Jim Samson has noted how Szymanowski’s voice in this slightly later period took on a ‘stark linear quality’, and the simplicity of momentum in the
Berceuse Op 52 (1925) offers a striking contrast, even if that might be expected in a work bearing this title. The tonal disjunction between violin and piano in the opening measures suggests two personalities pushed apart into their separate worlds by some nameless grief, and despite some textural expansion in the central stages the piece preserves an ashen and disconsolate air that is both unsettling and affecting—perhaps reminiscent in a fortuitous way of the post-War new radicalism of Frank Bridge’s second piano trio or third and fourth string quartets.
from notes by Francis Pott © 2009
