Roman Haubenstock-Ramati noticed the limitations of the serial method at an early stage of his creative work. According to him, the key problem was in the following paradox: works created according to the method gave their authors the status of a creator in total control over their material, and at the same time submitted them to the dictates of rigorous solutions imposed by the logic of the procedure. Such pieces, thus, did not limit discoveries in material, but definitely impacted the inventiveness of the form. For Haubenstock-Ramati, the distinction between matter and form, and between the fundamentally different methods of their development (through discovery and invention, respectively), became a starting point for his departure from the serial method. The ban on repetition was a limitation which most prominently hindered invention at the level of form. Haubenstock-Ramati saw potential in inspirations drawn from beyond the sphere of music. His encounter with Alexander Calder’s mobiles became his catalyst. This Paris-based American sculptor developed a method of creating suspended forms which, when moved by air, constantly changed their configurations and positions. A mobile is, therefore, a set of possibilities planned by the author that assume different forms depending on external conditions. The composer imagined each of such components as a closed form that becomes dynamic in relation to other closed forms. This kind of arrangement of components allows repetition as a method of exploring different properties of such forms, because the performance of the forms supposes that different properties will become apparent (audible) depending on the context in which they are presented. It can be compared to the process of looking at a sculpture: the time taken to walk around it allows us to experience not different forms, but different aspects of the same form. And, yet again, the topological metaphor returns and introduces the third dimension into musical scores.

Schaeffer did not avoid situations in which the threat of revealing a lack of textural ingenuity would be greater than when composing for nine instruments, including two xylorimbas, two celestas, two harpsichords and two vibraphones. He also composed for two pianos, for piano four-hands, and even for a clavichord. This album invites you to listen to five such pieces presenting the composer’s strategy of attention to “texture in the service of form and expression,”but which are also free of “shortcuts.”

It is tempting to see the history of Polish contemporary music as a succession of simple oppositions. Avant-garde versus reaction, sonorism versus New Romanticism, tape versus orchestra. The case of Andrzej Dobrowolski (1921–1990) undermines these dialectical systems and breaks free from the established order (similarly to the cases of Tomasz Sikorski or Roman Haubenstock-Ramati).

To say that Sikorski’s music is thought-inspiring is not enough. What is more important, it forces us to feel, react, vibrate. And in the case of the repertoire presented in this album, it introduces us to the very essence of the piano. Sikorski’s understanding of the instrument and its possibilities was remarkable. His sounds pierce through us. Only the composer, who fully existed within this sphere of sound, could so convincingly deal with the consequences of the sound’s harmony and repetition, its crescendo and decrescendo, its silence. Tension in Sikorski’s music results from the possibility and willingness to both reveal and conceal emotions with a single stroke of the pen. Passion expressed, passion suppressed, beauty, intensity, solitude, richness of sound and shortage are its essence.

Darryl Rosenberg

We began with performing the original work, then we played a certain conceptual game. We imagined landing on a strange planet and trying to recreate "Lerchenmusik" without access to any notes and recordings. We attempted to answer the question about what was truly important for us in the piece. On the third day, we didn't think about the original score trying to recreate what we had performed 24h earlier. It became a sort of Chinese whispers.

In Poland, for the last two decades and particularly in recent years there has been a growing need for a reinterpretation of the peasant class and especially its culture. It is difficult, perhaps, to unambiguously ascribe Zygmunt Krauze's folkloristic output to intentional, notional harbingers of those re-evaluations, but it certainly became a powerful antithesis to the protectional "polishing" that peaked a quarter of a century earlier. In Krauze, an unconventional attitude is combined with an "immersion" (to use the composer's own word) in the sound environment, resulting in work that is fresh, original and - against the Polish background of its times - distinctive.

Most of Bogusław Schaeffer’s electroacustic works emerged in the Polish Radio Experimental Studio. Among the works produced there in the years 1966-1978 were 15 autonomous compositions, 6 illustrations for the film and 11 works for the theatre and outdoor spectacle. The "Travel Notes" album assembles 5 out of 10 works created by Schaeffer outside Warsaw (in Berlin, Belgrae and Stockholm among others) in the exceptionally fertile eighth decade of the 20th century.

The contemporary status of 'Forte e piano' and 'Pianophonie' is different. Forte e piano is one of Serocki’s lesser known and acclaimed works, while 'Pianophonie' is considered his greatest masterpiece. However, it’s worth remembering that 'Forte a piano' and 'Pianophonie' are interrelated. It’s difficult to imagine the latter without the former.

Iwona Lindstedt

Tilbury left communist Poland in 1964 and his visits grew rare. He got involved with Cornelius Cardew’s Scrath Orchestra and the AMM; later he went on to become known for his performances of Morton Feldman’s compositions. Meanwhile Zygmunt Krauze, aside from his work in the Musical Workshop, grew to be his generation’s leading conceptual composer, mainly thanks to his reception of Władysław Strzemiński’s unism. The worlds of Krauze and Tilbury were sepa- rate, but adjacent.

I will be talking about my music, but I want you to realise that I am actually talking all the time about the source of that music which is the theory and work of Strzemiński. And that is because since the very beginning my music has been closely connected with it. It has actually been its source. In 1956, as a student of the Secondary School for Music, I went to a posthumous exhibition of Strzemiński’s works, and that day marked my future. First of all, I realized that I would become a composer, and I also understood how I would write my music.

Zygmunt Krauze

When dealing with art, we deal with mystery - something that needs to be pursued but remains impossible to satisfyingly explain or define. The mystery is obviously present in the works of this unusual pair of composers: Julius Eastman and Tomasz Sikorski.

There were several 'firsts' involved in my initial encounter with Zygmunt Krauze's music: my first visit to Poland (1970), my first 'Warsaw Autumn' festival and its first concert (19 September), and the Warsaw premiere of Krauze's first Piece for Orchestra (1969). The memory has stayed with me ever since, not least because here was a work that was distinctly different from the other new Polish music that had so far filtered westwards. I was familiar with some Lutosławski, Penderecki and Górecki, but what struck me that evening was the restraint, delicacy and individuality of Krauze's music. It stood out for being quiet, reflective and very beautiful.

Władysław Strzemiński's unism as well as functionalism are to be found at the roots of the first sound installation in Poland. Prepared for Galeria Współczesna in Warsaw, it is a piece signed by an architect Teresa Kelm, composer Zygmunt Krauze and sculptor Henryk Morel. "Spatial-Musical Composition" is a follow up of Morel's and Krauze's explorations initiated in 1966 together with Cezary Szubartowski and Grzegorz Kowalski which resulted in an action titled "5x".

The music on this album demonstrates Sikorski’s unerring feeling for harmony and register; the “minimal- ism” of these pieces was absorbed naturally, the repetitions never seem arbitrary. Above all, this is piano music, par excellence. The improvisation for prepared piano which follows is a humble tribute, elegiac in character and full of echoes and personal reminiscences of the man and his music.

(John Tilbury)

Sensuality of the sound, discipline of the form, epic scale and theatricality of performance - Witold Szalonek's music is multidimensional and still quite unknown. Highly valued by audiences and critics, it still hasn't gained a well-deserved place in the concert life. Its significance was by no means limited to the post-war history of Polish music and its spectacular stream: sonorism. Szalonek's interests were much more universal and had far-reaching consequences for the whole European music.