Ewelina Nowicka, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio - Laks · Weinberg · Nowicka (2023)

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Ewelina Nowicka, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio - Laks · Weinberg · Nowicka (2023)

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Ewelina Novicka came across Weinberg's traces while researching Shostakovich, and Laks was brought to her attention by pianist friend Milena Antoniewicz, with whom she recorded her own composition Kaddish in the version for violin and piano in 2011. The Polish-born violinist Ewelina Novicka was not only deeply touched by the fact that Laks and Weinberg had escaped the Shoah, but above all by the connection with the fate of her own family, which gave rise to her desire to place her artistic work in the service of the works of these two composers. Service, in this case, means not only re-creative interpretation, but also quite concretely adaptation and continuation through her own creation. Ewelina Nowicka describes her Kaddish 1944, written in 2007, as "a kind of psalm dedicated to the victims of the Lodz ghetto, the last ghetto in the occupied Polish territories, which was liquidated in August 1944." The composition was prompted by a 1948 letter from her great-aunt Ewelina Widell, née Szykier, in which she documented the story of her survival, and the story of the murder of much of her family. The three juvenile works by Weinberg arranged for string orchestra by Ewelina Nowicka lead us into the workshop of a brilliant, precocious - Polish - composer. "Scherzo", "Sen o Lalce" (The Dream of a Doll) and "Nocturne" for violin and piano are among the few surviving pieces from Weinberg's Warsaw period; he composed them in 1934/35 at the age of 15 or 16. This already shows his brilliant talent for exploiting the potential of a narrowly limited musical material or a simple structural idea to the maximum. One of the few works written before the 1960s, when Laks was once again able to build on his pre-war successes, is the Poème for violin and orchestra from 1954, which Ewelina Nowicka arranged for violin and string orchestra for the present recording. With this work, Laks places himself in the tradition of the single-movement "tone poem" for one or more solo string instruments and orchestra founded by Ysaÿe. More intimate in expression and not bound by the formal conventions of the multi-movement instrumental concerto, virtuosity sees itself placed entirely at the service of the poetic statement.