The Concert Overture of the 23-year old Karol Szymanowski reflects his passionate ambition at the time to create modern Polish music of European magnitude. The influence of the German late Romantics is unmistakable. In this early creative period a desire to provoke also continues to play a role throughout Szymanowski’s work – as when he looks forward to seeing the critics ‘leaving the hall with curses on their blue-stained lips’. The critics did not fail to wreak their revenge either, promptly accusing him of betraying the classic Polish national music, of which they considered Fréderic Chopin the patriarch.