news

The 'Muzyka u Źródeł' Chamber Music Festival will be held on 6–13 November 2021. Every year, concerts organised in a unique historic waterworks pump hall near Gdańsk Forest in Bydgoszcz attract fans of classical music, jazz as well as musicals.

The festival will be inaugurated by a concert #milongowo – the trio Kuropaczewski, Frąckiewicz and Miler will play a thrilling programme, the theme of which will be music in the rhythm of tango. The next evening with feature fantastic soloists of Polish musical theatres – Zofia Nowakowska, Edyta Krzemień, Damian Aleksander, Jarek Oberbek and Janek Traczyk. We will hear more and less known songs from movies and musicals.

This year's Independence Day will be celebrated during an evening concert with Polish music performed by Michał Francuz and the Barock Quartet – the programme includes piano quintets by Grażyna Bacewicz and Juliusz Zarębski. On 12 November, the organisers have planned a concert entitled #romantic. The serenades of Piotr Tchaikovsky and Carl Reinecke will be presented by the festival orchestra, which has been popular with the audience for several editions.

On the last festival evening, extremely versatile musicians will appear on stage – the Gypsy Swing Quartet. The artists present jazz and popular music in a fresh and original way.

The festival is supported by the funds of the Marshal's Office of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship and the Bydgoszcz City Hall. The main patron of the festival is the Municipal Water and Sewage Company in Bydgoszcz.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Tickets may be purchased at the ticket office before the concert and on the festival's website at: www.muzykauzrodel.com 

Joanna Bruzdowicz-Tittel (1943–2021) – composer, pianist and music critic, member of the Polish Composers' Union from 1968 – died at the age of 78 in Taillet (France).

She studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski and piano with Irena Protasewicz and Wanda Łosakiewicz at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw. She began her career as a pianist; during her studies she travelled to many places in Poland, Belgium, Austria and former Czechoslovakia to give concerts. She was a co-founder and General Secretary (between 1964-68) of the Polish section of “Jeunesses Musicales”. She received a scholarship from the French government, which enabled her to study composition with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Schaeffer and musicology under the supervision of Jacques Chailley at the Sorbonne University in Paris (1968-70).

Promoting Polish music and contemporary music was her passion. She co-founded the Groupe International de Musique Electroacoustique de Paris (GIMEP). In 1983 she established the Fryderyk Chopin Society and the Karol Szymanowski Society. In 1996 she organized the first edition of the International Music Festival in Cerét at the foot of the Pyrenees. In 2006 she initiated the opening of the Perpignan CAT.Studios – a centre for film production and distribution and a film music studio. She composed film music and wrote film scripts together with her husband (e.g. for 36 films produced for the German TV station WDR “Stahlkammer Zurich”).

In 2001 Joanna Bruzdowicz received the Order of Polonia Restituta, in December 2013 – the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis, and in 2019 – the Honorary Award of the Polish Composers' Union for many years of promoting Polish music and Polish musicians at the Festival International de Musique en Catalogne.

This year's long-term project of the Toruń Symphony Orchestra "Great Composers – Great Anniversaries" is coming to an end. The last concert entitled "Young Poland in Music" will be held on 5 November 2021 at 7.00 p.m. at the CKK Jordanki Concert Hall and will be devoted to Władysław Żeleński on the 100th anniversary of his death.

Władysław Żeleński's music was performed in concert venues across Europe during the composer's lifetime. Today it is worth recalling Maciej Negrey's words: "Władysław Żeleński belongs to those Polish composers, such as Mirecki or Noskowski, who, in the period between Chopin and Szymanowski, built both popular musical culture and high culture in Poland. Their best works can also count on a European scale, but it no longer depends on the creators, but on us".

The programme of the next concert in Toruń will include the characteristic overture In the Tatra Mountains, Op. 27, Suite of Polish Dances, Op. 47, Piano Concerto in E flat major, Op. 60, and Gavotte for symphony orchestra. The Toruń Symphony Orchestra and the famous pianist Piotr Sałajczyk will perform under the baton of Dainius Pavilionis.

All Music lovers who have purchased a ticket for the concert are invited to the introductory meeting, which will start at 6.00 p.m. at the CKK Jordanki Concert Hall. Karol Furtak will present the genesis and context of Żeleński's works.

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture, National Heritage and Sport from the Culture Promotion Fund as part of the "Music" programme, implemented by the National Institute of Music and Dance. Concert under the patronage of PWM Edition as part of the TUTTI.pl project promoting the performance of Polish music.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Ticket information: https://tos.art.pl/ 

The concert marking the 120th anniversary of the Warsaw Philharmonic, whose inaugural concert on 5 November 1901 was led by Emil Młynarski and featured Ignacy Jan Paderewski as soloist, will be devoted entirely to Polish music. On 5 November 2021 the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir will perofrm under the batons of three superb conductors each of whom has headed this institution for the past two decades: Antoni Wit, Jacek Kaspszyk and Andrzej Boreyko.

Although included as the Third in the cycle of his symphonies, Karol Szymanowski’s Song of the Night is a phenomenon that stands apart from any convention – both in terms of genre and in relation to the forms and timbral arrangements of many works written at that time. One of its author’s most original works is at the same time one of the most important achievements of Polish music at that time.

Thanks to the choice of title Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra in a way enters into a polemic with the very assumption of the genre, namely a confrontation between soloist and orchestra. And yet, the concerto is a reference to the early form of the “ensemble concerto”, in which all the musicians of an orchestra displayed the same level of quasi-soloistic virtuosity. Effervescent, colourful and perfect in its structure, the work gained lasting recognition from music lovers and conductors alike.

The audience will also witness the world premiere of Cantata to Happiness composed especially for the jubilee season by Jan A.P. Kaczmarek – the author of musical scores for over seventy films and numerous theatre plays, and a 2005 Oscar winner for his soundtrack to the film Dreamer. He has also written a great many symphonic pieces, including oratorios, commemorating the most important events of contemporary history. The programme will be complemented by Agnus Dei from Krzysztof Penderecki's Polish Requiem.

More information: http://filharmonia.pl/en/

Maestro Jerzy Maksymiuk, who celebrated his 85th birthday this year, will conduct the Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra during the concert on 6 November 2021 at 7.00 p.m. at the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio.

During the concert, the audience will have a rare opportunity to admire the most accurate interpretation possible, as Jerzy Maksymiuk will conduct the performance of his own piece, Vers per archi (2014). This miniature charms listeners with delightful sounds of the string ensemble and astonishes with an extensive variety of emotions: its arch form begins and ends with episodes filled with lyricism and nostalgia, while the middle section, which is more lively, offers a dramatic, rhapsodic mood. The piece was inspired by the memory of Hanna Czaki, a girl scout and a heroic runner of the Home Army, murdered by the Germans in 1944. "She was incredibly heroic and exceptionally sensitive. That’s why my piece starts gently and then it nearly vanishes…" – the author commented.

Maurice Ravel's colourful, grand, and sophisticated Piano Concerto in G Major will be performed by Paweł Kowalski, one of the most versatile Polish musicians. The programme will also include a brilliant and incredibly expressive string sextet – Verklärte Nacht by Arnold Schönberg, premiered in 1902. The one-movement composition with a free structure resembling a symphonic poem refers to a poem by Richard Dehmel – a rough dialogue between lovers in the moonlight, during the "transfigured night".

Piotr Maculewicz

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Ticket Information: www.sinfoniaiuventus.pl