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A year in Polish music in sixteen albums – ANAKLASIS celebrates its first birthday
2020-11-20
The ANAKLASIS record label, created by PWM just one year ago (on 22 November 2019), already boasts sixteen albums, and it shows no signs of slowing down, with further releases announced.
As the director - editor-in-chief of PWM Edition, Daniel Cichy PhD, stated a year ago during the label’s launch at Mała Warszawa, ‘ANAKLASIS documents what is happening in Polish music now, what happened during the twentieth century, what interests or irritates us, and also what fascinates us’.
This is all organised into six series. The recordings of Polish music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – both archive and specially produced recordings – display a uniform graphic design. The name ANAKLASIS comes from the title of what is perhaps the most famous avant-garde composition by Krzysztof Penderecki, from 1977. The word itself is Greek for ‘refraction of light’, and that is reflected in the minimalist graphic design by the Full Metal Jacket studio, dominated by irregular, refracted geometrical figures.
In defiance of the pandemic, which unfortunately occurred during the young brand’s first year on the market, we have succeeded in releasing new albums in each of the six series of ANAKLASIS.
The monographic blue series PORTRAITS, devoted to contemporary composers, includes a disc of works by Romuald Twardowski, the composer who has worked with PWM for the longest time, celebrating his ninetieth birthday this year (ANA 010), as well as discs of music by Maciej Zieliński (ANA 004) and Roman Palester (ANA 003). The green series SOUNDS, celebrating outstanding interpreters and their instruments, opened with Piotr Orzechowski, aka ‘Pianohooligan’, performing compositions by Zygmunt Krauze, Sławomir Kupczak, Marcin Stańczyk and Aleksander Nowak on a Rhodes electric piano (ANA 001). That was the first disc on the ANAKLASIS label. The second was devoted to Zygmunt Krauze, with a concept album on which he juxtaposed his own compositions with works by Fryderyk Chopin and John Cage, performing himself at the piano (ANA 002).
The orange series REVISIONS represents the crossing of borders and playing with conventions. To date it boasts experiments by the quartet of Kuba Stankiewicz, who is fascinated by Roman Statkowski’s opera Maria, in which he seeks sources of Polish jazz (ANA 008). Agata Zubel, Andrzej Bauer and Cezary Duchnowski, meanwhile, broke down the boundaries of genres and turned to songs by Stanisław Moniuszko on the album E-ŚPIEWNIK (ANA 009). Also drawing on the Romantic legacy was the High Definition Quartet, which – in keeping with Piotr Orzechowski’s pseudonym ‘Pianohooligan’ – offered a rakish treatment of the second part of Adam Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve, replacing the guests from the otherworld with iconic composers of experimental music (ANA 007). Appearing in this series less than two weeks ago was Krzysztof Herdzin’s album IMPRESSIONS ON PADEREWSKI, with jazz reinterpretations of the great pianist’s works (ANA 011). And 11 December sees the premiere of BAJGELMAN. GET TO TANGO, with compositions by one of the most famous Jewish composers from between the two world wars, performed by the well-known Cracow-based Bester Quartet.
The crème de la crème of ANAKLASIS is the purple series IMAGES. This features audio-visual recordings of shows and concerts in the ultimate Blu-ray standard, complemented with documentary films devoted to composers. Here we have Agata Zubel’s Bildbeschreibung (ANA 002 AV), Andrzej Krzanowski’s Audycja V (ANA 003 AV) and Aleksander Nowak’s much publicised and enthusiastically received opera ahat-īli – sister of gods, with a libretto by the Nobel prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk.
Polish music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries means not just composers and living, active performers of that music. There are also rich phonographic collections from the Polish Radio archive in the series HERITAGE. ANAKLASIS has turned to these collections twice, both times specifically to Stanisław Moniuszko, whose two-hundredth birthday was recently celebrated by the whole of Poland. SONGS / ARIAS / OVERTURES is a selection of excerpts from Moniuszko operas in performances that might be called canonic and exemplary, featuring Andrzej Hiolski, Bernard Ładysz, Halina Słonicka, Grzegorz Fitelberg, Jan Krenz and Jerzy Semkow (ANA 006). Also belonging among those performances is The Raftsman, with Słonicka and Ładysz, as well as Bogdan Paprocki and Andrzej Hiolski (ANA 005).
The latest series is OPERA, which features the first work by Aleksander Nowak and Szczepan Twardoch, Drach. Dramma per musica. Its premiere at the AUKSODRONE festival in Tychy was hailed as the ‘Event of the Year’ and won a Coryphaeus of Polish Music statuette this year. The CDs are complemented by vinyl releases. ANAKLASIS has already announced another release of an opera by the same duo – Syrena. Melodrama aeterna, recorded at this year’s AUKSODRONE. And that’s just the start!
All the ANAKLASIS releases are available at leading bookshops and music stores, on digital platforms and on the virtual shelves of the empik chain.
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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.
The most fascinating phenomena in contemporary music; a wide range of genres; outstanding works, excellent composers and performers – are the trademarks of the record label ANAKLASIS, launched by PWM Edition. ANAKLASIS is now celebrating its third birthday. It continues to grow at a dizzying pace and maintains the high artistic standards of its releases.
When asked to attempt a definition of her music, she called it lyrical expressionism. The choice of this term says much about the emotional intensity of Elżbieta Sikora’s music, which may reflect the experience of her two home countries, Poland and France, but is also a consequence of her artistic maturation in an age when two powerful trends – the avant-garde and neo-Classicism – were vying for the palm. Such a label may also result from the artist’s focus on the listener as her target, whom she invariably attempts to surprise, shock, or bewilder.
In cooperation with the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Tallinn, we invite you to two concerts and lectures presenting the diversity and beauty of Polish music.
Over 300 performances of works by Polish composers, 114 finalists, a total of 36 repertoire pieces in 6 age categories, 20 winners, 17 jurors, 4 competition locations and one day of master classes. The piano competition for children and teenagers, “ChopinLand Piano Competition,” is behind us – an extraordinary project that took several months, which PWM Edition organized in Japan. Thanks to cooperation with local partners, Polish music could reach hundreds of young pianists and their teachers, creating the ambassadors of Polish music in the Land of the Rising Sun.
