our projects

Two Regameys – father and son – on the album from the "Polish Music Today" series

The last album released in 2020 by the Polish Composers' Union as part of the "Polish Music Today – Portraits of Contemporary Polish Composers" series is completely unique. Due to the special relationship and fate of both characters, the publisher made an exception and decided to devote the album to two composers instead of one. In addition to works by the "Polish-Swiss composer" Konstanty Regamey, the CD includes pieces by his father, Konstanty Kazimierz – an almost completely unknown composer, who worked mainly in distant Ukraine, and in 1938 was sentenced to death by the Soviet regime.

The originator of the project and the author of the essay for the album is Jerzy Stankiewicz, who has devoted many years to researching the life and work of both Regamey (as well as popularizing the discovered works and contexts).

He invited two renowned artists to participate in the project – sisters Olga Pasiecznik (soprano) and Natalia Pasiecznik (piano). They performed a repertoire of songs and romances as well as piano pieces by the Regameys. The recording was made in the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio of the Polish Radio in August 2020 by Ewa Guziołek.

The booklet contains essays written by musicologist Jerzy Stankiewicz and literary scholar Anna Bednarczyk (in Polish and English), as well as song lyrics in the original languages (Polish and Russian) and their translations into Polish and English prepared by Anna Bednarczyk and Marta Kaźmierczak.

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund as part of the "Musical Trace" programme operated by the Institute of Music and Dance. The album was released thanks to the support of the ZAiKS Authors' Association. The project partner was Repliq Media Sp. z o.o. Co-producer of the recording and CD edition is Programme 2 of the Polish Radio.

The Polish Composers' Union own releases are intended solely for promotional, educational and research purposes. They are not intended for sale. They are provided free of charge to interested institutions and individuals, but due to the very small circulation and large interest, priority is given to music libraries, where a broad audience can benefit from each set. If you are interested, please contact the Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC (contact: Izabela Zymer, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

Materials from the "Warsaw Autumn" Festival available in the new POLMIC Digital Archive

600 archival photographs and 70 fragments of recordings from the "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music have been made available on the new POLMIC Digital Archive portal as part of the "Warsaw Autumn Available!" project.

In recent years, Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC has been archiving, digitizing and sharing recordings and photographs related to the "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music – the largest international Polish festival of contemporary music and one of the most important events of this type in Europe and around the world. Unique photographs and sound recordings documenting the festival in over 60 years of its existence are a true national heritage, reflecting the history of Polish musical culture in the second half of the 20th century, immortalizing its creators and presenting their most important works. The aim of our activities is to protect archival materials from inevitable degradation and to make them available to the general public.

For the purpose of presenting our digitized collections, POLMIC Digital Archive – the first digital archive devoted to Polish contemporary music was created in 2020. As part of last year's project, we shared online almost 700 records: photographs documenting festival concerts and accompanying events as captured by Andrzej Glanda – a photographer cooperating with "Warsaw Autumn" in the 1980s, as well as fragments of audio recordings from festival concerts in 1962 and 1963. Our digital collections will continue to grow as more materials are digitized.

The project was co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund.

POLMIC Digital Archive is available at: http://www.archiwumcyfrowe.polmic.pl/

Roman Maciejewski – for two pianos

As part of the "Polish Music Today – Portraits of Contemporary Polish Composers" series, initiated in 2013, the Polish Composers' Union released three more albums last year. The first of them, containing Roman Berger's monumental Missa pro nobis, was very important to the composer who wrote a text summarizing his work and philosophy especially for the booklet and fortunately received the album before his death in December 2020. The next two albums are devoted to two great figures whose work started already in the interwar period: Roman Maciejewski and Konstanty Regamey.

The album with Maciejewski's music (catalog number: polmic 161) contains a set of "minor" pieces for two pianos by this composer: Oberek (1943), four Negro Spirituals (1943), Mazurka (1948), Lullaby (1938), Tarantella (1938) and Swedish dances (six miniatures from 1940-1942). All of them were performed by Chopin Piano Duo composed of Anna Boczar and Bartłomiej Kominek; the recording was made by DUX Recording Producers at the Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Lusławice between 29 September and 1 October and on 24-25 November 2020. The essay for the album was written by Marlena Wieczorek – the author of the composer's monograph, published in Poznań (PTPN Publishing House) in 2008.

LISTEN TO THE MUSIC: HERE

POLMIC Digital Archive website has been launched

The new POLMIC Digital Archive website was launched in January for the purpose of making archive materials and documents of the Polish Composers’ Union (PCU) / Polish Music Information Centre available to all users. The materials include selected photographs, scores, and recordings as well as books and articles.

POLMIC Digital Archive is the first archive of this kind dedicated to Polish contemporary music. Our collection includes photographs documenting the early years of PCU’s activity and the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music, as well as portrait photos of artists associated with the music world, especially after WWII. We also share scans of manuscripts and computer versions of scores by Polish composers, including works never printed by professional publishers.

On our new website you can listen to audio recordings (selected fragments or complete) of ‘Warsaw Autumn’ events as well as other festivals and concerts held by the PCU, most of which have never been commercially released, though some have come out in limited issues under PCU’s own label. We also share PCU’s / POLMIC’s own publications related to the festivals, concerts and other events we organise, including texts from ‘Warsaw Autumn’ programme books and other papers on contemporary music.

POLMIC Digital Archive has been co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund as part of the ‘Digital Culture’ programme.

The new portal is available at: http://www.archiwumcyfrowe.polmic.pl/

Roman Maciejewski – pieces for two pianos

The project "Roman Maciejewski – pieces for two pianos" was created thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as part of the "Culture on the Web" programme.

It is dedicated to the promotion of Polish music and compositions for piano duo, emphasizing the important role of Roman Maciejewski in Polish musical life.

The project includes audio-video recordings of such Roman Maciejewski's works as Mazurka, Lullaby, Tarantella, the Negro spirituals series, Deep River, Listen to the Lambs, Sometimes I feel like Motherless Child and I want to be ready. The pieces were performed by the Chopin Piano Duo composed of Anna Boczar and Bartłomiej Kominek.

The recordings were made in September 2020 in the Concert Hall of the Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Lusławice. Sound director – Małgorzata Polańska (DUX), video director – Grzegorz Kućmierz ("Presto" Artistic Agency).

The material is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ocngeRpR2w

Roman Berger's jubilee album

For the 90th birthday of its Honorary Member Roman Berger, the Polish Composers' Union – in co-operation with the National Centre for Culture Poland and thanks to support from the Society of Authors ZAiKS – released a CD with a monumental work of this great composer and philosopher entitled Missa pro nobis.

Roman Berger was born in 1930 in Cieszyn, Poland, in the family of Józef Berger, a doctor of theology and evangelical minister in Český Těšín (in the disputed region of Zaolzie) and a wartime prisoner of concentration camps in Auschwitz and Dachau. After graduating from the Polish secondary school in Český Těšín, in 1949 Roman Berger entered the State High School of Music in Katowice, studying piano with Marta Furmanik and music theory with Jan Gawlas. In 1952, his family was forced to move to Bratislava, where he resumed his studies at the Academy of Music and Drama, first as a pianist and later as a composer in the class of Dezider Kardoš (1961–1966). He has never come back to live in Poland, and Slovakia became his new homeland.

In an essay prepared for the CD booklet, Roman Berger wrote:

The (confidential) message that the Polish Composers’ Union was going to release my Missa pro nobis on CD moved me greatly, [...] Classical (and even more pop) music, especially sacred compositions, are not written for our own pleasure (“so that it feels nice,” as stated in Sławomir Mrożek’s Émigré). I therefore took this message as an expression of the PCU management (presided over by Mieczysław Kominek) solidarity with the message of my work, intended as a response to St John Paul II’s ‘commandment’ which the Holy Father put forward in the context of the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust (let me quote from memory): “Let people dare to sing today, as long as their song will be a lament, a protest, or a sign of hope”.

The project is carried out in cooperation with the National Centre for Culture and co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

Records issued by POLMIC are intended for promotion, education and scientific research only. They are not for sale. They are provided free of charge to interested institutions and individuals, but due to the very small circulation and large interest, music libraries have priority, where a larger group of people can benefit from each set. If you are interested, please contact the Polish Music Information Center POLMIC (Izabela Zymer, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

www.droba.polmic.pl - a new website devoted to Polish music theorist and critic

On the initiative of the programme board of the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music, whose members were Krzysztof Droba’s colleagues and friends a new website – www.droba.polmic.pl was created, devoted to Krzysztof Droba. It is the Polish Composers’ Union’s first website dedicated to a music theorist and critic.

The first public presentation of the new website took place during the 49th Polish Composers' Union Musicological Conference, on October 26th, on the internet platform of the Academy of Music in Cracow - the conference co-organiser - and was broadcast to Vimeo.

The Polish Composers’ Union gives its sincere thanks to all the persons and institutions whose assistance and commitment have made this project possible, and in particular:

• the Office of the President of the Republic of Lithuania, for making photographs of state decoration ceremonies available;
• our colleagues from the Lithuanian Composers’ Union, especially to Ruta Stanevičiūtė, Onutė Narbutaitė, Vytautas Landsbergis, and Feliksas Bajoras, for their inestimable support in documenting Krzysztof Droba’s work in the field of Lithuanian music and sharing memories;
• experts: Professors Teresa Malecka and Eugeniusz Knapik, for their support;•
Eva Maria Jensen, Maria Wiktoria Hübner, and Kazimierz Płoskoń, for sharing photos;•
composers, performers and the publisher: PWM Edition, for their kind permission to make recordings of works dedicated to Krzysztof Droba available on our website;
• all those who have agreed to share their memories of Krzysztof.

We are particularly grateful to Mr Bogusław Droba, Krzysztof’s brother, for kindly sharing with us his memories and materials from the family collection.

Partners:
Academy of Music in Cracow
Academy of Music in Lodz
Lithuanian Composers Union
PWM Edition

Subsidised by the National Centre for Culture under the programme Kultura w sieci.

More: "About the project"

Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC will create a catalog of works related to the widely understood Olympic theme

Due to the cooperation of the Polish Composers' Union with the Polish Olympic Committee, the Polish Music Information Center POLMIC intends to create a catalog of works related to the widely understood Olympic theme, which will facilitate the selection of candidates for the "Olympic Laurel" prize.

This is a special award of the Polish Olympic Committe established in 1967 "as an expression of appreciation and respect for Polish artists who shape the humanistic values of sport and its image in society". The prizes are awarded in four-year Olympic cycles in various fields of work. The list of winners include representatives of the visual arts, musicians, writers, filmmakers, photographers, and architects. The "Olympic Laurel" medal was designed by the sculptor Stanisław Sikora and is awarded for lifetime achievement or a particular work. Cultivating the tradition of combining art with sport by the Polish Olympic Committee emphasizes the importance of culture and art in spreading the Olympic idea. The prestigious prize was awarded to, among others, Krzysztof Penderecki and Wojciech Kilar.

We encourage you to send information on musical works related to the Olympic movement, sport, peace and similar topics by 18 January 2021 to the address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Presentation of a new website dedicated to Roman Maciejewski

Concert and presentation of a new monographic website prepared by the Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC will take place on 26 September 2020 (Saturday) at 6.00 p.m. in the Chamber Hall of the National Philharmonic in Warsaw.

The new website – available at www.maciejewski.polmic.pl – is entirely dedicated to the extraordinary Polish composer Roman Maciejewski and his work.

The presentation will be hosted by Beata Bolesławska-Lewandowska and Lech Dzierżanowski. In the second part of the meeting, Chopin Piano Duo – Bartłomiej Kominek and Anna Boczar – will perform Roman Maciejewski's works for two pianos.

Live streaming will be available on the YouTube channel of the Polish Composers' Union: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe2h6r9A9OKgrSU2FUem0rw.

The presentation of the website dedicated to Roman Maciejewski is a fringe event of the 63rd "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music.

The project was financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as part of the "Digital Culture" programme.

Direct link to live streaming: https://youtu.be/ShRKBHRVc_g

Children's Art Centre in Poznań deposited scores to POLMIC

Based on the cooperation agreement between the Children's Art Center in Poznań and the Polish Composers' Union, the archive of the Poznań institution is now available at the Polish Music Information Center POLMIC website.

Children's Art Centre in Poznań is a culture institution controlled by the local government. It has been in operation for almost 30 years. It runs diverse and interdisciplinary initiatives in the area of art for children and teenagers. Its objectives are to inspire the creation of professional culture for children, to promote and spread the word about valuable trends in art and to popularize and support the development of innovative methods of cultural education. The Centre's statute tasks include the organization of the Biennial of Art for Children and the International Young Audience Film Festival Ale Kino! as well as the execution of educational and artistic projects.

The Centre has pioneered many cultural initiatives. It understands its mission on a variety of levels: inspiring academic debates, organizing artists' meetings, producing theatre plays, organizing multiple workshops: for visual arts, music, theatre and film. It is active as a publisher: “New Drama for Children and Teenagers” and a series of books “Art and Child”. The Centre organizes the only interdisciplinary art festival for children – the Biennial of Art for Children and the largest film festival for children and teenagers – the International Young Audience Film Festival Ale Kino!

Within several decades of activity, the Centre commissioned and collected in its archive a valuable collection of works for children by contemporary Polish composers. They are intended to be performed by professional musicians (most items) or with the participation of children in the audience (numerous items), and even by the children themselves (several items). They were created primarily for the needs of the series of contemporary music concerts for children entitled "Music and Fun", hosted in the years 1987-2015 by Hanna Gawrońska.

Under the cooperation agreement between the Polish Composers' Union and the Children's Art Centre in Poznań, the collected music materials and – in some cases –CDs were deposited and made available to readers in the Polish Composers' Union Library – Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC. The Children's Art Centre in Poznań remains the copyright owner of the compositions and scores and one should notify the intitution in order to purchase or rent materials.

DOWNLOAD: CATLOGUE – COLLECTION OF MUSICAL WORKS OF THE CHILDREN'S ART CENTRE IN POZNAŃ.

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