Chopin University Press - Complete Works for Solo Piano (2023)

The album contains all of Marian Borkowski's works for solo piano, interpreted by Marcin Tadeusz Łukaszewski. The album is part of the celebration of the triple jubilee of prof. Borkowski: ninety years of birth, seventy years of creative work and fifty-five years of teaching work.

Marian Borkowski's piano pieces are characterized by the exposure of the instrument's extensive technical and sound capabilities and the search for new color qualities. These works are virtuosic, but - as the composer emphasizes - virtuosity should be understood not only as a technical display, but also as an opportunity to highlight interpretative and expressive values. The category of virtuosity understood in this way can include both an impressive technical course and a structure completely devoid of these features. This is also one of the style-creating aspects of Borkowski's music.

In terms of similarities and musical affinities, Borkowski's piano works can be organized into three groups. The first includes Seven Preludes, Four Mazurkas, Three Miniatures, Variations, Romantic Interludes - this is a trend of the major-minor system and extended tonality, which shows the influence of late Romanticism and, to some extent, the early piano work of Karol Szymanowski (similarities of Borkowski's preludes to Szymanowski's and Variations to Variations in B minor, Op. 10). The Preludes initiate this trend, while the Variations close it. Romantic interludes, however, are a return full of sentiment and nostalgia to tonality after the stage of sonoristic experiments and in the regulation of the flow of musical time - a return after the phase of fascination with the avant-garde, and thus to tonality seen from a postmodern perspective. The second group of Borkowski's piano pieces consists of Two Mazurkas, Sonata, Toccata - this is a trend of extra-tonal harmonics with a preference for second, seventh and third dissonances and fourth-seventh chords; we can also notice inspirations with neoclassical motorism, toccata (also in the second mazurka), in Toccata and an announcement of sonoristic poetics. A separate, third place in this work is occupied by Fragmenti - belonging to the sonoristic trend and the new, isochronous musical notation. Fragmenti is an isolated piece in the group of piano works, but continues in the two-piano Dialogues. The finale is similar to the middle section of the Toccata in terms of building tension and reaching a powerful climax.