The work, titled Lumières and written in 1932, was traced in the archives of the French publishing house Éditions Durand by Polish musicologist Łukasz Kaczmarowski.
The 30-minute piece consists of four parts—Les Lampadaires (Streetlights), Les Fontaines lumineuses (Light Fountains), Les Enseignes lumineuses (Neons) and Le Métro (Metro)—each inspired by urban light and modern city life.
Kaczmarowski says the score reflects Tansman's neoclassical roots and is notable for its wealth of themes, unexpected harmonies and touches of jazz.
The ballet's libretto has not been found, and it remains unclear whether one was ever completed. According to Kaczmarowski, Tansman was dissatisfied with his collaboration on the project with André Coeuroy and Geneviève Clarence.
Friday's programme also includes Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, with Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova as soloist.
Organisers say the selection places Tansman’s work in the broader context of international musical trends of his era.
The concert will be conducted by Norbert Twórczyński.
Tansman, born in Łódź in 1897, made his compositional debut in 1915 with a song cycle to words by poet Julian Tuwim, performed at a charity concert in his hometown.
He went on to win the top three prizes at a Warsaw composition competition four years later, but conservative critics in Poland rejected his avant-garde leanings. Frustrated by limited prospects at home, he moved to France, where his career quickly flourished.
Tansman embraced the neoclassical tradition alongside Igor Stravinsky and Albert Roussel, and toured widely through the 1920s and '30s as both pianist and composer.
During a 1932–1933 world tour, he was received by Emperor Hirohito in Tokyo and hosted by Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay.
After the outbreak of World War II, and with help from Charlie Chaplin, Tansman emigrated to the United States and settled in Los Angeles. There he befriended leading composers including Darius Milhaud, Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg and Stravinsky.
Tansman returned to Paris in 1946 and continued composing prolifically, earning recognition as one of the most important neoclassical composers of the 20th century. He died in 1986.
Though he became a French citizen in 1938, Tansman renewed ties with Poland after 1956 and visited his homeland four times. During his final visit, he attended the unveiling of a plaque on his family home in Łódź.
In a foreword to his biography published in Poland in the 1980s, he wrote: "Of course, I owe much to France, but nobody who has ever heard my pieces can have any doubt that I was, am and will forever be a Polish composer."
(mk/gs)
Source: filharmonia.lodz.pl