2019-10-22

A concert inaugurating PWM’s new record label ANAKLASIS: 22 November, 8 p.m., Mała Warszawa

Stanisław Moniuszko

E-ŚPIEWNIK

Agata Zubel – voice

Andrzej Bauer – cello

Cezary Duchnowski – arrangements, electronics
 

The songs collected in Stanisław Moniuszko’s Home Songbooks were the nineteenth-century equivalent of modern-day pop music. The composer wrote them for the people; he wanted them to be sung in the home, to live their own lives. Many of them did indeed function in that way, and at least one of them (‘The spinstress’, of course) has survived to this day, but ultimately the inexorable passage of time covered the Home Songbooks with a layer of dust. That dust has now been blown away by the phenomenal singer and composer Agata Zubel, the cello virtuoso and brilliant improviser Andrzej Bauer, and Cezary Duchnowski, an outstanding composer and performer of computer, algorithmic and improvised music. This is not their first collaboration: a few years ago, on the disc El Derwid, they tackled songs by Witold Lutosławski. The contents of this e-songbook represent a marvellous display of technique, sensitivity and imagination, but with the utmost respect for the original compositions. We hear 12 songs which Zubel, Bauer and Duchnowski have not so much adapted for modern times as fired into the future. Moniuszko Year will soon be behind us, but this disc will be listened to again and again.

We launch the ANAKLASIS record label with a special concert in which we will hear a new, original take on songs by Stanisław Moniuszko, in arrangements by Cezary Duchnowski. The E-ŚPIEWNIK project is a modern-day interpretation of well-known works, which will shed new light on the specific qualities and potential of Polish Romantic song. The album will be released in the series REVISIONS. Discs on the ANAKLASIS label will be available to buy at the concert venue, including the E-ŚPIEWNIK. 

The concert promoting ANAKLASIS will take place at 8 p.m. on 22 November at Mała Warszawa (14 ul. Otwocka, Warsaw). Tickets can be bought through goingapp.pl and at the venue an hour before the concert. See you there!