Relief II
for accordion
The cycle of nine Reliefs was written between 1984 and 1989, during the last period in Andrzej
Krzanowski’s life, and it provides further evidence of his interest in the fine arts, which he exploited
in his compositional work. The sculpture technique enabling an artist to create bas reliefs of varying
degrees of convexity, for which the raw material is so important, is faithfully reflected in Relief II,
where the accordion offers such possibilities for shaping the sound, dynamics, timbre and articulation that the narrative pursued in this work, involving the expansion and contraction of sound streams and the consistent processing of the raw material (whole tone – semitone scale), creates a ‘musical relief ’. This is not a dramatic or virtuosic work. Time flows slowly, on low, subtly fluctuating dynamic levels, the bands of sounds that form streams of varying density are written solely by means of horizontal lines, stretched out across regular bar lines that measure out the time, and the static unfolding of the music is enriched solely with vibrations. The sounds alternately overlap and fade. Sometimes they occur in imitation, and self-contained chords appear incidentally. The contemplation of time, multi-level structuring, subtlety and… dedication to the brilliant Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa account for the popular name of this work – ‘Japanese’.
– fragment of preface Grażyna Krzanowska
translated by John Comber
- Series: Strumento
- ISMN 979-0-2740-3710-9
- Language of edition: pol, eng
- Number of pages: 16
- Cover: softcover
- No. of edition: 1
- Published: 2022
- Type: instrumental solo
- Size: N4 vertical (235x305 mm)
