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The final concert of the 60th Tadeusz Baird Young Composers' Competition will be held on 25 June 2019 (Tuesday) at 7pm in the PWM Edition Concert Hall at 8 Aleksandra Fredry Street in Warsaw.

Tadeusz Baird Young Composers' Competition (formerly called the Youth Competition of the Polish Composers' Union) has been organized annually since 1958. Its aim is to enable young Polish composers to start their professional life and encourage them to work independently. The main prize – the Tadeusz Baird Award – in the amount of $ 2,500 for further compositional studies is funded by Alina Sawicka-Baird, wife of the Composer. In this edition, the main prize was funded by Marta Ptaszyńska. Honorable mentions are funded by the Main Board of the Polish Composers' Union. Since 1990, the Tadeusz Baird Competition is open to all Polish composers who has not turned 35 years (previously it was intended only for graduates of the composition classes of the state music high schools). The subject of the competition is different each year.

Since 2003, the competition has two stages. The works that have been qualified to the 2nd stage are performed during a public concert, after which the final verdict is announced and the names of the winners are revealed. Such a concert will take place for the sixteenth time. The programme will include: Magic Squares (emblem Triangle), Une saison dans rêve (emblem Rimarth), Singing at the end of the day (emblem Chestnut 12), Sublimation (emblem TBQ), String Quartet Shapes (emblem Maple leave). The works will be performed by POLONIKA string quartet: Paulina Kusa – I violin, Anna Szalińska-Zaziębło – II violin, Magdalena Małecka-Wippich – viola, Krystyna Wiśniewska – cello.

The jury of this year's competition is composed of: Eugeniusz Knapik – chairman, Krzysztof Baculewski, Miłosz Bembinow, Arkadiusz Kubica and Hanna Kulenty.

The concert is organized by the Polish Composers' Union in cooperation with the PWM Edition and ZAiKS Authors' Association with funds from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as part of the "Music" programme.

The concert "Sinfonia Iuventus for Independence" on 22 June 2019 at 7pm in the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio in Warsaw, devoted entirely to Polish music of the twentieth and twenty-first century, will showcase outstanding cellist Tomasz Strahl.

This highly appreciated soloist, chamber musician and academic teacher has won many prestigious awards and distinctions and is one of the most esteemed cellists of his generation. The two cello concertos featured in the programme are the perfect way to show off the versatility of this artist’s talent in a single evening.

The work by Stanisław Moryta from 1992 is saturated with dramatic, elegiac expression, as expressed in the character of each movement: Drammatico / Lugubre / Aggresivo; it also displays cello virtuosity. Cello Concerto No. 2 by Piotr Moss titled Prières (Prayers) was composed in 2003 and premiered in Poland, performed by Tomasz Strahl of the NPRSO in 2005.

The programme is supplemented by two overtures – the first opened the now forgotten opera Maria by Roman Statkowski (1904), acknowledge when it premiered to be one of the best Polish works of its kind since the days of Moniuszko. The interwar period will be represented in the programme by the Overture for orchestra by Antoni Szałowski, one of the many Polish students of the famous Nadia Boulanger (interestingly, two generations before the young Piotr Moss also studied with her near the end of her long career), in tribute to neoclassical style – which is also present in this brilliant piece.

Piotr Maculewicz

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://sinfoniaiuventus.pl/sinfonia-iuventus-dla-niepodleglej/ 

On the World Music Day, 21 June 2019, the musicians of the Symphony Orchestra of the Szczecin Philharmonic will perform Symphony No. 1 by Wojtek Blecharz. An outdoor concert will take place at the plaza next to the Church of St. Nicholas (entrance from Starzyński Street).

The organizers invited the composer Wojtek Blecharz to collaborate on the idea of ​​musical arrangement of the beautiful green square between the Philharmonic and the Church of St. Nicholas along with Tokarnia – Patrycja Tokarska, which is the partner of the concert. As a result of this cooperation, Symphony No. 1 was created. Acording to the composer, it is a musical situation-installation, which opens the participants to new ways of experiencing sound, usually unheard of in a traditional concert. We will be able to "walk through" the sound with the body, lie on the ground to listen to it, or sit down between the musicians.

The second part of the event will take place in the Szczecin Philharmonic building. Musicians scattered in the concert hall will once again take the audiene for a musical journey, which will allow them to compare the sound of the symphony and individual instruments in both places – in the bosom of nature and in the Philharmonic. Admission free!

More information at: https://filharmonia.szczecin.pl/wydarzenia/1098-Park_Symfonia__Wojtek_Blecharz

The upcoming concert of the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra entitled "A Musical Feast" will take place on 21 June 2019 at 7:30pm. It will be an opportunity to listen to Polish and Russian symphonic works performed by the orchestra under Maestro Alexander Vedernikov and pianist Andrei Korobeinikov.

Sinfonia Varsovia will start a concert with Stanisław Moniuszko's Fairytale on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth. After that, the audience will listen to a rarely presented Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major Op. 44 by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. A virtuoso solo part will be performed by Andrei Korobeinikov – an acclaimed Russian pianist and perfect interpreter of Tchaikovsky's works. The concert will end with the Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information CentrePOLMIC.

More information at: www.sinfoniavarsovia.org 

German conductor Thomeas Culb will lead the Elbląg Chamber Orchestra during the concert on June 16, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. in the concert hall of the State Music Schools Complex in Elbląg.

German critics described him as a "sovereign interpreter". No wonder, since Thomas Kalb's original and ambiguous musical creations surprises even the most sophisticated music lovers. As one critic stated, "a conductor who, from every note, develops a bouquet of ideas and transfers his creativity to musicians". Under the baton of Thomas Kalb, the Elbląg chamber musicians will perform Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 12 in C minor D 703, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's String Symphony No. 12 in G minor, Edvard Grieg's String Quartet No. 1 in G minor Op. 27, and Canzona di barocco for string orchestra by Henryk Czyż.

The concert is held under the patronage of the PWM Edition as part of the TUTTI.pl project promoting the performances of Polish music.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Information on tickets at: http://www.eok.elblag.eu/pl/news/kameralne-oblicza-thomasa-kalba