Song of the Echo from the opera Live Stones, 1943-1944

Between 1943 and 1944 Palester worked very intensely on an opera based on Wacław Berent’s opera The Live Stones. As a result the composer wrote half of act I, dozen or so bars of act II and the complete act III. In the end, however, he stopped working on the work never to return to it. In hisFragments of Memories from 1939-1945 he comments on his decision in the following words: "When after a year of two I looked at the sketches for Live Stones, I came to a conclusion – not without regret – that I was at that point far away from the style in which I wrote that opera. The fact that I wasn’t distanced enough from the subject during the war simply led to the emergence of something other than I originally planned."

Song of the Echo, one of Palester’s more popular works, comes from act I of this unfinished opera.