Two String Quartets (1980, 2019), as well as Trio for Violin, Clarinet and Piano (2003), are works of particular importance in the chamber music chapter of the oeuvre of Eugeniusz Knapik, a composer who is arguably better known today for his monumental vocal-instrumental works – stage and non-stage. (…)

Significantly, the pieces featured in the recording were written at considerable time intervals. Knapik devoted the years between them to working on the large vocal-instrumental forms mentioned above. Twenty-three years passed between the first Quartet and the Trio (…) The Trio and Quartet No. 2 were composed sixteen years apart (…)

Due to aforementioned time intervals, the musical idiom and stylistics of the two Quartets and the Trio vary from one another considerably; however, the natural weight of these genres remains unchanged, which for Knapik’s instrumental music is of fundamental importance (the composer also speaks of the essence or idea of genre). Knapik wrote, quite significantly: “For me, a quartet, concerto grosso or sonata denote an idea, not a pattern or structure. When writing a piece like this, there were no musical canons I could refer to. However, I had in mind a vision of a quartet or a sonata as great structures, just as I might have a vision of a cathedral. This vision has been moulded by hundreds of years of history.” The essence of the quartet as a genre was once brilliantly grasped by, among others, Johann Wolfgang Goethe when he described it as “four rational people conversing”.

Stanisław Kosz