Joyful Overture [Радіснa увертюрa] for orchestra, Op. 25 (ca 1940) Józef Koffler

Joyful Overture [Радіснa увертюрa] for orchestra, Op. 25 (ca 1940)

Orchestral Works, Work with Opus Number

Manuscript: Unknown

Premiere: Lviv, 15 January 1941

Now considered lost, Koffler's Overture, Op. 25,

was written to mark the first anniversary of the Soviet ‘liberation’ of Western Ukraine (the propagandist term for the occupation of Eastern Poland by the Soviet army on 17 September 1939).

Little is known about this occasional piece.

'A Glorious Anniversary', Раднянська музика 1940, no. 5, p. 4

According to a text titled Славна річниця [A Glorious Anniversary] (Раднянська музика, 5 (1940), 4), the music written for those celebrations by Koffler and other Lwów-based artists ‘demonstrates that the composers’ hearts beat in harmony with the hearts of all the Soviet nation, that they are filled with a sense of genuine Soviet patriotism, true love for our beautiful and invincible fatherland and for the genius of the nations’ leader, the great Stalin, whose name stands for happiness, freedom, and victory’. In the language of the Soviet propaganda, such a declaration meant that the music was well received.

Nevertheless, opinions concerning its musical language were contradictory.

Music critic Anatoli Akvilev wrote after the concert of Lwów State Philharmonic Orchestra under Isaac Pain, held on 15 January 1941, that Joyful Overture testifies ‘merely to formal expertise. [...] It contains many technically sophisticated turns, but little heartfelt warmth. It breathes an air of scholastic cold’ (‘Концерт львівських композиторів’ [A Concert by Lviv Composers], Вiльна Украıнa, 19 Jan. 1941, 6). In a postwar text, Zofia Lissa (A Tribute to Józef Koffler, Poland’s First Dodecaphonist, typescript for a radio broadcast, 1963) suggests that the Overture marked ‘a sudden turn towards the Neoromantic style’. Maciej Gołąb, however, argues that, as in Symphony No. 4, Op. 26, in the Overture Koffler adhered to his modernist aspirations.