Against injustice, we each have our best way to combat. The gun is only the most direct, the most blunt, of instruments. One may yield a paint brush, a pen, a baton, aim and shoot.
The music of Saeverud, especially as played by such a vivid and unfeignedly sentimental performer as Grzegorz Niemczuk, pierces like a bullet, penetrating not the body but spirit. I append here a personal missive to the stellar Polish pianist.
Dear Grzegorz,
I became acquainted with your work quite recently and somewhat randomly. During my travels through Europe I came across Saeverud's piece, "Ballade of Revolt". This tune struck me. I was thereupon led to your analysis of that powerful, eternally relevant, and simply severe work.
In your lecture of this ballad, written during that most terrible of wars ("spontaneously, like a bitter oath, the tones burst out of me..."), you reconstituted its significance by reapplying it to the current war in, and for, Ukraine.
It is for this reason I am writing you.
I am returned from a sojourn in Ukraine, where I went to report on the conflict. To enter Ukraine one must perforce pass through Poland, a country which once served as the safe haven, and at another time served as the reliable hell, for Jews. I naturally came bearing preconceived notions of the old country, but was very surprised at the modernized reality I found. (The Chopin museum was lovely.)
Poland was once in the straddling position which Ukraine is in now. The hope is that Ukraine might attain to the freedom, the liberalism, the national sovereignty, and political independence that Poland has achieved.
I continue to fight with my pen, as you do with your music. It is the duty of the man as writer, as composer, as a human, to do as much as he can to expose and confront evil, and promote, as best as his flawed soul is able, the moral in our species, however dim it may appear at times.
Dziękuję,
The piece from Saeverud in question; Grzegorz’s attempt at an answer.