• Duration: 14'
• Instrumentation: 1211-0000-archi
• Year: 1949
• Type: parts, score

The work was written in 1944, but was partially destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising. The composer recreated it in 1949. The concerto consists of three parts, Kisielewski writes in the programme of the 1st International Festival of Contemporary Music in 1956, the first movement is a sonata allegro with a fugato development; the second movement, Andantino, is freely treated song form; while the last movement is constructed as a rondo. Concertante roles are given to the wind instruments, the quintet performs an 'accompaniment' function. (...) The concerto is quite simply ... funny. But the laughter, rather the smile which this piece inspires is benign, not malicious. The concerto is full of gentle humor, musical jokes, unforced comedy. (...) In the concerto there are not only funny individual episodes but also details, unexpected contrasts (...). The unforced humour and charm of the concerto provoke questions of a deeper nature, questions about the role of laughter in times which are not at all funny. The fact that a composer of talent is playing with different conventions, gently parodying them is one side of the coin. The other - is the use of the ''philosophy of laughter'' as a weapon in the fight against the absurdities of reality. The people used to answer the tyranny, and the absurdity resulting from it, with ordinary stones orlaughter. The comedy of the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra is healing. In parodying the baroque style the composer stirs up nostalgia for a world in which at least the arts were in their rightful place. [M. Gąsiorowska, Kisielewski, Krakow 2011]