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World-famous artists, recitals, chamber music, wide repertoire and interesting interpretations – you will find it all in the NOSPR concert series "Masterly". On 8 December 2019 at 6.00 p.m. Maciej Frąckiewicz, Łukasz Kuropaczewski and Marek Bracha will take us on a journey through various musical styles.

The star of the evening will be Maciej Frąckiewicz – an exquisite accordionist, winner of the Polityka Passport Award and multiple international awards. The instrumentalist actively cooperates with contemporary composers. He inspired the creation of nearly 100 new compositions. The recital at NOSPR will include the first performance of another work dedicated to Frąckiewicz, Quasi una Sonata for guitar and accordion, which he will perform with an acclaimed guitarist, Łukasz Kuropaczewski.

Moreover, the programme will include a range of accordion sonatas, from 19th-century ones, originally written for the concertina (a prototype of the bandoneon), to sophisticated contemporary works, exploring new technical possibilities offered by the accordion, including Dariusz Przybylski's Sonata da chiesa for solo accordion, Op. 72.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://www.nospr.org.pl/ 

Mieczysław Weinberg was born on 8 December 1919 in Warsaw. He is the author of the opera titled The Passenger, the Kaddish Symphony and over 150 other pieces which are now being re-discovered by musicians all across the world. On the occasion of the composer’s 100th birthday, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews invites its audience to the three concerts on three consecutive evenings, on 7-9 December 2019.

On Saturday, 7 December, flutist Ania Karpowicz, pianist Marek Bracha and the Hashtag Strings will perform a programme composed of Weinberg’s early pieces. For the evening’s finale, we will listen to the Double Concerto for flute, grand piano and strings, a new piece by young Warsaw-based composer Mikołaj Majkusiak, inspired by Weinberg’s 21th Symphony Kaddish.

On Sunday, 8 December, a meeting with Dr Daniel Elphick, a British musicologist whose book titled Music behind the Iron Curtain: Weinberg and his Polish Contemporaries has just been published by Cambridge University Press, will take place at POLIN Museum. University of London lecturer will talk about Polish and Jewish threads in Weinberg’s life opus. Following the meeting, a duet of Mark Glanville (bass-baritone) and Marc Verter (grand piano) will present the material from their new record titled Citizen of Nowhere. POLIN Museum’s main hall will resound with, i.a., songs composed by Weinberg to the lyrics of Tuwim and Peretz.

On Monday evening, 9 December, Gidon Kremer, the leading ambassador of the Polish-Jewish composer’s oeuvre will perform for the finale of the Wajnberg@100 series. This eminent Latvian violinist and conductor will perform the Polish premiere of Chronicle of Current Events. Weinberg’s music will be accompanied by a video screening. Kremer will be accompanied by the Kremerata Baltica orchestra and the soloists: Eszter Zemlenyi (soprano) and Georgijs Osokins (grand piano).

More information at: https://www.polin.pl/pl/aktualnosci/2019/11/06/100-rocznica-urodzin-mieczyslawa-wajnberga 

Although terms such as “an icon of Polish jazz” are sometimes overused, in the case of Krzysztof Herdzin, they are absolutely justified and well deserved. The Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra will perform under his baton in the Witolda Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio on 7 December 2019 at 7 p.m.

This outstanding artist – a pianist, chamber musician, conductor, composer, arranger, band leader, producer and academic lecturer – is one of the greatest musicians of his generation and, although generally associated with the jazz scene, he is also active in the sphere of classical music (as a well-educated graduate of the Music Academy in Bydgoszcz, including a class taught by the incredible K. Popowej-Zydroń) and pop. He is the first Polish composer to record for DECCA Records in London, the monographic album Suite on Polish Themes, with one of the most famous orchestras worldwide – the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

Selected compositions from this incredibly fascinating album will be included in the programme of the concert in December, conducted by the composer himself and featuring talented soloist performers Katarzyna Budnik (viola) and Paweł Gusnar (saxophone). The programme will highlight Herdzin’s activity as a composer, whose works, varied in form and genre (including those ordered by the Polish Composers’ Union and the Institute of Music and Dance), have resounded at prestigious festivals, as well as in the best Polish and foreign concert halls. “I would describe the compositions on the album Suite on Polish Themes as impressionist-neoclassical and strongly associated with Polish folklore,” said the artist of his London recording. “This is contemporary music with expanded tonality, inspired both by my Polish masters – Karol Szymanowski, Grażyna Bacewicz, Tadeusz Baird, Wojciech Kilar – as well as Shostakovich, Prokofiev and the French group Les Six.”

Piotr Maculewicz

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: www.sinfoniaiuventus.pl 

The world premiere of Anhelli – the opera-mystery by Dariusz Przybylski commissioned by the Poznań Grand Theater – will take place on 6 December 2019 at 7:00 p.m.

The work of the young composer is based on the poem of the same title by Juliusz Słowacki. The opera is staged by the Latvian director Margo Zālīte, the musical director is Grzegorz Wierus, the stage design was created by Dorota Karolczak. The main roles will be performed by Joanna Freszel, Jan Jakub Monowid and Jaromir Trafankowski.

Anhelli is a poetic journey to the snow hell, a land which makes people bad and harmful. A land that is just as horrifying as it is beautiful. The guide of Anhelli – the man-angel – is the Shaman, who has the knowledge of the forefathers. Our guide will be a Polish-Latvian artistic duo: Dariusz Przybylski and Margo Zālīte. He composes music full of expression, filled with emotion: delicate and subtle at times, and in other fragments blowing up with a sudden explosion of sounds. She thinks in pictures, creates stage compositions parallel to music and then breaks them when the viewer feels safe. Together, they build contemporary opera theatre close to the romantic visionariness.

At 6:00 pm you can meet the director and the composer on the second balcony – conversation hosted by Marcin Bogucki (with translation).

Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund under the "Composing Commissions" programme implemented by the Institute of Music and Dance.

More information at: https://opera.poznan.pl/pl/anhelli 

The final concert of the 7th International Days of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki will take place on 6 December 2019. The Italian artists will take music lovers on a musical journey through steppe landscapes and film-like images.

Massimiliano Caldi, the winner of the 6th Grzegorz Fitelberg International Competition for Conductors, will lead the Silesian Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, which will perform together with Raffaele Trevisani, an excellent flutist with extraordinary sensitivity and numerous international successes. The evening will open with the first symphonic poem in Polish music literature  – The Steppe, Op. 66 by Zygmunt Noskowski, particularly valued by Massimiliano Caldi. Then we will listen to the Concerto-Cantata, Op. 65 for flute and orchestra by Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, in which the outstanding soloist will have the opportunity to show the whole range of his virtuoso skills. The concert will culminate in the Nino Rota's La Strada Suite, combining themes from the film of the same title directed by Federico Fellini.

Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund under the "Music" programme implemented by the Institute of Music and Dance.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Full programme available at: https://filharmonia-slaska.eu