Aleksander Zarzycki’s Piano Concertos: New Findings in the Light of Existing Sources

Wioleta Muras

Abstract

The literature devoted to Polish music of the second half of the nineteenth century presents Aleksander Zarzycki as the composer of just one piano concerto. This information is reiterated in dictionaries (S. Dybowski, J. Skrabowski), encyclopaedias (B. Chmara-Żaczkiewicz), books (I. Poniatowska) and articles (F. Kęcki, K. Popielska), from which we learn that the Piano Concerto, Op. 17 was first performed in 1860 in Paris and functioned in a revised version twenty years later. These assertions are contradicted by press reports on performances given by Zarzycki during the 1860s. A survey of Polish and foreign newspapers has made it possible to establish that the work presented in 1860 in Paris was de facto the composer’s First Piano Concerto (without opus number). Written in the key of E minor, it consisted of three movements: Allegro energico, Adagio and Presto vivace. According to reviewers, it displayed influences from Chopin and Mendelssohn, while the distinctly virtuosic piano part dominated over the orchestra. At present we do not have the score of this Concerto, and it is not known whether it has even survived in any form. Press material from the 1880s, on the other hand, proves that the Piano Concerto in A flat major, Op. 17 was Zarzycki’s second work in the genre. This is confirmed not only by the different key, but also by the number and tempi of the movements (I Andante, II Allegro), as well as the much more cohesive relationship between the piano part and the orchestra. Additionally, the reviewers Juliusz Stattler and Jan Kleczyński directly indicate that the work presented in 1880 was a new, second piano concerto by this composer. The same year also saw its publication by Bote & Bock.