Mity (Myths) Op. 30 (1915)

The Fountain of Arethusa

Narcissus

Dryads and Pan

Like all but one of the other composers represented in this programme, Szymanowski was not himself a violinist. He did, however, enjoy the close friendship and professional collaboration of Pawel Kochanski, one of the most accomplished and most progressive violinists of his day. It was for Kochanski that he wrote his two Violin Concertos and most of his works for violin and piano -    beginning with the Sonata in D minor in 1904 and including the most successful of all his works of this kind, the three Mity which he dedicated to Kochanski’s wife eleven years later.

There is no more effective example of the combination of violin and piano colours than “The Fountain of Arethusa.” The running-water sound produced by the piano in the opening bars is not entirely original, in that it clearly derives from Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, but the first entry of the violin, high on the E-string, is beautifully contrived to blend with it. In fact, the scoring of the whole piece is so inspired that the Polish composer achieves here something which neither Debussy nor Ravel even attempted, which is the complete integration of the violin with impressionist piano textures. The Greek myth behind the piece – the story of the nymph Arethusa who finds that fleeing to the isle of Ortygia to be transformed by Artemis into a fountain is no protection from the attentions of the river-god Alpheus, who flows under the sea to unite with her – is probably not illustrated in detail in Szymanowsky’s music. The erotic atmosphere, on the other hand, secured largely though not exclusively by the combination of high-lying exotic melody on the violin with watery imagery on the piano, is palpable.

There is watery imagery in “Narcissus” too. In this case, however, it is still water, as represented in the opening bars by limpid but deliberately static piano harmonies (anticipating similar sounds in Messiaen by thirty years or so). Against this tranquil background the violin draws a sustained line of exquisite self-regarding tenderness. If the passionate middle section reflects Narcissus’s fatal pangs of frustrated self-love, the lamenting ending could represent Echo’s sad contemplation of the flower which grows in Narcissus’s place at the edge of the water.

“Dryads and Pan” is a very much more active scene than the other two. Beginning with the sound of the wind blowing through the trees in a remarkable example of microtonal colouring on the violin, the first part is devoted largely to the dancing wood nymphs. Although he has clearly had his eye on them already, Pan makes his definitive entry on a dramatic silence, playing his pipe in unaccompanied harmonics before giving amorous and eventful chase to the dryads. His pipe is heard again towards the end as he leaves the dryads to their windy forest.