The cultural phenomenon of the mazurka for piano, one of the most important forms of artistic utterance for Polish composers since the times of Chopin, is borne out by numerous musical works that delight us with their wealth of melodic inventiveness, the originality of their textures and the suggestiveness of their musical expression. The exceptional significance of the piano mazurka in Polish culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be explained by the fact that it became an artistic manifestation of the cultural identity of the Poles, the endurance of a 'hallowed' tradition; it provided scope for the safe expression of that distinctive identity, which as Maria Janion declared 'Polish romanticism turned into a new aesthetic category'.
Michalowski's mazurkas, composed during the twilight phase in the reception of the idea of Romantic music in Polish culture, are marked by the stamp of music from those times. Such is indicated by elements of fin-de-siecle style discernible in the harmonic writing, the formal shaping and above all the elegant, unpretentious and lyrical character of these compositions, enhanced in places with a virtuosic element.
The piano mazurkas of Ignaz Friedman, like the mazurkas of Aleksander Michalowski, preserve the model of a stylised dance inherited from Chopin, with its idiomatic sound and character, are at the same time miniatures evoking the atmosphere of salon music, its sentimental and noble tone, the singular aesthetic quality of which is revealed to listeners by Ludmil Angelov's interpretations recorded on this disc.
Listening closely to the sound of the works recorded onto this CD by Ludmila Angelova, we recognise the characteristic stylistic idiom of the mazurka rooted in Chopin's rubato, which Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski defined as 'music marked by folklore, betraying an unequivocally "national colouring" and at the same time, of course, a traditional folk provenance'.
The symbolic content of these works manifests itself through the means of musical expression used by both these pianist-composers to express cultural values close to their hearts.
