Szymanowski composed the "Three Songs Op. 32", his only setting of a Russian text, reaching out for poems by Dymitr Davydov, the landlord of Wierzbówka, an estate bordering on the Szymanowski family property in Tymoszówka, Ukraine.
Szymanowski composed the Three Songs Op. 32, his only setting of a Russian text, in the autumn of 1915, reaching out for poems by Dymitr Davydov, the landlord of Wierzbówka, an estate bordering on the Szymanowski family property in Tymoszówka, Ukraine. The romantic poems are set to diverse music, from the cheerful and occasionally austere first song Kak tolko vostok / Sunrise to the dramatic and at times gloomy song No. 2 Nebo bez zvyozd / Sky without Stars to the sorrowful third and last song Osyennyeye sontse / Autumnal Sun.
Although Szymanowski did not think much of the Three Songs Op. 32 and considered them marginal, they have been frequently performed in concerts and recorded, notably by Krystyna Szostek-Radkowa (Polskie Nagrania, Muza and Polskie Radio), Urszula Kryger, Jadwiga Rappé, Piotr Beczała (Channel Classics) and by a number of Russian singers and pianists.
In 1952 Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne published the Three Songs Op. 32 in the Russian and Polish languages (translated by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz).
Author: Anna Iwanicka-Nijakowska, September 2007.