Wanda Wiłkomirska Plays Mieczysław Karłowicz

This post is a tribute to the recently deceased Polish violinist Wanda Wiłkomirska, an artist of great taste and sensitivity who made too few recordings.

Wanda Wiłkomirska

Here she is heard in the Violin Concerto of her compatriot Mieczysław Karłowicz. Wiłkomirska championed the piece, even taking it on tour to the US in the 1960s.

It's a composition fully worthy of her advocacy. Karłowicz wrote in the late Romantic idiom, and this is one of the great under-appreciated works of the period. The unfortunate composer lived only to age 32, perishing in an avalanche while on a ski trip in 1909.

Wiłkomirska is flawless in this 1962 reading, where she is backed by the Warsaw National Philharmonic Symphony, conducted by Witold Rowicki.

Mieczysław Karłowicz

The LP also contains a good performance of Karłowicz's brooding symphonic poem "The Sorrowful Tale." The composition evidently is intended to depict a suicidal interlude, and the composer at one time contemplated including a fateful gunshot sound-effect, mercifully not included here. The piece's doleful mood comes as a surprise following the sunny Violin Concerto. The performance is led by Stanisław Wisłocki.

The sound on this 1962 Polskie Nagrania Muza album lacked bass (basically, there wasn't any). It also had a right-channel bias. I've adjusted things and the sound is now reasonably vivid, with Wiłkomirska's violin coming through well.

I also have Wiłkomirska's recordings of violin concertos by Szymanowski and Wieniawski and can transfer them if there is interest.