Performers
- Ania Karpowicz flute, program concept*
- Aleksandra Kaca piano (in homage to Felicia Montealegre)**
- Sinfonia Varsovia
- Bar Avni conductor
Programme
Gustav Mahler Adagietto: Sehr langsam (mov. IV) from Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor [10’]
Leonard Bernstein Ḥalil for flute and chamber orchestra [16’]**
Leonard Bernstein For Felicia Montealegre for piano [2’]*
Aleksandra Kaca but the rain is full of ghosts tonight for flute and orchestra (world premiere) [16’]**
Concert description
Inspired by the remarkable figure of Felicia Montealegre, who stood in the shadow of her husband, legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, we will hear a musical story composed around a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
I only know that summer sang in me
Slowly and unhurriedly, we will move from lively rhythms and bright evenings to the rain tapping in the gloom, from the irrepressible song of life to the pain of quiet loss. And at the center of the program – the story of women, listening to the silence falling over them, women stretched between eras, continents and contexts.
Leonard Bernstein will scatter music in the nocturnal Halil, playing between life and death, between tender tonality and expressive dodecaphony. Following the final, ephemeral sound of the three flutes from Halil, we will plunge into Gustav Mahler’s Adagietto. This is one of those great confessions of love that changed the history of music, which under Bernstein’s baton reached a dimension of “timelessness.”
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Before the evening rain overflows with memories, composer Aleksandra Kaca will play Bernstein’s miniature For Felicia Montealegre, as if looking for inspiration. Finally, we will listen to the premiere of but the rain is full of ghosts tonight. In the composition, fragments of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry are sewn into multi-layered, ephemeral structures of flutes, harp, strings and percussion.
– Ania Karpowicz
***
Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (1920)
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Felicia Montealegre and Leonard Bernstein’s relationship is not only a love story, but also a constant decision about the right to give or take away one’s voice. Sometimes in spite of oneself. “Why do you fold your lips into a smile when you want to cry, say yes when you don’t feel like it completely” 1). That voice is the flute part, which resounds among the delicate, lacy textures in the orchestra.
And along with St. Vincent Millay’s poem, which the flutist recites, it sets in motion a whole series of memories.
1) Kukon (feat. Kwiatek haze), „Wbrew sobie” (prod. Ka-Meal, Aleksandra Kaca) from the album „Kraków, Marzec 2025”
– Aleksandra Kaca