ABSTRACT
Szymanowski was brought up in a highly cultured family environment [see Family]. His parents, Stanisław Szymanowski and Anna Taube both nurtured their son’s love of music. Also influential in the early years were Gustaw Neuhaus and Felix Blumenfeld, who were both from related families. The Neuhauses ran a music school that Karol attended with Gustaw’s son Harry, who was to become a fine pianist. The music of Chopin, Beethoven and the Austro-German Romantics were dominant in this education [see Education and Linguistic Abilities of Szymanowski]. In 1897 Szymanowski attended a production of Lohengrin in Vienna, which confirmed his enthusiasm for Wagner. Later in his teens and early twenties he studied with Marek Zawirski and Zygmunt Noskowski in Warsaw. The first published products of this education – the Piano Preludes, Op. 1, Four Études, Op. 4 and Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. 8 – show that the keyboard and harmonic idioms of Chopin, Brahms, Liszt and early Scriabin had been thoroughly absorbed. In the settings of German poems that date from 1905, the chromatic harmony, complex counterpoint and declamatory vocal writing of Wagner and Richard Strauss are pervasive. The influence of the latter composer is especially overt in Szymanowski’s first orchestral work, the Concert Overture, Op. 12.
