On Tuesday February 24 at 7:30 p.m., Polish musical heritage will be celebrated on the USC campus. The Cracow Duo—a cello and piano ensemble of two young professors from the Kraków Music Academy—will present a recital featuring works by Aleksander Tansman, Krzysztof Meyer, Tomasz Opałka, and Frederic Chopin, among others.
In their recording career, the Cracow Duo have championed the music of Aleksander Tansman (1897-1986), which is little-known today even though he was a major composer and a virtuoso pianist with a worldwide career in his time. Tansman was born in Łódź but, after studying in Warsaw, he moved to Paris in the 1930s where he befriended Ravel, Honegger and other leading French avant-garde composers. He spent the war years in Los Angeles and throughout the 1940s he scored several Hollywood films. The Cracow Duo’s February 24th program will also feature the world premiere of The Glitch by Tomasz Opałka—a leading member of the young generation of Polish composers, who will be present for the premiere—and the American premiere of Krzysztof Meyer’s Three Times Four. Held at USC’s Newman Recital Hall, this concert is free and open to the public.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015 | 7:30 p.m.
Cracow Duo performs Chopin, Meyer, Opałka & Tansman
USC’s Alfred Newman Recital Hall
3616 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Admission is FREE
Info: music.usc.edu or 213-821-1356
Following their performance in Los Angeles, the Cracow Duo will continue on to Washington D.C. and Chicago for several exclusive, invitation-only performances. Then, on March 2, they will make their New York City debut at Carnegie Hall, a concert for which the admission was made free in celebration of Chopin’s 205th Birthday. From New York, they will continue on to concerts in Seoul, South Korea.
Monday, March 2, 2015 | 8 p.m.
Cracow Duo – Carnegie Hall Debut
Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall
154 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
Admission is FREE, tickets are available at Carnegie Hall’s box office or by calling 212-247-7800
Info: www.carnegiehall.org
[Sources: polishculture-nyc.org, sikorski.de]