flirts with atonality, the other a sometimes playful, sometimes nervy late work from the 1960s. Both are rewarding – why she didn’t consider them worthy of publication is baffling.
This week’s other pick
Shortly before Kaija Saariaho’s death earlier this summer, the BBC Singers gave the UK premiere of Reconnaissance: a many-layered, 25-minute work, eclectic yet monumental, which she described as a sci-fi madrigal. It gives its name to the substantial survey of her choral music by the Helsinki Chamber Choir and their conductor Nils Schweckendiek just released on BIS. The selection ranges from the fleeting delicacy of Überzeugung through Horloge, Tais-Toi, a lighthearted but characteristically edgy piece she wrote for her young daughter’s choir, to her Messiaen tribute Écho!; several of the texts are by Aleksi Barrière, her son. Most haunting of all are the two versions of Nuits, Adieux – one performed with electronic manipulation, the other without, both mesmerisingly beautiful. It’s a fitting tribute to Saariaho’s vast imagination regarding the human voice.
