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On the 400th anniversary of the death of Gulio Caccini – one of the founders of the Florentine Camerata and the author of a theoretical treatises on "new music" – the Polish Radio Choir invites you to a concert that will take place in Villa Decius on December 16, 2018 at 5.00 p.m.

The concert will be held as part of the "Music Salon of the Polish Radio Choir at the Villa Decius" series, which aims to present contemporary music and initiate meetings with composers led by culture critics and journalists. For the third year in a row, the concerts have been held at the Krakow Villa Decius, which half a thousand years ago was designed as a space for the exchange of ideas, becoming an important place on the European cultural map.

As part of the December concert, Caccini's compositions from the collection of Le Nuove Musiche and works by continuators of stile rappresentativo – Claudio Monteverdi, Alessandro Grandi and Heinrich Schütz – will be performed. The culmination of the evening will be a contemporary composition by Andrzej Kwieciński  Per non pensare, which refers directly to the Baroque period. The works will be performed by: Anna Zawisza (soprano), Anna Wiktoria Swoboda (chittarone) and pianists Martyna Zakrzewska and Paulina Woś. An introduction about the birth of the accompanied monody – a breakthrough point in the history of music – will be given by Ewa Szczecińska and Magdalena Łoś-Komarnicka from the Programme 2 of Polish Radio.

Information on tickets at: https://fundacjasonoris.org/show/caccini-monteverdi-kwiecinski/ 

On December 15, 2018 at 7.00 p.m. at the Grand Theater in Poznan there will be a premiere of Manru – the only opera written by Ignacy Jan Paderewski and the only Polish work that was staged at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (in 1902).

It is difficult to find a Polish opera so much fitting in the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Greater Poland Uprising, and at the same time so relevant today. Its author – Ignacy Jan Paderewski – is an icon of insurgent fights started in Poznan on December 27, 1918.  How does the story written by Alfred Nossig over a century ago look like today

The production of the work directed by Marek Weiss is in line with the idea of a socially engaged opera. He transfers Manru to present times where some tendencies have not changed at all. This astonishingly topical story is love in the world of intolerance, class and ethnic divisions.  It also touches the problems of two communities, none of which is clearly positive.  With the language used by the director interpreting the work from the beginning of the 20th century you have the impression of commune with a completely modern work.

On December 13 at 6:00 p.m., a lecture titled "What leader would you follow? Ignacy Jan Paderewski and the modern paradigm of leadership" will be led by Izabela Stachurska, while on December 15 at 5:15 pm a meeting with director Marek Weiss will take place. The next performances of the opera will take place on December 16 and 18, 2018.

A co-production of the Grand Theater – National Opera in Warsaw and Stanisław Moniuszko Grand Theater in Poznań.  Participation of  Stanisław Moniuszko  Grant Theater in Poznan co-financed from the funds of Greater Poland Voivodeship. The performance is staged as part of the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Greater Poland uprising.

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

La traviata in a new staging by Michael Mayer and under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin opens a new era at The Metropolitan Opera. This extremely popular opera by Giuseppe Verdi will be broadcast live to theaters around the world on December 15, 2018. At the Warsaw Cinema "Praha", the broadcast will take place at 18:35 p.m.

Verdi's work will be the first premiere that Nézet-Séguin will lead as the new music director of the New York scene. Michael Mayer’s richly textured new production feature a dazzling 19th-century setting that changes with the seasons. Soprano Diana Damrau plays the tragic heroine, Violetta, and tenor Juan Diego Flórez returns to the Met for the first time since 2015 to sing the role of Alfredo, Violetta’s hapless lover. Baritone Quinn Kelsey is Alfredo’s father, Germont, who destroys their love. Later performances feature Anita Hartig, Stephen Costello, Artur Ruciński, and Plácido Domingo.

The show lasts about 3 hours and 40 minutes (including 2 breaks). Presentation in the original language (Italian) with Polish subtitles.

The list of cinemas in Poland, where you can watch broadcasts from the Bolshoi Theater, is available here.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: Artur Ruciński

On December 16, 2018, the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute in Wrasaw will held a concert of premieres featuring the works of Marek Chołoniewski, Przemysław Zych, Rafał Zapała and the Polish premiere of Anthèmes 2 by Pierre Boulez. The concert will be repeated on December 18, 2018 in Krakow's Cricoteka.

The concerts are part of the "Dźwiękowisko" series, which was inaugurated in 2014 by the "Harmonies and Noises" Music Foundation in cooperation with the Institute of Music and Dance. The events of the cycle includes works that assume the cooperation of professional musicians with large groups of amateur youth. Their authors are well-known Polish composers. These pieces are presented at the concerts next to the prominent works of contemporary music performed by musicians specializing in this field. Programmes designed in this way also engage audiences, usually reduced to the role of passive listeners.

In the multimedia compositions En Rondeau by Przemyslaw Zych and TeGeLaR by Marek Chołoniewski (in the photo), the well-known artists and debutants will be joined by a group of amateurs – the high school students of the Warsaw School of Culture and Education. Among professional performers we will find Anna Kwiatkowska (violin), Rafał Zapała (sound projection), Kazimierz Pyzik (double bass), Leszek Wiśniowski (saxophone), and Tomasz Chołoniewski (drums). Rafał Zapała will enrich the unconventional formula of the concert  with his No Meaning Detected, in which the audience participates in a dialogue with a performer and a speech synthesizer. "Classics of modernity" is represented by Pierre Boulez's Anthèmes 2 – a masterpiece of one of the greatest contemporary composers not yet performed in Poland.

Documentation of the previous "Dźwiękowisko" events (film recordings of works by Sławomir Wojciechowski, Maciej Jabłoński, Eunho Chang and Lidia Zielińska) is available at: www.dzwiekowisko.pl.

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

More information at: https://harmonieihalasy.wordpress.com/

On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 6:00 p.m. in the NOSPR chamber hall in Katowice the New Music Orchestra conducted by Szymon Bywalec will premiere, among others, works by Emil Wojtacki and Karolina Filipska. The concert will take place as part of Pēteris Vasks Days.

The Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks (1946) is today one of the most recognizable European composers. His name is mentioned next to Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina or Alfred Schnittke – composers coming from the so-called Eastern Block countries, whose music is associated with spirituality. Vasks arises from a tradition which roots reach minimalism in its special version, concentrating on slowly flowing time, meditation, concentration on nature or inspiration flowing from silence. During the concert, we will hear his Viatore (2001) for 11 solo strings.

A similar approach to composing is presented by a much younger Latvian artist – Ēriks Ešenvalds (1977). In Fantāzija (2003), commissioned by the Warsaw Autumn Friends' Foundation, the source of the sound, besides the traditional instruments, are bottles of various sizes. The soft, delicate color complements the sound textures written in the score.

The concert will also premiere two Polish works commissioned by the Brand New Music festival. Geständnis. The operatic music by Emil Wojtacki is a composition inspired by a fragment of the Guilt Confession (from the Uncertainty of the Situation) by the contemporary German playwright and director Philipp Löhle. The second piece, Angel's Fall by Karolina Filipska, is a mini-concert for four multipercussion sets, sinfonietta and tape. The inspiration for the piece was a sculpture in the eastern part of Madrid and a fragment of John Milton's Paradise lost.

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