official patronage

Premiere of the new album Polish Landscape by Les Femmes ensemble will take place on 8 September 2019 at 7 p.m. at the St. I. Witkiewicz Theatre in Zakopane as part of the 'Music on the Heights' Festival.

The album is an anthology of Polish vocal lyrics of the last 150 years. The rich selection of songs by Polish composers from the Romantic era to the present day is the basis of the ensemble's original performance, staged under the title Polish Landscape. Individual songs create a script of an artistic spectacle about the experiences and emotions that have accompanied women over the last two centuries. Part of the selected repertoire was recorded for the first time (Stanisław Niewiadomski's Cupid and Heart, Bohdan Riemer's Sunset, Stefan Kisielewski's Request for happy islands, Romuald Twardowski's Vocalization).

Coming from the Tri-City, Les Femmes is known for their innovative approach to classical music. By realizing their own artistic needs, the artists created a new stage form – opera collage. As a chamber ensemble, they successfully recreate ambitious repertoire, enhancing the musical effect with acting, set design and beautiful costumes. Works connected by a coherent plot are shown in a new context and create a captivating musical collage with a consistent stage action. In addition, the ensemble uses the latest technical improvements: visual and sound effects as well as multimedia graphics.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: http://www.muzykanaszczytach.com/pl/ 

Next edition of the historic concerts "Music in the Temples" will take place on 23-25 Septembe 2019 in Częstochowa. This is a unique, mystical journey through time, accompanied by soothing sounds of sacred choral music.

The concerts will take place in three Churches in Częstochowa: St Joseph Church, St. Barbara and Andrew the Apostle Church and Church of Of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The programme will include pearls of Polish and European a cappella music – works by Juliusz Łuciuk, Paweł Łukaszewski and Romuald Twardowski. The concert will be performed by the Częstochowa Philharmonic Choir Collegium Cantorum conducted by maestro Janusz Siadlak. A short historical introduction will be provided by the head of the Częstochowa Documentation Center, Dr Juliusz Sętowski.

The project organized by the Institute of Art Development in cooperation with the Częstochowa Philharmonic was co-financed by the Częstochowa City Hall and the Polish History Museum in Warsaw.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://www.filharmonia.com.pl/ 

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/ 

The 75th anniversary season of the Silesian Philharmonic will be inaugurated on 20 September 2019 at 7 p.m. with a concert featuring the Silesian Chamber Orchestra with a special guest – finalist of the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition in 2014, Sara Domjanić.

Twenty-two-year-old Croatian violinist plays a Stephan von Baehr “Antonio Stradivari – Golden Period” violin, which was made in 2014. Together with the Silesian Chamber Orchestra, she will perfrom Las cuatro estaciones porteñas by Astora Piazzolli. The concert programme will also include Three pieces in old style by Henryk Mikołaj Górecki as well as three three different divertimenti – composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Grażyna Bacewicz and Mikołaj Górecki.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://filharmonia-slaska.eu/production/inauguracja-75-jubileuszowego-sezonu-artystycznego-filharmonii-slaskiej/?=2 

SEE: Facebook Event

On 28 September 2019 at 7 p.m. at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Jerzy Semkow Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus conducted by Daniel Stabraw, who will also appear as a soloist that evening, will perform symphonic works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert and Andrzej Panufnik.

Andrzej Panufnik, an outstanding Polish composer who resided in Great Britain since the 1950s, has developed his own individual style, a rich and genuine harmonic language in particular; at the same time, he had always been fond of clear forms and showed a visible preference for beautiful melodies and a euphonia of sound, which linked him to the Neoclassical current. All these features can be found in the Violin Concerto composed at the commission of the great violin player Yehudi Menuhin. Shortly before the commission, the composer, who was the son of the splendid luthier Tomasz Panufnik, was given his father’s precious violin previously owned by Dawid Ojstrach. Deeply touched by this gift, he was even more eager to accept the commission. “I believe that when I composed a piece for violin, I was deeply affected by my childhood memories, such as the smell of wood my father made his instruments of, or my mother’s play. Thus, for me, the piece was a form of a journey back, inevitably saturated with the spirit of Poland […] I therefore decided to focus on the violin as an instrument with a warm, expressive sound” – he wrote about his piece. The Concerto’s values and an excellent interpretation of Menuhin contributed to its immense popularity. The piece was played by numerous violinists, eagerly recorded and still remains one of Andrzej Panufnik’s most famous works.

The excellent soloist and conductor, Daniel Stabrawa – the first concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic and, since 1995, the director and conductor of Capella Bydgostiensis, will complement the concert’s programme with a youthful, charming and melodic Violin Concerto No. 1 by Mozart and Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 (similarly composed by a teenage genius).

Piotr Maculewicz

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://sinfoniaiuventus.pl/28wrzesnia/ 

On 27 and 28 September 2019, the Municipal Cultural Center in Nowa Ruda (2A Strzelecka St.) will host improvisation workshops for children entitled "Tell me a story". The events are organized by the Polish Society for Contemporary Music.

The workshops are a continuation of a project commenced in 2015. During this year's edition, the classes will take place in two series: in Nowa Ruda, Lower Silesia (27-28 September 2019) and in Skoki, Krajenka and Wągrowiec, Greater Poland (24-26 October 2019). They are intended for groups of 25 children at the age of 3-5 years and for children aged 6-8 years. In total, there will be 12 workshops for preschool and school groups as well as workshops open for children and their guardians.

The main idea of ​​the project is to trigger graphic-inspired improvisations. Children will create their own stories based on picture books. Improvisation is the most basic, primary and joyful form of music performance, which is why the workshops combine children's creativity and imagination with books and contemporary music. The musical guest of the workshops will be the Trillingen Duo group, composed of: multi-instrumentalist Iwona Jędruch and double bassist Małgorzata Kołcz – workshop coordinator. Adventure through improvisations together with artists will be led by composer and pianist Jarosław Siwiński.

The organizers invite children aged 3-5 and 6-8 to the upcoming classes. The youngest group will learn, play and improvise from 10:00  to 11:30 a.m.; children aged 6-8 years – from 12:00 to 13:30 p.m.

Participation in the workshops is free, but due to the limited number of places, prior registration is required. Registrations for 27 September: 74 872 44 85 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Registration for 28 September: 790 395 228 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

SEE: Facebook Event

On 27-28 September 2019, the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk will host the International Moniuszko Congress "Stanisław Moniuszko in Polish and World Culture. New perspectives and interpretations” – one of the most important events of the celebration of the Moniuszko Year.

In connection with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Stanisław Moniuszko – the father of Polish national opera and one of the most important Polish composers – the thematic scope of the Congress includes the composer's biography and work as well as his artistic achievements considered both in the national-cultural context and in the perspective of socio-aesthetic situation in Europe of his time.

The Congress programme will include two plenary lectures and several dozen papers. The meeting is planned in four themetic blocks composed of four parallel sections, during which an international group of speakers will address issues from the following thematic areas:

1. Stanisław Moniuszko, the composer and his work, from the perspective of various humanistic disciplines (musicology, history, theatre studies, film studies, philology, sociology, cultural studies, etc.);

2. Trends, interpretations and perspectives in Moniuszko studies;

3. Nineteenth-century Polish music as the context and backdrop to Moniuszko’s creative output;

4. The concept of Moniuszko’s Polish national opera compared to European currents of national stage output;

5. The role of music in shaping nineteenth-century political and cultural awareness;

6. The dialectic of the socio-political and artistic domains in musical output of the nineteenth century.

The Congress will be accompanied by two concerts organized by its Gdańsk partners. On 27 September, the Fryderyk Chopin Polish Baltic Philharmonic in Gdańsk will hold a concert of Fryderyk Chopin's music, and on 28 September – the Moniuszko Gala, inaugurating the 2019/2020 seson.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Full programme available at: http://www.amuz.gda.pl/events/miedzynarodowy-kongres-moniuszkowski-stanislaw-moniuszko-w-kulturze-polskiej-i-swiatowej-nowe-perspektywy-i-interpretacje/ 

The 68th season of the Opole Philharmonic will be inaugurated by the music of its patron – Józef Elsner – on 27 September 2019 at 7 p.m.

This time, the orchestra and its director, Przemysław Neumann, will reach for the overture from the opera Jagiełło in Tenczyn. The work, existing only in the manuscript, was never recorded and certainly not performed over the last century. The beginning of the Philharmonic's season will therefore honor Elsner in the ongoing year of his 250th birthday anniversary. The programme will be complemented by Johannes Brahms'Symphony No. 2 and Fryderyk Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, featuring Krzysztof Jabłoński as a soloist.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://filharmonia.opole.pl/wydarzenia/68-sezon-artystyczny-inauguracja-68-sezonu-artystycznego/ 

The guest of the next meeting of the "Vivat Academia" series, which will take place on Thursday, 26 September 2019 at 6 p.m. in the Archdiocese Museum in Katowice, will be Prof. Leon Markiewicz – outstanding musicologist, pedagogue and publicist. The meeting and the accompanying concert will be hosted by Grażyna Brewińska.

The Institution for the Promotion and Dissemination of Music "Silesia" joined the celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music, which is the oldest academic institution in Upper Silesia. Once again, the organizers invite music lovers to a meeting held as part of the "Vivat Academia!" series, which gives the opportunity to meet the rectors of the Katowice Academy of Music.

In 1949–55, Professor Leon Markiewicz studied pedagogy and theory of music at the PWSM in Katowice – today's Academy of Music, becoming its rector in 1979–81. He has also been the head of the Music Theory Department and the head of the Music Education Department. For many years he was a lecturer at the Pedagogical University in Częstochowa. He was the director and secretary of the jury of the International Grzegorz Fitelberg Competition for Conductors in Katowice. The impressive achievements of Prof. Markiewicz covers around 140 publications, and nearly 300 reviews that appeared in the music and daily press. His research interests are focused on music analysis, Silesian music culture, all aspects of music pedagogy, and the popularization of music.

As always, the meeting led by Grażyna Brewińska will be accompanied by music. We will listen to the works by Manuel de Falla, Maurice Ravel, Karol Szymanowski and Grzegorz Fitelberg in the interpretations of graduates and current lecturers of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music – violinist Adam Mokrus and pianist Katarzyna Makowska.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://www.silesia.art.pl/