Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Henryk Wars:
Discovering a Masterpiece Cover Image

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Henryk Wars: Discovering a Masterpiece
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Henryk Wars: Discovering a Masterpiece

Author(s): Marek Żebrowski
Subject(s): Music
Published by: Musica Iagellonica Sp. z o.o.
Keywords: piano concerto form; Richard Addinsell; Henryk Wars

Summary/Abstract: Henryk Wars has been long known for many film soundtracks and countless hit songs composedin Poland during the inter-war period and in the United States in the 1950s and the 1960s.But he was also a classically trained composer who left a substantial legacy of finely crafted,large-scale orchestral works. They were written soon after he settled in California in 1947, andquite a few years before he had a chance to redefine himself as a film composer in Hollywood.During his early years in America Wars devoted most of his passion and energy to completingamong others such large scale works as Symphony No. 1 (1948–1949), Piano Concerto (1950),City Sketches – Orchestral Suite (1951/1969–1974), and Sonatina for Orchestra.Aim of this study is to present Wars’s Piano Concerto – a skillfully designed one-movementwork completed in 1950, with a strongly neo-romantic character, sparkling virtuoso solopart, and richly-scored orchestral accompaniment.The author of the study analyzes in detail the formal layout of the work, indicates thecomposer’s inspirations (mostly Schumann and Addinsell, also Chopin, Gershwin and Rachmaninov)and shows that using the traditional sonata allegro layout, Wars effectively introducesseveral very attractive melodic ideas and skillfully shapes them in into a successful one-movementformal design. Wars’s one-movement Piano Concerto is an excellent addition to therepertoire of shorter works for piano and orchestra. Whilst it offers some technical challengesfor the performers, it is also a very effective work that easily finds favor with the audiences.

  • Issue Year: 9/2018
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 101-126
  • Page Count: 26
  • Language: English