KARLOWICZ, MIECZYSLAW  BIOGRAPHY

Born into a wealthy academic family at Wiszniew, in what is now Lithuania, Mieczysław Karłowicz trained as a violinist but, after his arrival in Berlin, where he studied between 1895 and 1901 with Henryk Urban, turned increasingly to composition. Several sets of songs and piano pieces represent his earliest published work, but the Serenade for Strings (1897) demonstrates no mean grasp of larger musical forms; an ability that was further consolidated by incidental music for Jozafat Nowinski’s drama The White Dove (1899-1900), the Rebirth Symphony (1900?-1902) whose compact four-movement design is pointedly overlaid with an ambitious conceptual programme, and the three-movement Violin Concerto (1902) which proved to be his last composition that was not determined by extra-musical considerations.

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