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LAETA MUNDUS: A polyphony of eras and personalities on a new album from ANAKLASIS
2024-11-18
Can one shared musical language be worked out for both contemporary jazz and fifteenth-century polyphony? LAETA MUNDUS, the latest album under the ANAKLASIS label, brings these two ostensibly irreconcilable worlds together in a kind of ‘harmony of the spheres’. The album’s premiere will be coupled with a concert to be held on 12 December in the series ‘ANAKLASIS on the air’.
He – a violin virtuoso, music composer and arranger. His wanderings in the borderland between jazz and contemporary classical music have led to the development of a new style, which has since inspired new generations of improvising violinists. She – a singer, harpist, pianist, musicologist, founder of Ensemble Peregrina – a group focusing on historically informed performance practice, associated with the famous early music hub of Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Which of these worlds could Adam Bałdych and Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett possibly meet in? The answer lies in their interpretations of works from Poland’s most precious source of medieval polyphony, referred to by researchers as Kras 52. This inconspicuous manuscript comprises music by both local and foreign masters, thus testifying to the presence of current (or even innovative) European stylistic trends in Cracow’s musical scene in that period.
Budzińska-Bennett programmed the album by coupling selected pieces from Kras 52 with other Cracow-related works from 15th-century Polish sources. Composer Adam Bałdych used these works as the starting point for a creative process which, as he explains, consisted of bringing new sound colours and timbres to the early Jagiellon music – ones that were unknown in that period but serve the music well. To Bałdych, the extraordinary sound and character of medieval polyphony became both an inspiration and a field for improvising quite freely on the Renaissance violin. This approach turns LAETA MUNDUS into a bridge between history and the present. The other musicians featuring on this album are Michał Górczyński (contrabass clarinet) and Ensemble Peregrina, consisting of: Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett (voice, Gothic harp), Hanna Järveläinen (voice), Lorenza Donadini (voice), and Grace Newcombe (voice, Gothic harp).
What are the fruits of the musical marriage between these two worlds? The programme juxtaposes open-form arrangements suited to Bałdych’s improvisational performance style with new compositions inspired by Poland’s most valuable medieval music manuscripts. There is also room for a conceptual approach, in which Bałdych’s improvisations and his way of playing with the source material become the foundation for polyphonic music-making with the participation of Górczyński and the singers. ‘I developed my ideas through interactions with Peregrina. I listened to them singing and responded so that our joint creativity could translate into interpretations,’ Bałdych emphasises. ‘The girls proved open to experimentation. They were willing to cross boundaries in this project and to get carried away. They placed their trust in me.’
‘The girls were delighted. It was nothing like the customary “tedious medieval stuff” that I feed them,’ says Budzińska-Bennett, laughing. ‘In this project we had to be constantly alert […]. Joint improvisation is by no means easy. In this case, one also needs to sense where the given improvisation should end so that we can move on to a notated passage.’
LAETA MUNDUS comes out on 12 December, in the REVISIONS series under the ANAKLASIS label. The album premiere will be coupled with a concert in the series ‘ANAKLASIS on the air’, during which music from the album’s programme will be performed at the Romana Bobrowska Studio
of Radio Kraków. The event will be broadcast live on Radio Kraków and rebroadcast on Polish Radio Channel Two and Radio Kraków Kultura.
The LAETA MUNDUS album is one of the outcomes of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute’s long-term ‘Kras 52’ project, implemented in collaboration with PWM Edition. In 2025, the project will yield a new critical edition of the manuscript, complete with bilingual commentaries. The editors are Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett and Marc Lewon. The latter is well-known German lutenist, musicologist and medieval music expert, professor at Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. The work will be published by PWM Edition. The project also features a recording of the complete music from Kras 52 performed by Dragma and Peregrina ensembles under the direction of Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett (a 3CD-set, Raumklang 2024), a concert cycle, lectures, and workshops.
LAETA MUNDUS from ANAKLASIS will be available from the PWM bookshop, best music shops, as well as the virtual shop of the empik chain and from online streaming services.
The album was recorded in the Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Lusławice.
Media patrons of the LAETA MUNDUS album: TVP Kultura, Polish Radio Channel Two, Culture.pl
Partner: Ruch Muzyczny music magazine
Co-organised by: The Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Co-financed from the funds of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
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