news

Bydgoszcz | 57th Bydgoszcz Music Festival

57th edition of the Bydgoszcz Music Festival will take place on 20 September – 11 October 2019 at the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Pomeranian Philharmonic, featuring ten concerts under the slogan "Contrasts – songs from different sides".

The festival will present vocal and instrumental works of different eras, incuding less known but extremely attractive genres of music – from songs from the Okinawa island region in Japan, through the presentation of songs inspired by the Kashubian folklore (the premiere of the cycle of twelve Kashubian songs God's Will by Łukasz Godyla), to the performance of the original "Zaboracy' Folk Theater from Brusy. A separate concert will be dedicated to the cantatas of Stanisław Moniuszko. During the "Silver Screen Vocals" concert, which will be accompanied by live visualizations, we will listen to music by Fryderyk Chopin, Wojciech Kilar, Michał Lorenc and Krzesimir Dębski. The "Evening of Songs", held under the patronage of the PWM Edition as part of the TUTTI.pl project promoting the performances of Polish music, will including works by Karol Szymanowski (Four Polish Dances, Penthesilea) and Witold Lutosławski (Chantefleurs et Chantefables).

Among the performers, there will be outstanding Polish and foreign musicians, including the Henryk Mikołaj Górecki Silesian Philharmonic Choir in Katowice, the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Choir of the European Art Center, the Capella Bydgostiensis Chamber Orchestra, the Astrolabium Choir from Toruń, the Chamber Choir of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, the Taras Shevchenko National Opera Choir of Ukraine, the famous group L'Arpeggiata with their latest project Himmelsmusik (the Polish premiere will take place in Bydgoszcz) and a group of internationally renowned conductors and soloists.

Full programme available at: http://www.filharmonia.bydgoszcz.pl/

Zielona Góra | Inauguration of the 2019/2020 season

The inauguration concert of the 2019/2020 season of the Tadeusz Baird Zielona Góra Philharmonic will take place on 20 September 2019 at 7 p.m., featuring works by Franz Liszt, Sergey Rachmaninov and Mieczysław Weinberg.

In 2019, 100 years have passed since the birth of Mieczysław Weinberg – Polish composer whose music remained little known for many years. Today, his works are admiried in the musical world. While remaining in the neo-romantic aesthetics, he created his own characteristic musical language. Polish melodies, Op. 47 No. 2 for rochestra were composed in 1950 as an expression of longing for the homeland, which the composer left in 1939. They are written in a simple, folcloric style, with references to such dances as oberek, krakowiak, kujawiak, and polonaise. At the outbreak od WWII Weinberg moved to Minsk to continue his musical studies started in Poland, and since 1943 he lived in Moscow. The greatest popularity brought him the score written for the film The Cranes are Flying, awarded the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1958.

During the inaugural concert, we will also listen to Franz Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major and Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, Op. 45. The Symphony Orchestra of the Zielona Góra Philharmonic will be conducted by Czesław Grabowski. Pianist Karol Radziwonowicz will perform as a soloist.

More information at: http://filharmoniazg.pl/

Rzeszów | 1st Stanisław Moniuszko International Competition of Polish Music

The Stanisław Moniuszko International Competition of Polish Music in Rzeszów will take place on 20-27 September 2019. It is a new cultural initiative which purpose is to promote Polish music around the world and make the listeners realise the quality and significance of the musical legacy of Stanisław Moniuszko and many other distinguished Polish composers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The first edition of the Competition is intended for two categories of participants – pianists and chamber ensembles. The programme will include works mainly from the 19th and 20th century, selected from the works of 50 Polish composers.

Competition auditions will be held at the Artur Malawski Podkarpacka Philharmonic in Rzeszów on 21-26 September 2019, and the winners' concert – on 27 September. The performers will be the Artur Malawski Philharmonic Orchestra in Rzeszów under the direction of Jerzy Salwarowski and Tomasz Chmiel as well as the winners of the competition. The event will be repeated on 29 September at the National Philharmonic.

The competition is organized by the Institute of Music and Dance. The event is co-organized by the Artur Malawski Podkarpacka Philharmonic in Rzeszów. The first edition of the Competition is held under the National Patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda in the 100th Anniversary of Independence.

More information at: www.konkursmuzykipolskiej.pl

Warsaw | 62nd International Festival Of Contemporary Music "Warsaw Autumn"

The 62nd edition of the "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music will take place on 20-28 September 2019 under the slogan "Pneuma – ExpandedReality". The festival features over 50 events, including 29 in the main thread, two within Warsaw Autumn Hits the Club, seven at Little Warsaw Autumn, and a dozen fringe events.

This year’s "Warsaw Autumn" concludes a specific triptych of ideas that inspired our programmes between 2017 and 2019. 2017’s “Trans/avant-garde” addressed musical radicalism and various avant-garde movements with their social agendas. 2018’s “Res Publica” tackled different aspects of identity, shaping our consciousness, including national and social. 2019’s “Pneuma” nurtures the nature of the undefined. Regardless of its themes, "Warsaw Autumn" is primarily an overview of new music from recent years, with references to twentieth-century music.

The main thread of the Festival will feature eleven first performances of works by Monika Dalach, Magdalena Długosz, Paweł Hendrich, Zygmunt Krauze, Cécile Marti, Adrián Mocanu, Piotr Roemer, Agnieszka Stulgińska, Piotr Tabakiernik, Tadeusz Wielecki, and Sławomir Wojciechowski. Further premieres will be featured at Warsaw Autumn Hits the Club and Little Warsaw Autumn. Especially interesting will be two large musical shows: Aperghis’s Thinking Things presented by IRCAM; and Rønsholdt’s Gaze for Gaze celebrated by the Danish ensemble SCENATET, the VRC choir and …the audience. One of the Festival’s threads will be the music of Swiss female composers: Cécile Marti and Katharina Rosenberger, featured in a spectacular concert of the Basel Sinfonietta, as well as Icelandic female composers: Thurídur Jónsdóttir and Bára Gísladóttir, whose works are included in the opening and final concert.

Full programme available at: http://www.warszawska-jesien.art.pl/wj2019/home-2019

38th International Festival "Chopin in the Colors of Autumn"

The 38th International Festival 'Chopin in the Colors of Autumn' will take place in Ostrów Wielkopolski and Antonin between 19 and 22 September 2019.

The inauguration concert will take place at the Ostrów Cultural Center, featuring the Poznań Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Łukasz Borowicz. The 200th anniversary of the birth of Stanisław Moniuszko will be honored with the performance of Mazur from the opera Halka. The programme will also include Łukasz Krupiński's rendition of Piano Concerto in A minor by Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Ingolf Wunder's rendition of Frederic Chopin's Concerto in E minor, Op. 11 and Allegro de concert in A major, Op. 46 arrangeed for piano and symphony orchestra.

During the next three festival days at the Hunting Palace of the Radziwiłł Princes in Antonin we will have a chance to listen to, among others, songs by Chopin, Perkowski, Karłowicz, Malawski, Moniuszko, Niewiadomski and Szymanowski performed by soprano Edyta Piasecka and pianist Bartłomiej Kominek. There will be a late evening concert with jazz music performed by Włodzimierz Nahorny Trio, who will present compositions inspired by the music of Chopin, Paderewski, Szymanowski and Komeda. The final concert will feature world renowned pianist Anna Malikova, graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, winner of the XII International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition.

Full programme available at: http://ckis.kalisz.pl/wydarzenia/38-miedzynarodowy-festiwal-chopin-w-barwach-jesieni/

Warsaw | Sinfonia Varsovia & guests: Azrieli Music Prizes

Works by the 2018 Azrieli Music Prize-Winners – Avner Dorman and Kelly-Marie Murphy – will be given their European premiere by the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra at POLIN Museum on 15 September 2019 at 7 p.m.

Established in 2014 by the Azrieli Foundation, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) offer opportunities for the discovery, creation, performance and celebration of excellence in music composition. The Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music is awarded to a composer who has written the best new major work of Jewish music in the past ten years. In 2018, this Prize was awarded to Israeli-American composer Avner Dorman for his composition Nigunim for violin and orchestra.

The Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music is awarded to encourage composers to engage with the question “What is Jewish music?” This prize is given to the composer who proposes a response to this question in the shape of a musical work that displays the utmost creativity, artistry and musical excellence. In 2018, The Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music was awarded to Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy to create the work En el escuro es todo uno (In the Darkness All is One) – a double concerto for cello, harp and orchestra.

On 15 September, the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra will perform the European premiere of the 2018 Prize-winning works on the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews stage. Maestro Yoav Talmi will conduct the concert which will also feature outstanding Canadian soloists: COULOIR (cellist Ariel Barnes and harpist Heidi Krutzen), violinist Lara St. John and soprano Sharon Azrieli. The program of the concert will also include compositions by Yoav Talmi, Srul Irving Glick and Mieczysław Weinberg.

More information at: https://www.polin.pl/azrieli-music-prizes

Warsaw | Inauguration of the 2019/2020 artistic season of the Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra

Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra will inaugurate the 2019/2020 artistic season with a concert on 14 September 2019 at 7 p.m. at the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio. The honorary patronage over the event was taken by the Embassy of Switzerland and the Polish UNESCO Committee.

Inauguration of the new season will begin with lively, dazzling and insterstingly instrumentated Overture by Antoni Szałowski – one of the Polish students of Nadia Boulanger, who used to appreciate neoclassic style present as well in this piece.

The Leningrad audience rewarded the premiere of Symphony No. 5 by Dmitri Shostakovich, directed by Mrawiński in 1937, with 30 minutes of applause. Despite accusations of a certain eclecticism, the scale of Shostakovich’s talent determined the lasting success of this symphony, and its neo-Mahlerian power and expression still moves listeners today.

One generation after Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke also struggled against the many obstacles faced by an ambitious artist in the USSR. Today, he is acknowledged as an important precursor and representative of post-modernism in music and his Concerto Grosso No. 1 of 1977 was one of the flagship pieces in this trend, representing a humorous (but not mocking) combination of neo- and post-Baroque, and modern elements.

The inauguration of the new season of the Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra will feature this piece, played by solo performers Marcin Markowicz and Jakub Jakowicz and conducted by Nicolae Moldoveanu, a valuable Romanian conductor who is active as opera and philharmonic performer around the world.

Piotr Maculewicz

More information at: https://sinfoniaiuventus.pl/

Zabrze | 7th Krzysztof Penderecki International Festival – Level 320

Wold-class artists – Cameron Carpenter, Rafael Payare, Jerzy Stuhr – will take part in the 7th Krzysztof Penderecki International Festival – level 320 in Zabrze on September 14-19, 2019.

The Festival will be inaugurated by Maestro Penderecki himself. He will conduct his Adagio from the Symphony No.3 for string orchestra and Mazur from Moniuszko's opera The Haunted Manor, in the year of the celebrations of the composer's 200th birth anniversary. Rafael Payare, director of the famous San Diego Symphony Orchestra, together with Sinfonietta Cracovia – who celebrates 25th anniversary this year – will interpret Penderecki's Symphony No. 4 'Adagio' and Schuman's Symphony No. 4.

The concert on 15 September will feature Cameron Carpenter, whom the American press described as "one of the rare musicians who changes the game of his instrument". The artist will present his renditions of Bach, Poulenc and Penderecki, playing on specially constructed organs that he will bring to Zabrze. The Festival will end on 19 September with a famous interpretation of The double bass play by Patrick Süskind, directed and acted by Jerzy Stuhr. All events will take place 320 meters underground in the Guido Mine.

More information at: www.penderecki320.com

Szczecin | II MUSIC.DESIGN.FORM Festival 2019

'Audioluminescence' became the slogan of the second edition of the MUSIC.DESIGN.FORM Festival which retuns to the Szczecin Philharmonic on 13-15 September 2019.

Sound and light will be treated literally as an artistic material, and metaphorically as a direction of the festival activities. To address this topic, the organisers invited artists, activists and animators to use music, image and architecture in a non-standard way. Once again, the MDF Festival will create a unique opportunity to experience art with different senses. Being led by sound and light, the participants will get to to unexpected corners of the building and will be surprised by the unusual visualizations in the white Lobby. The facade of the Philharmonic will also shine again.

We can expect concerts by Polish and foreign stars, premiere performances prepared for the festival, as well as exhibitions, workshops and educational meetings. The first day of the Festival will feature a presentation of several projects of the group of Polish composers and performers 'panGenerator', which combines bits and photons in the context of new media art. On 14 September, composer and conductor Michał Janocha will present his multimedia spectacle I hear you are watching. The performance is an artistic and scientific expedition, thanks to which the youngest listeners will discover that modern technologies can "change" the sound of instruments into light. Later that day at the Philharmonic white hall, there will be a Szczecin premiere of the full performance of the latest project of the Kwadrofonik ensemble Urlicht – variations based on the chorale and its counterpoint, which resound separately or enter into a dialogue with each other.

Full programme available at: https://mdf.filharmonia.szczecin.pl