Franciszek Mirecki - Piano Sonata No. 2 in C-Major Op. 14 (Słotwiński)

Written in 1820
Pianist: / @arturslotwinski
0:00 - I. Allegro moderato
7:28 - II. Allegro
Franciszek Mirecki (1791 - 1862) was among the first Poles to achieve musical fame outside Poland. He was born in Kraków only barely before the final partition of Poland obliterated the Polish state. As the Polish people underwent a period of transition to life under foreign occupiers, music was also undergoing a period of transition. Pivotal moments in music development and Poland's history formed currents around Mirecki's life.
In his earlier life, Mirecki worked as a librarian in Vienna, using the opportunity to study with Hummel, Salieri, and Moscheles. Soon afterwards, Mirecki travelled to Italy where he fall in love with Italian opera, which would form the stylistic base from which he would draw. His dedication to the Italian opera and general resistance to Romanticism in all of its manifestations kept him rooted to classicism. From early on, however, he was aware of Beethoven's music. He even had the chance to meet the great master while serving Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński as a librarian. Due to his reluctance to embrace Romanticism, this chance meeting is usually the focal point of any attention directed toward Mirecki. Eventually, Mirecki made peace with Beethoven's style, but he never entered the Romantic idiom as fully as his contemporaries, leaving him forever eclipsed by Moniuszko, Chopin, and even Dobrzyński.
Mirecki stands as a forgotten figure, but his legacy can be found with enough investigation. In his day he won plenty of fame and admiration for his operatic and vocal output. After returning to Poland in 1838, he founded a vocal music school that the Free City of Kraków requested. After the Warsaw Conservatory was forcibly closed by the Russians in 1831 following the November Uprising, institutions of musical training where scarce in Poland. Mirecki furthered his contributions to the pedagogical side of Polish music by teaching both Władysław Żeleński and Emil Śmietański. He wrote and argued against Romanticism, but his output began showing the influence of Beethoven late in life. One can only speculate whether or not he would have fully embraced the Romanticism of Żeleński, Noskowski, and Moniuszko eventually, but he died in 1862 - one year before the outbreak of the January Uprising.
Mirecki's Piano Sonatas
Due to historical tumult, many Polish piano sonatas have been lost, leading one to note the relatively small number of piano sonatas by Polish authors. Add to that the decline of the piano sonata as a musical form in the romantic era, and, outside of Chopin, one can count out very few piano sonatas that receive any attention at all. Fortunately, the attempts at comprehensive surveys of Polish music have yielded performances of sonatas by Stolpe, Wieniawski, Krzyżanowski, Pachulski, and Żeleński among others. In this sparse space, the work of pre-Chopin composers becomes essential. Among the most prolific Polish composers of piano sonatas can be counted Franciszek Lessel, Józef Elsner, and Franciszek Mirecki. All of these composers wrote according to classical conventions, but Mirecki's output borders between the conventional and the forward-leaning sonatas of Muzio Clementi.
Info from Wikipedia and PWM.

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7:28 early german romanticism intensifies

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