[1907-1982]

Konstanty Regamey - Kwintet

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Year
1942/44
Time
30'
Instr.
Klar. Fag. Pno. Vl. Vc.
Edition
PWM (Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, Warzawa/Krakow)
This composition has been played by the Ebony Band
CD
Polish Masterworks, Channel Classics CCS 31010

After Józef Koffler and the Lvov composer Tadeusz Majerski, Konstanty Regamey was the next Polish composer to employ dodecaphony, at the very moment when most of his colleagues found themselves under social-realist pressure. Paradoxically, it was the lack of a normal concert life in Warsaw (concerts for Poles took place at cafés and – clandestinely – in private apartments) that prompted the 33- year-old Regamey to begin to compose seriously. The two masterpieces he wrote between 1940-44 (the Persian Songs and the Quintet) were premiered at clandestine concerts in 1943 and 1944. Witold Lutoslawski called the Quintet “a sensational première” and attributed its unparalleled success to “the exceptional imagination of the author and the extremely individual way of using Schönberg’s technique”.

The conviction that he would not survive the war, and the complete isolation of occupied Warsaw, gave the composer Constantin Regamey the sensation of a total lack of restraint. Everything was possible, everything was as significant as it was insignificant, everything imaginable could be put to manuscript paper. In this situation, any awareness of a consistent musical style, or orientation towards whatever school or tradition, seemed absurd. This is why one recognises so many different styles in the Kwintet. Regamey desired to demonstrate in this work that dodecaphony was not a style, but merely a technique; the atonal clarinet theme in the first movement is used in the variations, which are composed in different styles. The second movement, Intermezzo Romantico, is based on two 12-note series which are organised à la Alban Berg in an almost nineteenth-century tonal manner. At other points one recognises melodic elements of Prokofiev or harmonic characteristics of Ravel or Messiaen. It is an astonishing score, ingeniously written and rich in detail. Listening to it is like undertaking a journey through a most diversified landscape.