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Seven Gates: Music of Poland Explored festival in Manchester
2015-07-01
Last week, the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester hosted the Seven Gates: Music of Poland Explored festival.
During the four festival days the audience could hear the music of Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutosławski, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Karol Szymanowski, Agata Zubel and the works of the RNCM composers, inspired by Polish music and culture.
Next to the pieces of older generation of famous composers, the programme included three works by Agata Zubel: Suite for percussion trio, Shades of Ice and The Streets of a Human City.
Shades of Ice depicts an Icelandic glacier. "(...) It is predominated by long, vibrating sounds that make a background for the fountains of short, staccato notes of the clarinet and other instruments of bright, shrill sound. (...)" (Maciej Jabłoński). The last of the pieces, The Streets of a Human City, is inspired by poetry of Czesław Miłosz. While Miłosz tried to grasp the reality with word, Agata Zubel transfers this reality (steps, stamping, laughter, car horns) into the music structure.
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The short documentary “Bacewicz x Bomsori”, directed by Jakub Piątek, is reaching an ever-wider international audience. The film, which explores South Korean violinist Bomsori Kim’s encounter with the music of Grażyna Bacewicz, will be screened at upcoming film festivals in Warsaw, Reykjavik and Barcelona.
Contact. Sonoromanza is an opera by Alek Nowak and Paweł Sołtys’s literary debut in the world of classical music. A contemporary tale of longing, the desire for conversation and the need for closeness, performed by Joanna Freszel, Karol Kozłowski and the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy, conducted by Marek Mos. The debut album, ANAKLASIS, is now available to buy and on streaming services.
October will bring a series of world premieres of the latest compositions by artists represented byPWM Edition. New works by Zygmunt Krauze, Alek Nowak, Joanna Woźny, Ewa Fabiańska-Jelińska, Agata Zubel, Paweł Malinowski, Andrzej Kwieciński and Aleksander Lasoń will be performed in Poland, as well as in Japan, Germany and Austria.
On September 14, the prestigious Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari will host the Italian premiere of Zygmunt Krauze's two-act opera, which tells the poignant story of Bona Sforza d’Aragona. Staging this work in Bari carries deep symbolic meaning – it is the very city where the title heroine spent her final years and was laid to rest.
This autumn, with the September premieres of the latest Polish music, we are stepping forward neither boldly nor timidly – in keeping with Gdańsk’s motto. It is in this city that the first world premieres will take place. In September, we will be listening to new works by Polish composers in Gdańsk, Warsaw and Valencia. For the first time, we will hear works by Tadeusz Wielecki, Lidia Zielińska, Krzysztof Knittel and Agata Zubel.
Karol Augustyniak and Artur Szczepkowski have been selected as winners of the composer.pl programme – an artistic residency in Iceland for young Polish composers. The invited participants’ creative residency in the ‘Land of Ice and Fire’ will last two weeks, from 8 to 25 September.
Today, 2 December, marks the start of the 18th edition of one of Europe's most prestigious conducting competitions: the Donatella Flick – London Symphony Orchestra Conducting Competition. Grażyna Bacewicz's Concerto for String Orchestra is among the repertoire as an obligatory piece.
This timeless encounter with the music of ‘Poland’s last Romantic’ Tadeusz Baird and with the interpretative feats of NOSPR Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra features three symphonies and four outstanding conductors in both rediscovered historical and new recordings, released together on a 2CD album from ANAKLASIS.
Iconic songs by Zygmunt Konieczny that audiences of Ewa Demarczyk loved decades ago in a new arrangement by Cezary Duchnowski. The latest ANAKLASIS album with Agata Zubel, Andrzej Bauer, Bartek Wąsik and the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Humala is now available for purchase.
The theme of the 37th Krakow International Festival of Composers is music in music. Already in the 1970s, this issue was studied by the outstanding founder of the Krakow Theoretical School, Professor Mieczysław Tomaszewski. He reflected on the subject in an article entitled “At the Opening: why ‘music in music’”, which was published before one of the famous Music Meetings in Baranów.
