News
Agata Zubel – the January Composer of the Month
2019-01-02
Agata Zubel is a unique figure – a composer who has taken the world’s music stages by storm and has remained present on them for many years now. Her successive works confirm her rare sensitivity, resourcefulness, and the confidence with which she applies her musical tools.
She receives commissions for new pieces from all over the world, and her compositions win awards in Poland and abroad.
The previous year was special in Agata Zubel’s activity as a composer in that she presented to the audiences as many as four new works:
Cleopatra’s Songs, first performed in March 2018 at the renowned festival “Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik”;
Fireworks, which had three premieres in three European capitals: on 13th August in Warsaw during the Festival “Chopin and His Europe”, on 14th August in Berlin at the “Young Euro Classic”, and on 19th August at the world-famous BBC Proms in London;
Bildbeschreibung – an operatic form first performed in early September in Bolzano as part of the “Transart” Festival, while the Polish premiere followed at the end of the same month during the “Warsaw Autumn”;
Chamber Piano Concerto – the last of this year’s premieres, first heard in October at the “Donaueschinger Musiktage”.
2018 also earned Agata Zubel a number of prestigious awards. The already mentioned Fireworks won the European Composers Award 2018 as well as the Coryphaeus of Polish Music Award as ‘event of the year’. The composer also received the Erste Bank Kompositionspreis 2018 – a prize previously presented only to Austrian composers; Zubel is the first foreigner ever to have received it!
It should be noted that, apart from her activity as a composer, Agata Zubel also leads a very active concert life, performing the vocal parts in her own works as well as those by other composers, to mention only the recent premiere of Marcin Stańczyk’s Unseen, whose vocal part was written specially for this artist.
Collaboration with Agata Zubel is a source of genuine pride and joy to PWM Edition, and it is with pride and joy, too, that we inaugurate this year’s COMPOSER OF THE MONTH cycle with this unique musical phenomenon – the figure and the music of Agata Zubel!
As usual, we start the month with a special ‘composer’s alphabet’. Here is how Agata Zubel describes her world:
A for ABSTRACTION
B for NO BORDERS
C for CURIOSITY
D for DIVERSITY
E for ENERGY
F for FASCINATION
G for GENUINE DEPTH
H for HUMOUR
I for INSPIRATION
J for JOINING IN WITH PEOPLE
K for KALEIDOSCOPES OF COLOUR
L for LIGHT
M for MIGHT
N for NOW
O for OPENNESS
P for PASSION
R for REACHING FAR AND WIDE
R for RICH EMOTIONALITY
S for SKY-REACHING
T for TENACITY
U for UNCOMMON
V for VOCALITY
W for strong WILL
Z for ZEAL
Agata Zubel’s compositions are available from the PWM bookshop throughout January at an attractive discount, while on the PWM website we have published a selection of the composer’s recent photos. On PWM’s Facebook profile this month we will present titbits concerning this artist’s life and work.
Most popular:
The esteemed American-Canadian jazz musician Michael Bates, his Acrobat Ensemble and the Lutosławski Quartet will perform three concerts in Poland in November. The repertoire will include material recorded by the musicians on the album METAMORPHOSES: VARIATIONS ON LUTOSŁAWSKI, released by ANAKLASIS in the REVISIONS series.
The artists have already successfully presented it at Lincoln Center and Barbès Jazz Club in New York. In autumn 2024 we will have the opportunity to hear them live for the first time in Poland: 14.11 - Krakow, 15.11 - Lublin, 17.11 - Wroclaw.
The Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw invites to the inaugural session of the biennial International Digital Musicology Conference, which will be held 23–25 October 2024, at the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, Poland. The conference focuses on the integration of digital technologies into musicological research, with a special emphasis on introducing digital tools and methods to the Polish academic community, where digital musicology has not yet been widely adopted.
It’ s like a game. The memory game, thanks to which you can look at a very ordinary family from an extraordinary perspective. ALBUM RODZINNY [Family album] – an opera by Jerzy Kornowicz with a libretto by Michał Rusinek – is another premiere of the ANAKLASIS label this year. This time, the record brand is expanding its audience to include the youngest listeners. The album will be released on 21st June.
Time passes constantly, changing the world and its soundscape around us. The title IL TEMPO PASSA may be both a reflection on the impermanence of life, world and things and a piece of advice to enjoy the moment. The latest album by ANAKLASIS presents Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa’s cameral and symphonic works from recent years. Premiere on 28 May 2024, on the composer’s 75th birthday.
It is a musical-literary tale about a quest for identity, truth, and for what makes us human. The new stage work by Aleksander Nowak – which is, at the same time, Radek Rak’s operatic debut – explores the sources of good and evil, fusing reality with mythology and steering towards ‘the left-hand side of the world’. The authors spin a tale about the dual human nature. THE TALE OF THE HEART. FAVOLA IN MUSICA – the album that presents their joint project – will go on sale on 6th October.
Spectacularly successful as Ludomir Różycki’s music was in his lifetime, it is seldom programmed nowadays. All the same, such remarkable art could hardly fall into utter oblivion. It has attracted and fascinated excellent jazz pianist Kuba Stankiewicz, who has translated it into the language of jazz. The effects have been recorded and released on ANAKLASIS label’s most recent album, INSPIRED BY LUDOMIR RÓŻYCKI, which goes on sale as of 28th August.
PWM Edition is entering the execution phase of the revitalisation of its Warsaw department. With the commencement of the renovation and the implementation of the assumptions of the architectural design, the Hire Department and the editorial office of “Ruch Muzyczny” are moving to a temporary headquarters at 19 Wiejska Street, Warsaw.
This is by no means a piece about the centuries-long Polish-German conflict. It is, instead, a tale of impossible love, of tragic conflict between personal happiness and the common good.
PWM Edition resumes cooperation with the Italian publishing house Ricordi, as well as with its international partners forming Universal Music Publishing Classics & Screen. This means that rentals of orchestral materials from the catalogues of all publishing houses belonging to Classics & Screen is carried out in Poland by Dział Zbiorów Nutowych (Sheet Music Department) of PWM.
