The album contains Marian Borkowski’s complete piano solo works performed by Marcin Tadeusz Łukaszewski. The CD is part of the celebration of Prof. Borkowski’s triple anniversary: his ninetieth birthday, seventy years of creative work and fifty-five years of pedagogical work. Marian Borkowski’s piano works are characterised by the exposure of the extensive technical and sonic capabilities of the instrument and by the search for new colour qualities. These works are virtuoso, but as the composer himself points out virtuosity should be understood not only as display of perfect technique, but also as a possibility to expose interpretative and expressive values. Understood as such, virtuosity can be both an impressive technical course and a structure completely devoid of these features. At the same time, it is one of the aspects contributing to the style of Borkowski’s music.

In terms of similarities and musical affinities, Borkowski’s piano works can be arranged into three groups. The first includes Seven Preludes, Four Mazurkas, Three Miniatures, Variations, and Romantic Interludes they rep-resent the trend of the major-minor system and extended tonality, in which one can see the influences of late Romanticism and, to some extent, Karol Szymanowski’s early piano works (the similarity of Borkowski’s preludes to Szymanowski’s preludes and of his Variations to Szymanowski’s Variations in B minor, Op. 10). The Preludes initiate this trend, while the Variations end it. The Romantic Interludes, on the other hand, are a sentimental and nostalgic return to tonality after the stage of sonoristic experiments, while in the field of regulating the flow of musical time a return after the phase of fascination with the avant-garde, and thus to a tonality seen from a postmodern perspective. The second group of Borkowski’s piano works consists of Two Mazurkas, Sonata, and Toccata it is a trend of extra-tonal harmony with a preference for seconds, sevenths, and ninths and for quartal-septimal chords; we can also notice Neoclassical inspirations (rhythm-driven nature of the works), influences of the genre of toccata (also in the second mazurka), while the Toccata heralds the sonoristic poetics. A separate, third place in Borkowski’s work is occupied by the Fragmenti belonging to the sonoristic trend and using a new, isochronic musical notation. The Fragmenti are an isolated piece in the group of the composer’s piano works, but they do find a continuation in the Dialoghi for two pianos. In the finale, one can find similarities to the middle link of the Toccata in terms of building tension and achieving a powerful climax.

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Data premiery: 24.11.2023