The composition, scored for soloists, choir and orchestra, is a setting of a Polish translation of the Latin text of a medieval hymn about the suffering of the Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross.
Premiered in Warsaw in January 1929, it was performed at New York's Carnegie Hall two years later.
Szymanowski’s Stabat mater will be performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall by Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen, Irish mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy and Polish baritone Szymon Mechliński, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC National Chorus of Wales conducted by Ryan Bancroft.
The programme of the concert, which is described on the BBC Proms website as "spiritually charged," includes also Lili Boulanger’s Vieille prière bouddhique, Oliver Messiaen’s L’Ascension and Richard Strauss' Death and Transfiguration.
In another Proms concert, on Saturday, July 25, Polish violinist Maria Włoszczowska will direct the Royal Northern Sinfonia in a programme featuring the Divertimento by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz, Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 and Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin, Piano and Strings—in which Włoszczowska will appear as the soloist alongside pianist Christian Ihle Hadland.
Włoszczowska, 34, is a prizewinner of the 2016 International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poznań, western Poland.
In 2018, she won First Prize and Audience Award at the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, Germany.
A UK resident, she serves as leader of the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Gateshead, also appearing regularly at London’s Wigmore Hall and at international festivals.
Britain's Gramophone magazine highlighted in its July issue what it described as surging international interest in Polish women composers, including the renewed recognition of Bacewicz, who died in 1969 at the age of 60.
"It is rare to come across a neglected compositional voice that remains so strong; that speaks to both its own turbulent time and ours," the magazine wrote.
Another Polish presence at the BBC Proms will be the September 9 concert in which the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra will perform under up-and-coming Polish conductor Paweł Kapuła in his Proms debut.
(mk/gs)