Szymanowski composed six songs for voice and piano in September and October 1911, setting Hans Bethge's German paraphrases of poems by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz from Shiraz.
Szymanowski composed six Love Songs of Hafiz Op. 24 for voice and piano in September and October 1911, setting Hans Bethge's German paraphrases of poems by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz from Shiraz. They were first publicly performed by Szymanowski's sister Stanisława Korwin-Szymanowska with Artur Rubinstein in Vienna on 27th February 1912.
While stylistically close to late Romantic music, Songs Op. 24 herald Szymanowski's fascination with Oriental culture which will become evident in his Symphony No. 3 'Song of the Night' (incidentally another paraphrase of a Persian poem). Enraptured by Persian love poetry, Szymanowski set it to music brimming with a myriad of emotions, from subtle lyricism (the songs No. 1 - Wünsche / Desires, No. 3 - Die brennenden Tulpen / Flaming Tulips and No. 6 - Trauriger Frühling / Sad Spring) to spontaneous expression (songs No. 2 - Die einzige Arznei / The Only Medicine, No. 4 - Tanz / Dance and No. 5 - Der verliebte Ostwind / The Infatuated East Wind). Szymanowski's individual composing style came to the fore particularly in the fourth song, Dance, in which each chord is approached colouristically.
Unflaggingly popular with musicians ever since their first publication in German and Polish (translated by Stanisław Barącz) by Vienna's Universal Edition in 1914, Love Songs of Hafiz Op. 24 have been recorded a number of times, among others by Halina Łukomska and Jerzy Sulikowski (Polskie Nagrania, Muza), Dorothy Dorow and Rudolf Jansen (Etcetera / Helicon), Annette Céline and Felicja Blumental (Olympia) and, more recently, by Urszula Kryger and Reinild Mees (Channel Classics, 2004).
In 1914 Szymanowski selected three of the songs (Nos. 1, 4 and 5) to re-instrument them for voice and orchestra and incorporate in the second series of Love Songs of Hafiz Op. 26.
Author: Anna Iwanicka-Nijakowska, September 2007.