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An album of extraordinary adventures
2024-06-17
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.
Memory brings an image to life. Photographs from family albums, which document events important to us, moments captured in frames and portraits of our loved ones evoke memories, encourage reflections and bring back to life what has passed. At the same time, they also discover what is forgotten and often interesting and funny.
‘I made up my mind to go gaga for a few weeks and write some verse loosely based on the bios of my family members,’ explains Michał Rusinek, otherwise a serious and reputable literary scholar, translator, and writer. ‘My ancestors were apparently rather ordinary. Still, I am convinced that even a very ordinary family can be viewed from an unusual perspective. Every one of us has their eccentricities, as well as some adventures or anecdotes from their biographies to recount.’
These anecdotes added up to form the libretto of an opera, set to music by another extremely serious artist – the composer Jerzy Kornowicz, who is also an improvising pianist, educator, and music life organiser, director of the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music. He too, nevertheless, allowed himself to be guided by Rusinek’s text into the carefree, magical land of childhood. ‘Ours is a time in which we occupy several worlds at the same time. We are probably the least present in the real world since we have no clue what it is all about,’ says the composer of A FAMILY ALBUM. The music perfectly reflects this state. Singers Ewa Biegas and Jan Jakub Monowid are accompanied by AUKSO – Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy under Marek Moś.
The opera by Kornowicz and Rusinek encourages listeners to look in their own family albums, not only to consider their genealogy but also to find many amusing stories worth remembering. ALBUM RODZINNY (ANA 031) also provides a simple and attractive way to discuss difficult and complex topics with children, such as identity, gender or cultural differences.
Opera was staged for the first time on 11 March 2023 in Katowice at the NOSPR Festival of Premiers. At the end of the same year, it was preformed and very well received in Kiev and Lviv in Ukrainian translation.
The album, with a recording of the work and fabulous illustrations by Joanna Rusinek, will go on sale on 21 June 2024. The album will be available on CD in the PWM bookstore, in the best music stores, on the virtual shelves of Empik and on streaming services.
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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.
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.
