Since the Treaty of Vienna and the installation of Stanislas, Poland has always felt a little at home in Nancy. The presence of Marta Gardolińska at the head of the Orchestra of the Opéra national de Lorraine is clearly an occasion to highlight those fraternal links in music. And who better to illustrate it than Frédéric Chopin? Aside from being a masterpiece, his Concerto Opus 11 is also the incarnation of a crucial moment in his life and that of his country. Although it was first performed in Warsaw in October 1811, for Chopin it represented a farewell to his native land. He was about to leave for Vienna and Paris and would never return to Poland again. A few weeks later, on November 29, Warsaw rose up in insurrection against its Russian occupiers. For a few months before the uprising was crushed Poland was independent. In his own way, the Franco-Polish composer Antoni Szałowski found himself in a similar position: During the 1930s, he studied in Paris, under the stern eye of Nadia Boulanger. The Overture which he composed at the end of that period bears the trace of a musical style in which he was bathed there and which would accompany him. The shadow of Chopin also hovers over Lutosławski’s Concerto for orchestra. If the title of the score evokes thoughts of Bartók’s previous masterpiece—the composer's music had a lasting influence on Lutosławski—it is clear that he also drew inspiration from the musical traditions of his own country. And more particularly, from the popular melodic themes of Mazovia, the region of central Poland where Chopin was born—themes which he blended into a vast and imposing orchestral work where atonal influences intertwine with baroque-inspired forms.
