Szymanowski - Metopes no. 1 - L'isle des Sirenes

Szymanowski - Metopes no. 1 Op 29 - L'isle des Sirenes (Isle of Sirens) - Lento (molto rubato ed improvisando)
Isaac Barry - Piano
The three Poems comprising 'Metopes' were composed in 1915 and they stand at the threshold of Szymanowski's full maturity as a composer, when he rejected German influences in favour of a highly personal 'impressionist' manner. Like the metopes in the friezes of doric architecture (a metope being the space between two triglyphs; an ornament with three vertical channels on a Doric frieze) Szymanowski's pieces are intended to outline stages in a history, here based on homer's Odyssey. The idea was probably suggested by the metopes from the Temple of Selinunt which the composer saw while visiting the museum in Palermo the previous year. The first of the 3 Pieces, 'Isle of the Sirens', takes much of its musical detail from the mythological source, not only in the more and more insistent lullaby theme which runs through the music but in configurations which presumably reflect the double flute and Lyre associated in Homer with the Sirens. Some of these patterns also suggest bird calls, reminding us that the Sirens were half-bird and half-woman who lured unwitting sailors to their death on the rocks.
'Calypso', the second of the Metopes, portrays the daughter of Atlas and Tethys who personifies the depths of the sea and who kept Odysseus on the island of Ortygia for seven years. A recurring refrain-like melody in the composer's favourite 'narrative' manner - 6/8 metre with dotted rhythm - surrounded by a 'bitonality' of white and black notes evoking the sea.
The relatively static character of these two pieces is balanced by the third of the Metopes. 'Nausicaa', depicting the dancing of Nausicaa and the Phaecians maidens who discover Odysseus after his shipwreck. Stylisations of the dance are common in middle-period Szymanowski and Nausicaa is closely related to several dance pieces from earlier song-cycles. The piece gradually builds up to an outburst of excitement and frenzied movement only reluctantly falling away while quoting figures and refrains from the other two pieces.

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Music

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• Isaac
• Barry
• classical