Józef Elsner - Chamber Music (Józef Kolinek; etc.)

Information

Composer: Józef Elsner

CD1

• Polonaise in D major for violin and piano
• Sonata in F major for piano and violin, Op. 10 No. 1
• Polonaise in D major for violin and piano
• Sonata in D major for piano and violin, Op. 10 No. 2
• Polonaise in E flat major for violin and piano
• Grande Sonata in B major for violin, cello and piano

CD2

• Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 15
• String Quartet in D minor, Op. 8 No. 3
• Mass in G major, Op. 75

Józef Kolinek, violin

Elżbieta Karaś-Krasztel, piano

Justyna Reczeniedi, soprano

Katarzyna Kiszewska, mezzo-soprano

Adrian Kreda, piano

Roman Perucki, organ

Piotr Hausenplas, cello

Krzysztof Bzówka, violin

Piotr Nowicki, viola

Zbigniew Krzymiński, cello

Date: 2020

Label: DUX

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Description

The family seat of Józef Elsner and his ancestors was Grodków, a small charming town in Opole Silesia. The composer’s grandfather, Jan Piotr Elsner, was a valued carpenter, and it was him that was entrusted with the work of building the main altar in the Parish Church of St. Michael in Grodków. One of his ten children was Jan Franciszek Michał Elsner (baptised on 28 September 1739), the later father of the composer. In 1768 (on 17 May) he married, already as a widower, Anna Barbara Matzkin, the daughter of a builder of musical instruments—Józef, who built lute and violin, played these instruments, and taught his children to play them. On 1 June 1769, a child of the marriage was born—Józef Franciszek Antoni Elsner. We adopt this date of the composer’s birth, although Wojciech Bogusławski gives 29 June. Due to the fact that the parish books burnt down in 1830, in the great fire of Grodków, we cannot resolve this doubt definitively. On the tomb of Józef Elsner it is also 1 June 1769.

Young Józef Elsner encountered music for the first time at home, where he learned to play the violin, and also tried his hand at composition, arranging “songs and little music, without any knowledge of composition, [...] barely able to play anything” (Bogusławski). Since Elsner also showed great general capabilities, his father decided to transfer him to the school of the Dominicans in Wrocław, where Józef began to systematically attend violin, music theory, and composition lessons, making rapid progress in all these areas. It was also there, in the church of the Dominicans, that he would sing numerous solo parts in the choir.

During Elsner’s school times in Wrocław, his first compositions were created. Already as a thirteen-year-old, he began to compose an opera; he also wrote several dances, two violin duos, the Violin Concerto in G major, and two string trios. He also began composing religious pieces, remaining under the influence of kapellmeister and composer Dreiritter, of whom he spoke fondly after many years: “I owe it to him that I did not waste this talent that the Creator of the Universe has given me.” The first religious compositions are: the motet Ave maris Stella, Benedictus, several offertories with the accompaniment of the violin, arias and duets with the choir, Completorium with string instruments, French horn, and organ, Kyrie and Gloria, and Four Stations for Corpus Christi.

In accordance with the wishes of his parents, Józef Elsner entered the theological faculty of the university, but he did not graduate, and after his father’s death, in 1789 he moved to Vienna to study medicine.

Soon afterwards, he decided to drop from the medical studies and to commit himself exclusively to music, in a professional manner. Elsner decided to use his stay in Vienna to develop his musical knowledge. In 1791, he took the position of the concertmaster in a theatre orchestra in Moravian Brno. From Moravian Brno, Elsner went to a country that was to become his new homeland.

An entrepreneur of a German theatre, Franz Bull, offered Elsner the position of kapellmeister of an orchestra in Warsaw. Along the way, he made Elsner an offer to conduct a concert in Lviv. The programme included, among others, Elsner’s Symphony in E-flat major. The concert was so successful that Bulla decided to keep Elsner in Lviv. Elsner was active in that city for seven years; he was very busy, and he would contribute to various areas, e.g. his activities led to a performance of the opera Don Giovanni by Mozart; he composed many pieces for the local military brass band, introducing a completely new instrument in Lviv—the tuba. He also began preparations for writing the first major opera in his life: Die seltenen Brüder. It was staged in 1795 in Lviv, where it was heard by Wojciech Bogusławski, which gave rise to a long-term cooperation and friendship between the founder of the Polish theatre and Józef Elsner.

At that time, Elsner already belonged to the Masonic lodge, which proves his more and more important position in the social and artistic life of Lviv. He would give private music lessons, and as a tireless organiser, he established the Academy of Music, which brought together music lovers; he would also dedicate his time to concert activities, by organising weekly events. For the needs of chamber music, Elsner composed three “Polish” quartets: the Trio in B-flat major, Three String Quartets, Op. 8, and three violin sonatas. The difficulty level of Józef Elsner’s chamber works from the Lviv period is adapted to the average instrumental skills of people generally making music in the conditions of home amateurs.

In 1797, Bogusławski proposed Elsner to take the position of director of the orchestra in the Polish theatre and encouraged him to a closer compositional cooperation in the resumption of earlier items of the operatic repertoire as well as to create new works, e.g. Iskahar or Amazons. This kind of cooperation forced Elsner to quickly and thoroughly study the Polish language, which he had to use in his operatic output. Polonisation of young Józef was also fostered by very lively and cordial contacts with the Polish community in Lviv, and finally love and marriage with a Polish woman, Klara Abt in 1796. Unfortunately, the composer’s wife died soon after delivery, leaving him with his daughter Karolina.

A crucial moment in Józef Elsner’s life was his trip to Warsaw at the beginning of 1799, at the invitation of Wojciech Bogusławski. Elsner was to remain in Warsaw until the end of his life, i.e. for fifty-five years. Elsner was the music director of the Warsaw opera for twenty-five years (1799–1824), first alone, and since 1810, with Karol Kurpiński as the second director at his side. Elsner performed for the first time at the National Theatre on 31 August 1799, conducting Martini’s opera L’arbore di Diana.

From 1799 to 1812, Elsner wrote as many as twenty operas for the Warsaw stage. The first two-act opera Sultan Wampun or imprudent wishes immediately won the audience not only in Warsaw, but also in Lviv and Kraków. In 1806, he wrote the one-act opera seria Andromeda to words by Ludwik Osiński. Elsner’s frequently performed operas included the one-act Echo in the forest to words by Pękalski and the three-act “magic opera” Leszek the White, written in 1809 to the libretto by Ludwik Adam Danuszewski. After 1812, there was a six-year break, followed by Elsner’s return to the operatic stage: King Łokietek, or The Women of Wiślica from 1818 (Elsner’s most popular opera), Jagiełło in Tenczyn from 1820, and a melodrama featuring singing and dancing Sacrifice of Abraham from 1821 (the last work written for the Warsaw stage). During his long career as the director of the Warsaw opera, Elsner significantly raised the artistic level of this institution, preparing each of the productions with extraordinary dedication and investment of time. He would invite outstanding European operas to Warsaw, often just a few months after their national premieres.

Elsner’s activity in the Warsaw opera was only one of the artistic fields that he had cultivated with passion and perseverance for decades. Already since 1805, he had closely cooperated with the famous Leipzig publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel, in which he published his compositions, and in the music magazine with a European scope belonging to that publishing house, Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung; he began to print correspondence about the music movement in Poland on a regular basis, and published historical and critical articles on Polish music, very interesting for foreign readers.

Elsner’s trip to Paris, which took place at that time, was of utmost importance to him. There he met Jean-François Lesueur, a composer and kapellmeister at the Napoleonic court, who reviewed Elsner’s compositions and foretold him a bright future. He also made friends with E. T. A. Hoffmann, at the same time deciding to establish together with him a Resursa Muzyczna (Music Social Club) in Warsaw. Upon his return to Warsaw, he ordered a concert piano from Erard in Paris for the new musical institution, which immediately became the centre of the capital’s musical life. Unfortunately, the Resursa Muzyczna existed for a very short time, only until 1807, when Warsaw was occupied by the French. From that moment, in the capital there was no society to cultivate symphonic, chamber, and religious music.

It was only after seven years that a project of establishing a new Society for the Friends of Religious and National Music emerged, which, interestingly, came out of the Masonic lodge of the Grand Orient of Poland. The initiator was a brother mason, or... Józef Elsner. The society operated until 1819, when it collapsed due to lack of funds.

It is also worth mentioning here another area of Józef Elsner’s interests, namely his fascination with the Polish language, its melody and the role it can play in music. Elsner, a German by birth, who had not spoken Polish for many years, in 1818, published in Warsaw a large work written in Polish and entitled Rozprawa o metryczności i rytmiczności języka polskiego, szczególniej o wierszach polskich we względzie muzycznym (Dissertation on the Metre and Rhythm of the Polish Language, Especially on Polish Poems in Musical Terms). The main purpose of Elsner’s dissertation was to show the possibility of coexistence and combination of poetry and music in a musical work. The second part of the Dissertation... contains many interesting, substantive comments about the use of poetry in singing as well as a lot of insights on Polish music, particularly its dance forms: mazurka, krakowiak, and polonaise. Elsner’s other theoretical works include the dissertation O muzyce wojskowej i jej użytku (On Military Music and Its Use) from 1840, and Listy o muzyce i harmonii (Letters on Music and Harmony), which are a record of his university lectures.

Elsner’s extraordinary diligence and organisational skills were most fruitful in the field of teaching. Initially, since 1814, he had been teaching “music and singing” at Bogusławski’s drama school; afterwards he was asked to develop a plan for a new school. Therefore, in 1820, the instrumental and vocal classes were combined into one, and thus the Conservatory of Music was established with Józef Elsner as the rector. This is how Elsner began his long and extremely rewarding teaching career.

In September 1826, sixteen-year-old Fryderyk Chopin became a student of Elsner, beginning his first course of harmony and counterpoint. Elsner recognised his great talent very early, and after the final exam he wrote the following opinion: “Chopin Fryderyk (third year) amazing capabilities, musical genius.” On a certificate of one of his other outstanding students, Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński, he wrote: “uncommon capabilities.” As one can see, he was able to maintain proportions even in the assessment of highly talented students. Elsner educated a whole group of very good composers; apart from Chopin and Dobrzyński it included Franciszek Nidecki, Józef Krogulski, Antoni Stolpe, Józef Nowakowski, Antoni Orłowski, and Oskar Kolberg. It was them that would be developing the Polish music culture for many decades of the 19th century.

The November Uprising, and then its failure, had tragic effects on the musical life of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Poland. The tsarist government closed the Warsaw Conservatory (the Main School of Music) and the University. Despite difficult circumstances, and maybe thanks to them, Elsner began to devote more attention and time to religious works. He would compose for the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Church as well as for the Warsaw synagogue (a Cantata to a Hebrew text). Among the religious compositions written at that time, there are numerous not very extensive masses written for a small ensemble to Latin texts and, which is very interesting, small masses to Polish texts.

Elsner’s financial situation after the uprising was simply tragic—he was ruined. The closing of the Main School of Music and the University meant a loss of salary for him; moreover, a fire broke out in his property Elsnerowo in 1830, during which the dwelling house and the whole farm burnt down. The tsarist government set him a ridiculously low salary and only the new law on pensions of 1839 provided him with decent living conditions.

The most outstanding composition of Elsner from the 1830s and, at the same time, his greatest achievement in the field of religious music, was undoubtedly the oratorio Passio Domini Nostri Jezu Christi (The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ), written in 1835–1837, and performed for the first time as a whole in June 1838 at the Protestant church in Warsaw. This monumental work was played by over four hundred artists, including soloists, two choirs, and a large orchestra.

Elsner was at the peak of fame and popularity, achieving a pre-eminent position in the Polish musical world. All illustrious musicians coming to Warsaw would pay him a visit, including Franz Liszt in April 1843.

In June 1852, on the feast of John the Baptist, Elsner celebrated his Golden Anniversary in the Church of the Virgin Mary in the New Town. Later, in the Merchant Social Club’s Hall, the Warsaw musical community paid a tribute to him as the “creator of national music,” by handing him a gold medal with the inscription “for the celebration of the golden wedding.” Elsner’s student, Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński, wrote a march for this ceremony, in the trio of which the theme from Elsner’s opera King Łokietek appeared.

The composer died on 18 April 1854, at the age of eighty-five. The long life of this extremely hard-working artist came to an end. “If, after closing my eyelids, I am able, from the heights of a better world, to deserve to be put among the righteous and faithfully happy with God, my spirit, flying over my beloved city, which I took as my home and in which I spent the rest of my days, will be merry and it will bless with gratitude those who embellished my thorny life with their friendship and even made it more pleasant, and even when I was no longer among them, the memory of my person and my small and modest merits were not forgotten in their hearts.”

It should be emphasised that many of Elsner’s works are the first examples of using elements of folk music and national dances in the Polish violin and chamber music. These certainly include three preserved polonaises for piano and violin, which, despite their small size, are a successful attempt to stylise this Polish national dance, and which were undoubtedly an inspiration for later masters of this form, such as Karol Lipiński and Henryk Wieniawski. An interesting example of the use of polonaise in chamber music is also the finale of the String Quartet in D minor, Op. 8 No. 3 by Elsner, in the middle section of which the composer successfully introduced a motif of this Polish dance.

In addition, three sonatas for piano and violin are the best pieces of this music genre in the Polish violin music of the Classicism—an example of a very successful attempt to transfer this classical form into the Polish reality. On the basis of the classical structure, Elsner introduced interesting elements of the musical dialogue between the piano and the violin, beautiful cantilenas, typical violin figurations in rhythmic parts, and elements of Polish folk music.

The Piano Trio (Grande Sonate) in B-flat major and the Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 15 are also isolated items in our music of that era; they are very successful examples of chamber music with the leading role of the piano. In these compositions, Elsner maintained a classical formal structure; simultaneously, he introduced the form of a dialogue between all instruments, fresh and plenty of joy resulting from making music, yet with the piano in the lead. In turn, these chamber forms were an inspiration for his students, such as Józef Krogulski or Józef Nowakowski, and especially for Fryderyk Chopin (in the Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 8).

The preserved string quartets by Elsner are the best Classical chamber music pieces in the Polish music. One can feel here the hand of a very efficient composer and a true chamber violinist. The beautiful sound of an ensemble of homogeneous string instruments, so difficult to achieve for many composers, is something natural for Elsner and is a great asset of his quartet compositions, at the same time combined with melodic invention and efficient motivic development. Elsner set the bar very high in this music genre; however, it was successfully tackled by his students, especially Ignacy Józef Dobrzyński as well as the successors: Stanisław Moniuszko, Antoni Rutkowski, Antoni Stolpe, and Zygmunt Noskowski.

Elsner’s chamber piece for the largest instrumental ensemble is the Septet in D major for piano and mixed ensemble of wind instruments (flute and clarinet) and string instruments (violin, viola, cello, and double bass). Dedicated to Józef Cichocki and premiered in his music salon, it is also a rarely encountered example of a composition for a larger ensemble in the Polish chamber music; the piece is very successful, and it creates opportunities for the instruments of different colours forming this ensemble to make beautiful music. This type of composition was continued by Józef Krogulski, a very talented Elsner’s student, whom he liked very much.

“Music to be performed in a Holy Mass,” or the Mass in G major, is a very interesting piece. This chamber mass for two voices (soprano and mezzo-soprano) and four instruments (violin, viola, cello, and organ) was dedicated to the Werner family, who was friends with Elsner. Individual members of this family were indicated on the title page as performers of specific vocal and instrumental parts. It was unusual in the first half of the 19th century that a mass was written to a Polish text, in this case by eminent poet Kazimierz Brodziński. Most of the masses at that time were composed to Latin texts. The words of Kazimierz Brodziński, and particularly “Upadnij na kolana, ludu czcią przejęty...” (“Fall on your knees, people moved with worship...”) from Sanctus are very popular to this day and are constantly sung in the Polish Church. Individual sections of this composition can be included in the liturgy of the Holy Mass (and this was their original purpose).

Elsner certainly enriched the Polish violin and chamber music with a whole range of very valuable items that are still waiting to be discovered, to be edited in new studies, to be introduced to the curricula of music schools and colleges as well as to be performed in concerts and re-recorded. A seed thrown into the soil of the chamber music has risen and has borne fruit in the work of his students and successors.

— Józef Kolinek

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Józef Elsner (1 June 1769 – 18 April 1854) was a Polish composer and educator. After studying in Wrocław and briefly pursuing theology and medicine, he devoted himself to music, working in Brno and Lvov before settling in Warsaw in 1799. As director of the National Theatre's opera, he expanded its repertoire with numerous operas and ballets. Elsner established and led several music schools, where he taught notable students, including Frédéric Chopin. His lifelong contributions to composition, education, publishing and cultural institutions earned him widespread recognition and lasting influence on Polish musical life.

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Józef Kolinek (16 February 1955 – 6 May 2021) was a Polish violinist. A graduate of the Academy of Music in Łódź and the Warsaw School of Economics, he performed internationally with renowned ensembles, including the Polish Chamber Orchestra and Sinfonia Varsovia, and founded the acclaimed Prima Vista String Quartet. Throughout his career, he recorded around 150 albums, earned multiple Fryderyk Awards, and taught master classes across Asia and Europe. A longtime resident of Podkowa Leśna, he devoted himself to enriching the town's cultural life by creating festivals, organizing concerts and supporting local arts initiatives.

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