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The Piano Department of the Academy of Music in Łódź invites you on 30-31 March 2021 to the 3rd Young Pedagogues Piano Forum. The event consists of lecture sessions, open lessons and concerts. Piano teachers, pupils and students can participate free of charge in all online activities on the YouTube channel of the Academy of Music in Łódź.

Pianists from Łódź, Poznań, Warsaw, Bydgoszcz, Kraków, Wrocław, Gdańsk, and Katowice prepared a series of lectures on piano performance practice. The 3rd Forum will also include online master classes and two concerts.

The lecture sessions will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday from 10.00 a.m. The list of speakers will include: Michał Mossakowski, Jaime Peñate Conde, Szczepan Kończal, Julia Kociuban-Maximov, Adam Goździewski, Michał Michalski, Paweł Wakarecy, and Mateusz Kurcab. Among the discussed topics will be piano works by Grażyna Bacewicz, Isaac Albeniz, and Gabriel Fauré, music performance issues or the theory of affects in practice. The pedagogues will also conduct online master classes on both days, and then perform during the afternoon concerts. The repertoire will correspond with the topics of the morning lectures.

A detailed schedule of online lectures and master classes as well as two concert programmes can be found at: http://www.amuz.lodz.pl/ 

The 25th edition of the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival will take place from 20 March to 2 April 2021. The concerts will be live streamed online to the public. The festival events will be broadcast by Polish Radio 2.

The festival’s theme – "Beethoven and Penderecki. The Sphere of Sacrum" – defines the programme of the concerts, which will feature both religious works and those that reflect the human spiritual dimension in its broadest sense. The festival will highlight foremost Polish symphonic and choral ensembles as well as an array of renowned vocalists, including Natalia Rubiś, Iwona Hossa, Karolina Sikora, Anna Lubańska, Aleksandra Kubas-Kruk, Krystian Krzeszowiak, Mariusz Godlewski, Łukasz Konieczny, Tomasz Konieczny.

In the inaugural concert, Maestro Andrzej Boreyko and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Beethoven’s Mass in C major and two works by Krzysztof Penderecki: Adagietto from Paradise Lost and Agnus Dei from Polish Requiem; in the closing concert, he will conduct works by Penderecki, Pärt, Ravel and Kanczeli (European premiere of Libera me).

Maestro Jerzy Maksymiuk and Sinfonia Varsovia will present an all-Beethoven repertoire. Symphony concerts will be performed by Polish ensembles such as the Polish Radio Orchestra in Warsaw conducted by Michał Klauza (works by Penderecki and Olivier Messiaen), Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra under Dawid Runtz (works by Beethoven and Sibelius, Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E flat major with cadenzas by K. Penderecki performed by Gábor Boldoczki), as well as Sinfonietta Cracovia led by Jurek Dybał (works by Penderecki, Takemitsu and Barber). The Silesian String Quartet’s chamber concert featuring the complete string quartets by Krzysztof Penderecki promises to be intriguing.

The programme of the event: http://beethoven.org.pl/ 

Professor Ryszard Zimak, conductor and teacher, rector of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in 1999-2005 and 2012-2016, long-time conductor of the National Philharmonic Choir, then conductor and director of the Warsaw Chamber Opera Choir, died on 28 March 2021 at the age of 74.

In 1971, he graduated with honours from the Department of Music Education at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and started working at his alma mater. He was vice-dean and dean of the Faculty of Music Education, vice-rector for science and didactics, rector of the Fryderyk Choppin Academy of Music. He participated in the works of the European Conferences of Rectors of the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC) and the Association of Baltic Academies of Music (ABAM). In the years 2002-2005 he was the chairman of the Conference of Rectors of Art Academies (KRUA) and a member of the Presidium of the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland (KRASP).

He was an assistant conductor (1973-1974) and then a conductor (1977-1983) of the National Philharmonic Choir. From 1983 to 2005, he was the conductor of the Warsaw Chamber Opera and the director of the Chamber Choir. He has performed in many European countries, as well as in South Korea, Taiwan and the USA. From July 2005 to January 2007 he was the Director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute.

He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, the Order of Merit for Polish Culture, an individual award of the Minister of Culture and Art and the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture "Gloria Artis".

Michał Balas, a student of the Grażyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łódź, is the winner of the 1st Polish National Dominik Połoński Cello Competition, which ended on 28 March 2021. The young cellist delighted the jurors with his sincerity, great virtuosity and playing finesse.

Michał Balas received the title of "Cello Individuality 2021", a statuette funded by the Połoński Family and designed by Jadwiga Gajda-Lusina, and a number of awards, mainly invitations to concerts and recitals. As the winner, Michał Balas will be promoted by TVP Kultura and Polish Radio Channel 2. In addition, he received the Marcin Mazur Violin Making Studio award for the best student of the Academy of Music in Łódź and – like other outstanding participants – sheet music editions of the latest cello compositions by contemporary Polish composers from Merakel Music and Printing Publishing House in Łódź.

The jury also selected five other participants who were awarded diplomas for outstanding cellists and extra-statutory prizes: Mateusz Błaszczak (FCUM Warsaw), Dominik Drewniak (AM Poznań), Jakub Lemański (AM Łódź), Maria Leszczyńska (UMFC Warsaw) and Agata Nowak (AM Bydgoszcz). The distinguished participants received numerous non-statutory prizes. Dominik Drewniak received an invitation from the Academy of Music in Krakow to a recital as part of the Krakow Cello Spring 2022 and two private awards: one founded by Professor Stanisław Firlej for the performance of Franz Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata (1000 PLN) and one awarded by the honorary chairman of the jury Izabela Połońska (rental of Dominik Połoński's cello for three years). Agata Nowak received two invitations to concerts with chamber orchestras, which she received from the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy and the Radom Chamber Orchestra, both in cooperation with Połońska Art Agency. The Pro Cello Foundation from Poznań invited Jakub Lemański to a concert as part of the 1st Summer Music Course in Szamotuły, Połońska Art Agency funded three more awards – chamber concerts for Dominik Drewniak, Urszula Markowska and Agata Nowak, who also received a special award from TVP Kultura.

36 students of Polish music academies entered the competition by submitting their recordings. The jury was composed of: prof. dr hab. Stanisław Firlej (chairman), prof. dr hab. Zdzisław Łapiński, dr hab. Tomasz Lisiecki, dr hab. Marcin Zdunik and dr hab. Jacek Rogala. The honorary chairman was dr Izabela Połońska – the wife of the patron of the competition, who died less than three years ago. After listening to all the recitals, the members of the jury unanimously emphasized the unexpectedly high quality of the recordings and their special atmosphere.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information: http://www.amuz.lodz.pl/pl/wydarzenia/konkurs-wiolonczelowy-im-dominika-polonskiego 

On the first anniversary of the death of Krzysztof Penderecki, the most outstanding Polish contemporary composer, a world authority in the field of classical music, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute invites you to  "Penderecki's Garden" – a virtual space filled with music, films and texts devoted to the maestro. From 8.00 p.m. on 29 March 2021, you will be able to watch a unique concert in the virtual amphitheater of "Penderecki's Garden".

Krzysztof Penderecki's great non-musical work – the Garden in Lusławice – inspired the creation of a special digital platform dedicated to the composer. PendereckisGarden.pl, just like a real garden, will flourish and will be enriched with new content and functionalities over time.

"Penderecki's Garden" provides a comprehensive overview of the composer's legacy, presenting the scale and significance of the cultural phenomenon of Penderecki's music, which intersects with many genres, including film music, rock, jazz, classical and electronic music. The artists themselves testify to the phenomenon of Penderecki's music: Hania Rani, Max Richter, Robert Piotrowicz, Skalpel, Paweł Romańczuk, Jeajoon Ryu and Piotr Orzechowski were commissioned by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute to create works dedicated to the composer. New, short pieces – audio, visual and audiovisual – make up the landscape of the digital garden, in which Penderecki is recalled by, among others: Anne-Sophie Mutter, Arto Noras, Jeajoon Ryu, Katarzyna Budnik-Gałązka, Szymon Nehring, Janusz Wawrowski and Marcin Zdunik.

The project, also available in English, is aimed at people from all over the world. From music lovers, through those who know Krzysztof Penderecki's music only from films by David Lynch or Stanley Kubrick, to those who do not know it at all. The concert on 29 March will feature the premiere of new composition commissions from the Institute: Prelude a la Cadenza by Hania Rani and Testament by Max Richter. In addition, Atom String Quartet will improvise on selected works by Krzysztof Penderecki.

The concert will be available at: https://pendereckisgarden.pl/en/the-amphitheatre