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The Wrocław Opera invites you on 14 February 2021 at 6.00 p.m to the Valentine's Day Concert entitled "Faces of Love". The carnival evening will be broadcast on YouTube in two parts: devoted to musical and operetta.

The musical part will feature an overture performed by the Wrocław Opera Orchestra conducted by Adam Banaszak and numerous fragments of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, which was premiered at the Wrocław Opera in December 2017. Martin's laughing song Words, words, words will be performed by Jakub Michalski, Kunegunda's aria Glitter and be gay will be performed by Maria Rozynek-Banaszak, and Song Old Lady by Barbara Bagińska. We also hear fragments of other musicals, including My Fair Lady or Man from La Mancha, performed by Katarzyna Haras, Maciej Krzysztyniak, Jacek Jaskuła and Tomasz Rudnicki.

The second part, devoted to operetta, will open with the overture to The Revenge of the Bat by Johann Strauss and will also feature Prince Orlofsky's cuples performed by Dorota Dutkowska. The most beautiful arias from operettas by Franz Lehár and Emmerich Kálmánn will be performed by Elżbieta Kaczmarzyk-Janczak, Eliza Kruszczyńska, Hanna Sosnowska and Łukasz Rosiak. Anna Lichorowicz will present Ludomir Różycki's Waltz Caton, and Aleksandra Opała Ah! que j’aime les militaires by Jacques Offenbach. We will also hear Edward Kulczyk and Jędrzej Tomczyk.

The concert will be hosted by two soloists: Jacek Jaskuła and Aleksander Zuchowicz, who will also sing during the evening.

Full programme is available at: https://www.opera.wroclaw.pl/1/ 

The Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra is proud to invite you on 13 February 2021 at 7.00 p.m. to a concert dedicated to the musical heritage of Italy. The programme includes an extensive selection of compositions by masters of Italian music. Also the conductor, highly regarded in his homeland, admired throughout Europe and beyond, well known to Warsaw audiences – Massimiliano Caldi – is Italian.

The repertoire will include Rossini’s impressive and incredibly beautiful overtures: to Cinderella and to The Italian Girl in Algiers, as well as compositions from the most outstanding operas composed in the later period: Prelude to Act 3 of Giuseppe Verdi’s epochal Traviata and Intermezzo from Pietro Mascagni’s veristic Cavalleria Rusticana.

The appealing programme will be completed by Concerto soirée, the author of which, Nino Rota, is primarily remembered as “Fellini’s composer” (he is also the creator of the unforgettable soundtrack to Coppola’s Godfather and films by Visconti, Zefirelli and others). Rota was a musician with an excellent “classical” composer education, admired from an early age – even he himself regretted that he owed his fame more to films than to his concertos. This brilliant composition for piano and orchestra will remind of the lesser-known face of the Italian maestro – he was admired for the brilliant virtuosity as well as for charm and wit compared to Prokofiev’s works. We will hear it performed by Maurizio Baglini, who very positively attracted the audience of the 13th International Chopin Competition in 1995, and although he didn’t win the competition at that time, his later career confirmed his great talent. Not much later he won the World Music Piano Master in Montecarlo and began active concert activity on major stages around the world. He is also a valued teacher and has been successfully managing the Amiata Piano Festival in his native Tuscany for many years now.

Piotr Maculewicz

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

The concert will be broadcast online from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music on the YouTube channel and on the website https://sinfoniaiuventus.pl/ 

The Castle Opera invites you on 13 February 2021 at 7.00 p.m. to the ballet premiere of Visions of Love / Myths choreographed by Zofia Rudnicka to the music of Fryderyk Chopin and Karol Szymanowski. The performance is co-organised by the Institute of Music and Dance as part of the "Choreographic Comissions 2021" programme.

The first part of the evening is a dance story of five women of different ages. We will see them in the park, lost in thought and frozen in the frame. Gradually, we will learn about their dreams, hopes and expectations. The protagonists' desires are as timeless as Chopin's music. Selected works by the composer, including preludes – piano miniatures, belonging to the most beautiful musical works of the artist, will create an atmospheric background for the virtuosity of classical dance and an exciting journey into the depths of a woman's soul.

The second part of the performance is the world of ancient mythology, in which fantastic transformations of deities and heroes explain phenomena taking place in nature. We will see the tragedy of Narcissus in love with himself and the metamorphosis of forest nymphs fleeing from the advances of lustful idols. Each myth is a different picture, dance and mood. All of them perfectly reflect the poetry of Szymanowski's hypnotic music, characterized by unusual tonal colors and drama. Neoclassical dance will emphasize the value of brilliant music and fully illustrate the supernatural transformations of mythical heroes.

More information: https://www.opera.szczecin.pl/ 

The Silesian Philharmonic's concert on 12 February 2021 at 7.00 p.m. will be filled with music by Mozart, Dvořák and Żeleński. The Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sebastian Perłowski will perform together with Waldemar Matera, who will delight the audience with the beautiful sound of the French horn.

Władysław Żeleński's Gavotte, Op. 45 was composed as a piano piece in the composer's late period. However, during the upcoming concert, we will listen to an arrangement for orchestra, which will certainly allow the listeners to discover new colors and different shades of the work.

Waldemar Matera, French horn player of the Silesian Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, will perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's French horn Concerto No. 3 in E flat major. Mozart wrote a total of four concertos for this instrument and to this day they are the basis of the horn's repertoire. In the 18th century, the horn did not have a valve system yet, so all the possibilities of the player were limited to producing the sound only through the appropriate positioning of the lips against the mouthpiece.

The evening will be crowned by Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 7 in D minor, commissioned by the London Philharmonic Society in 1884. In his study of the composer’s work, Otakar Šourek wrote: "Dvořák worked at the D minor Symphony with passionate concentration and in the conscious endeavor to create a work of noble proportions and content, which should surpass not only what he had so far produced in the field of symphonic composition, but which was also designed to occupy an important place in world music". This piece combines lyrical and heroic motifs with a triumphant coda in a major key.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://filharmonia-slaska.eu/ 

The first concert of the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Rune Bergmann in 2021 will be held on 12 February at 7.00 p.m. on the streaming platform https://livefilharmonia.szczecin.pl/. The programme will include Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen and Stefan Kisielewski's Concerto for chamber orchestra.

Stefan Kisielewski was one of the most colourful figures on the Polish music scene. Composing was only one of several fields of his public activity. He was also known as a writer, journalist and commentator, social and political activist. Because of his uncompromising stand in all these areas, he became an object of communist repressions. He was dismissed from the faculty of Cracow's State Higher School of Music, where he had taught theory; the periodical "Ruch Muzyczny", of which he was the founder and editor-in-chief, was closed for some time. He was banned from the Parliament, where he represented the Catholic club "Znak"; he was forbidden to publish feuilletons in the Catholic weekly "Tygodnik Powszechny"; he had to publish his books under a pen name in the underground. Despite this persecution, he always remained a great authority.

Kisielewski's music was virtually absent from philharmonic halls, both for political reasons and owing to the conservative neo-Classical style to which the composer remained faithful throughout his artistic life. He viewed music as an autonomous art, and the creative process – as multi-level organisation of sounds. He rejected all extra-musical contents, as well as the Romantic aesthetic. He composed works which were clear in form and made frequent use of classical formal patterns. His musical language combined the traditional tonality with modern atonal music. The strong element of humour and self-irony, characteristic of his works, reflected very well the personality of that man, his brilliant wit and unmanageable humour. The Concerto for chamber orchestra (1949) is one of his most famous ochestral works.

More information at: https://filharmonia.szczecin.pl/pl