Does music call for gender equality? It can surely defend itself. Nonetheless, the artistic advantages of excellent present-day women-composers and their eminent predecessors are worthy of being noticed and highlighted. Women have their separate and distinctive voice in Polish music. In recognition of the need to acknowledge that voice, on 29 January 2021 Anaklasis will release the CD Polish heroines of music, comprising orchestral works by Elżbieta Sikora, Hanna Kulenty, Grażyna Bacewicz, and Agata Zubel.
This most recent album in the"Sounds" series is the result of cooperation between PWM Edition and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, which aim is to create and disseminate a new canon of music by Polish women-composers by promoting Polish culture worldwide. The third project participant is the French Orchestre Pasdeloup, which has undertaken to record four pieces by outstanding Polish women-artists. The orchestra is led on this album, appropriately to the task, by Marzena Diakun, an extraordinarily gifted woman-conductor.
Elżbieta Sikora’s piece Sonosphère V. Wanda Landowska, included on the CD, combines acoustic tradition with electric modernity. The mastery of French jazz guitarist Misja Fitzgerald Michel, whose virtuosic electric guitar solo conjures up, in accordance with the composer’s intentions, the nervousness and sound colour of Jimi Hendrix’s playing, will leave no one indifferent. Hanna Kulenty’s Aisthetikos brings us in contact with metaphysical trance and musical surrealism. This work is interpreted here by excellent soloists: saxophonist Bartłomiej Duś and pianist Magdalena Duś, who premiered the piece less than a year ago at Kielce’s Świętokrzyska Philharmonic. Contradizione is a classic by the eminent composer and violin virtuoso Grażyna Bacewicz, who also was a proficient pianist and writer. Agata Zubel’s In the Shade of an Unshed Tear attempts to explore the possibilities of a Beethoven orchestra in contemporary music. Anaklasis release features the world premiere recording of this composition.
More information at: www.anaklasis.pl