Stojowski Chant d'Amour Jonathan Plowright

Zygmunt Stojowski's celebrated "Love Song" was one of the pieces on a progamme of Polish Romantic piano music performed by British virtuoso Jonathan Plowright in National Gallery of Ireland, in celebration of Polish Independence Day, on 11th November 2007.

Polish Romantic pianist and composer Zygmunt (Sigismond) Stojowski was born in 1870 in Kielce, Poland. Although he studied at the Paris Conservatoire, he counted his compatriot Ignacy Jan Paderewski as his strongest musical influence. In 1905 Stojowski emigrated to New York, where he taught at what became the Julliard School. He was celebrated in the United States as a great composer, teacher and performer.

Musicologist Joe Herter, Stojowski's biographer, writes:

"Stojowskis Love Song, the third miniature from the Four Pieces for Piano, was the composers claim to fame during his lifetime. Upon arriving in the United States in October 1905, Stojowski headed the piano department at the new Institute of Musical Art in New York. He had been in the United States for less than two years when his teacher and mentor Ignacy Jan Paderewski included Chant damour on his 1907-08 concert tour of the United States. Thanks to Paderewski, who performed it more than 50 times throughout the country, Stojowski became well known throughout American musical circles. Prior to a gramophone recording of the piece which Paderewski made in 1926 for Victor Records, there had been several piano-roll recordings, including ones made by Rudolph Ganz, Carl Friedberg, and one by the composer himself on Ampico. The works popularity continued into the 1950s, when the flamboyant pianist and entertainer Liberace recorded a souped-up version with the George Liberace Orchestra on the Columbia LP Moonlight Sonata.

In a July 1928 article in The Musical Mirror, British composer Alec Rowley described Chant d'amour as a gem of the first water. A ravishing melody, with harmonies that thrill one... The 1907-08 Paderewski Concert Tour Programme contained the following analytical notes by H. E. Krehbiel:

"Regarding Chant d' amour: The piece is in the key of G-flat, and is marked by a formal feature of an original nature: The principal melody dies away in a cadenza in D-flat which leads to a middle part of a duet-like character, which, after working itself up to an impassioned climax, gives way to a return of the first theme by means of the same cadenza, this time in G-flat.
Paderewski Archives 258, Achiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw.

"Chant damour was first published in 1903 by C.F. Peters, Leipzig, and dedicated to Julia Appleton Fuller. Because of mistakes in several editions, the G. Schirmer edition of 1908, with the composers own fingering, is undoubtedly the best edition of the work."