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#SHARPENYOUREARS WITH ANAKLASIS: THE LABEL’S THIRD BIRTHDAY
2022-11-22
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.
We have released nearly 30 compact discs and analogue titles, as well as three audio-visual projects. Our catalogue includes long forgotten recordings, programmes dedicated individually to 20th- and 21st-century composers, and experiments in crossing the boundaries between musical worlds.
After three years, our label can boast a large catalogue grouped into six thematic series and a number of prestigious accolades. Our exploration of the most attractive landmarks in Polish contemporary music is only just beginning!
NEVER ENOUGH AWARDS!
Enthusiastically critically and publicly acclaimed, the label has won five Fryderyk nominations in the last year alone, as well as the Fryderyk Award in the category of ‘Album of the Year: Oratorios and Operatic Music’ for SYRENA. MELODRAMA AETERNA, the product of a collaboration between writer Szczepan Twardoch and composer Aleksander Nowak, PWM Edition’s long-time contributor.
‘We are happy to see our young record label triumph for three years in a row and gain more and more acclaim among music-lovers. Our albums have also earned recognition in the music circles both in Poland and abroad,’ said PWM’s director and editor-in-chief, Daniel Cichy, PhD, during the Fryderyk Award gala.
This is not ANAKLASIS label’s only accolade in 2022. The French Académie Charles Cros has awarded the album POLISH HEROINES OF MUSIC with the title of ‘Anthologies’ Coup de coeur 2021, thus boosting the international status of this release, already highly acclaimed in Poland.
THE COMPLETION OF A TRIPTYCH
This year the Fryderyk-awarded opera duo Nowak-Twardoch, which continues to win the hearts of both audiences and jurors, has completed its ‘Silesian triptych’ (whose previous parts were created on an annual basis) with a work titled POKORA. DRAMMA GIOCOSO.
The OPERA series from ANAKLASIS, co-authored by composer Aleksander Nowak writer Szczepan Twardoch, was inaugurated in 2020 with DRACH. DRAMMA PER MUSICA, followed exactly a year later by SYRENA. MELODRAMA AETERNA.
In their triptych, the Silesian artists invite the audience for a journey into the collective subconscious. They explore yearnings, great history, and the little affairs of everyday life. Importantly, these three works for voices and instruments by the musical-literary tandem are now available not only on compact discs, but also on vinyl records!
THE LEGEND
The last months of 2022 abound in anniversaries and unique events! In October, the violin world experienced the thrills of the 16th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition. We celebrated Karol Szymanowski’s 140th birth anniversary and 30 years since the premiere of the film Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. ANAKLASIS could hardly stay indifferent to these events. Directly linked to these anniversaries are our albums in the orange REVISIONS series, which, as in the previous year, led the way as far as new releases are concerned.
Traditional Polish music, a passion for profound violin expression, and for exploring new territories – our album LEGEND, which came out in June, combines all these three. It comprises ‘variations on the theme of Henryk Wieniawski’ presented by Adam Bałdych and Agata Szymczewska.
‘I do believe that this project aptly represents an idea that is of great importance to me, namely, that of crossing and blurring musical boundaries. LEGEND is thus an invitation to the entire classical music world to rediscover the violin repertoire and listen with a fresh mind to the music of its masters,’ says Adam Bałdych about this album.
EXPERIMENTATION AND THE BLURRING OF BOUNDARIES
These, however, are not all the novelties in our orange series! ANAKLASIS continues its crossover stylistic explorations, this time – the combination of jazz with film music. THEMES OF DRACULA will be a perfect choice for fans of both these genres. Reinterpretations of Wojciech Kilar’s music for Coppola’s cult movie are presented by two electrifying figures in the young Polish jazz scene: pianist Piotr ‘Pianohooligan’ Orzechowski and sax player Kuba Więcek. The album sums up five years of the two artists’ collaboration. With due respect for the 1990s original, on THEMES OF DRACULA they create their own autonomous space.
‘Wojciech Kilar’s compositions have proved highly congenial to our own sound language, providing us at the same time with endless resources of inspiration on every occasion when we play this material,’ comments Kuba Więcek.
October 2022 saw the 140th anniversary of Karol Szymanowski’s birth. The music of the composer of Myths has also become the subject of ANAKLASIS orange series. Saxophonist Adam Pierończyk, one of the central personalities in Polish jazz, ‘X-rays’ that composer’s Études Op. 33 in his project SZYMANOWSKI / X-RAY. New colours and an intriguing atmosphere permeate these seven poems for saxophone, piano, and electro-acoustic guitar, which are the effect of collaboration between daring jazz celebrities: apart from Pierończyk, the pianist Dominik Wania and Brazilian guitarist Nelson Veras.
The sax master says complexity was his key inspiration for choosing to ‘X-ray’ Szymanowski’s cycle of Études Op. 33. ‘I love to be pushed out of my comfort zone by such challenges and feel like a student again,’ explains Pierończyk. We take him by his word, then, and through the ear!
ONE, TWO... THREE TIMES CHOPIN!
The 18th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition was hailed as Event of the Year at the Coryphaeus of Polish Music Awards Gala. This reminded us of last year’s excitement, immediately affecting even those music lovers who otherwise rarely listen to Chopin. On ANAKLASIS, however, we need no special occasion to recall outstanding interpretations of Chopin’s works!
For the anniversary of the ‘piano poet’s’ birth in March, our HERITAGE series presented a 3CD-box titled FRYDERYK CHOPIN – PIANO CONCERTOS / ÉTUDES / CHAMBER WORKS, featuring brilliant interpretations of Chopin’s greatest works divided by genre into three groups. The performers are legends of the Polish piano world: Halina Czerny-Stefańska, Regina Smendzianka, Władysław Szpilman, and Bolesław Woytowicz. In the concertos, the soloists are accompanied by Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under Witold Rowicki.
PORTRAITS
ANAKLASIS is not only about the heritage of the classics. Our blue PORTRAITS series has prepared new albums presenting the works of Polish 20th- and 21st-century composers.
Andrzej Krzanowski, co-founder of Generation ’51, was a romantic visionary who drew on the achievements of the avant-garde. The accordion was his great passion, and he elevated this instrument from the spheres of popular and folk music to that of high culture. Our recent ANAKLASIS release features Reliefs, a cycle of ‘musical sculptures’ composed in the 1980, in which the accordion (played here by Maciej Frąckiewicz) takes pride of place as the main instrument in four out of nine miniatures.
The album was recorded by the crème de la crème of the Polish classical music scene: Lutosławski Quartet, Arkadiusz Bialic, Joanna Freszel, Leszek Lorent, and Marcin Zdunik, who join forces to present a survey of Krzanowski’s output from the years 1984-1988.
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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.
