22 NOTTURNO Fauré’s Second Sonata is virtually contemporary (there’s a year’s difference) with Notturno e Tarantella, which Szymanowski composed after Mythes, in 1915. Émile Vuillermoz, a critic of the time, described Szymanowski as the Polish Debussy. Eva, is that judgment confirmed when we listen to this work? Eva Zavaro: ‘Notturno’, the title of our album, was inspired by this work that Szymanowski composed in collaboration with his great friend and associate, the virtuoso violinist Paweł Kochański, in Zarudzie – very close to the town where my grandfather was born! The first of the two movements, Notturno, evokes Spain and its warm nights with a vaguely oriental flavour. However, although he had travelled extensively around the Mediterranean, he had never actually been to Spain! This music reflects a fantasy, conveying purely imaginary atmospheres. He must certainly have heard Albéniz’s Iberia, and like many composers, he developed a taste for Spanish music. He also turned his attention to the new aesthetic of French Impressionism, which became an inspiration in his search for sound worlds: a major stylistic evolution that he would take further, most notably in his Symphony no.3, ‘Song of the Night’.
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