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The 19th Music Gardens Festival will be held on 30 June – 28 July 2019 in the Grand Courtyard of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, under a huge, air-conditioned tent, which can accommodate 1000 spectators.

The Music Gardens Festival has been taking place in Warsaw since 2001. Every year, the Festival programme is comprised of rebroadcasts of the best opera and ballet productions (from, among other houses, the Metropolitan Opera and the Bolshoi Theatre, as well as the Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg and Bregenz Festivals), live concerts – both symphonic and chamber music – as well as music films and film recordings of concerts. Also a special educational and artistic programme for children is organized as part of the festival: the Children’s Music Gardens.

The programme of the 19th Gardens will include 21 film screenings and 5 live concerts. The festival prologue will feature film music of Krzysztof Komeda, Henryk Kuźniak and Jerzy Matuszkiewicz. During the inauguration concert, Janusz Wawrowski, who plays the Stradivarius violin from 1685, together with the Warsaw Players' string orchestra will present, among others, works by Mieczysław Karłowicz and Mieczysław Weinberg. Songs from Moniuszko's Songbook for Home Use will be presented on 15 July in the original interpretation by Agata Zubel, Andrzej Bauer and Cezary Duchnowski.

Since 2008, another inspiration for successive editions of the Festival has been the culture and art of the countries taking over the leadership of the European Council on the day the festival begins, i.e. in the second half of each year. This year, no less than three countries will serve as the Guests of Honor: Finland, which begins its presidency at the European Council on 1 July 2019; Romania, which will lead the Council in the first half of 2019; and, for the second time, Austria. On 8 July, an evening devoted to Leonardo da Vinci will include a concert of Sławomir Zubrzycki on viola organista, an instrument invented by Leonardo da Vinci.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Full programme available at: https://www.ogrodymuzyczne.pl/ 

7th International Copernicus Choir Festival and Competition "Per Musicam ad Astra" will be held on 29 June – 3 July 2019 in Toruń and Chełmża. The event is organized by the "Astrolabium" Choral Music Enthusiasts Society in Toruń and co-organized by the German agency Meeting Music and the Tumska 14 Association in Chełmża.

This year's edition will feature ensembles from the Philippines, Indonesia, Lithuania, Latvia, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, Taiwan and the USA. The programme of the 7th edition of "Per Musicam ad Astra" will include competition auditions and festival concerts with the participation of the contending choirs top out with a competition for the Nicolaus Copernicus Grand Prix in the amount of 5,000 EUR. Two of the the festival events, the aim of which is to present the broad spectrum of choral music, support the work of young composers and promote Polish culture, deserve special attention.

On 1 July in the Main Hall of the Artus Court, the proMODERN ensemble will present the proMODERN shakespired programme featuring music of Polish composers inspired by the works of Shakespeare. The concert is organized in cooperation with the Marshal's Office of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship as part of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the Local Government. A special concert entitled Swinging chimes – the spinner in distress will feature jazz arrangements of nineteenth-century music, including Stanisław Moniuszko's compositions, made by Jarek Kostka.

For all concerts and auditions the entrance is free. Only for the inauguration concert and 2 special concerts there will be free tickets available to collect at the box office of the Artus Court on weekdays between 12-18pm and, subject to availability, before the concert.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://www.facebook.com/PerMusicamAdAstra/ and http://pmaa.pl 

The Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus under the baton of Mirosław Jacek Błaszczyk will present works of George Gershwin and Georges Bizet on 29 June 2019 at 7pm at the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio. The renowned Polish pianist Paweł Kowalski will perform as a soloist.

The life of a piece of incidental music is often ephemeral – it does not outlast the run of a specific theatrical play for which it was written. Yet there are some exceptions from this rule. L’Arlésienne (also known as The Girl from Arles) is a play based on a novel by an eminent French writer Alphonse Daudet, an eulogist of beauty and the culture of Provence. Bizet arranged four particularly impressive fragments for an orchestra, featuring, inter alia, themes from Provençal folk music. After Bizet’s premature death, his friend, Ernest Guiraud, collated the second suite on the basis of surviving drafts. In time, both spectacular and colourful cycles turned out to be a major success and built up fame of the author, who had died at 37 in poverty, grief-stricken and with a sense that he had been completely underrated…

With the American composer George Gershwin, Bizet shared both his first name and nearly the same age at which both authors, all too soon, died – yet the similarities end here. Gershwin rose quickly to fame and recognition as a composer who, in an original approach, introduced elements of jazz into his symphonic and operatic music. This is also a characteristic of his Concerto in F Major, composed (1925) right after the immensely successful Rhapsody in Blue. In the intervening period of just one year between the two works, Gershwin’s talent and skills developed remarkably – the new piece, orchestrated by the author himself, is also a proof of excellent knowledge of form and facture, which was appreciated by both the audience and the critics, but also by pianists, who often include it in their repertoires.

Piotr Maculewicz

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://sinfoniaiuventus.pl/gershwin-bizet/ 

The inauguration concert of the 20th Touring Festial of the Łódź Philharmonic "Colors of Poland" will be held on 29 June 2019 at 7.30pm in the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Nicholas in Łowicz.

In the jubilee year of the Łódź Philharmonic Choir, the programme of the "Colors of Poland" festival has to include a performance of this experienced ensemble. The choir has been enriching the repertoire of the Philharmonic since 1969. Previously, it operated as an amateur band.

The celebration of the golden jubilee began on 17 February 2019 and it will last until March 2020. During this time, there will be over a dozen concerts presenting diverse repertoire. "The philharmonic choir is composed of talented, fully engaged artists - professional enthusiasts whose skills have been appreciated not only by music lovers from Łódź – emphasizes Tomasz Bęben, the general director of the Łódź Philharmonic. – I'm glad that from season to season the choir becomes more and more recognizable as an ensemble of our institution".

The concert in Łowicz will feature works from various eras, from Baroque, through Classicism, to the 20th and 21st centuries. We will listen to, among others, the premiere of Glosa for trumpet and mixed choir by Krzysztof Grzeszczak, a composer associated with Łódź. The work is dedicated to: "Dawid Ber and the A. Rubinstein Łódź Philharmonic Choir on the occasion of the 50th Jubilee". Gloria by Sławomir Kaczorowski will also be performed for the first time. The programme will also include Missa Brevis by Krzysztof Penderecki and Bibi Synku, bi by Anna Rocławska.

More information at: https://filharmonia.lodz.pl/

The 11th edition of the Jerzy Waldorf Summer Festival in Radziejowice will be held between 28 June and 6 July 2019.

The year 2019 sees the 200th anniversary of the birth of Stanisław Moniuszko. The House of Creative Work in Radziejowice joins the anniversary celebrations by devoting three of the nine festival concerts to this outstanding composer. The festival will be inaugurated by Dziady-Widma with the text of the second part of Dziady by Adam Mickiewicz and music from the Widma by Stanisław Moniuszko. The dramatic spectacle in the staging and direction of Ryszard Peryt will be performed by the Polish Royal Opera.

The programme of festival concerts will also include works by Adam Jarzębski, Zygmunt Noskowski, Karol Szymanowski, Grażyna Bacewicz and Krzysztof Komeda. Among the performers we will find the Symphony Orchestra of the Oskar Kolberg Świętokrzyska Philharmonicin Kielce, Elbląg Chamber Orchestra, Royal String Qurtet, Jerzy Semkow Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus and renowned soloists. The host of the festival evenings will be, as every year, Jerzy Kisielewski. All concerts will take place in the Festival Tent. Admission free!

Full programme available at: http://palacradziejowice.pl/xi-letni-festiwal-im-jerzego-waldorffa-w-radziejowicach/