On January 19, the LA Phil New Music Group presents a program of premieres entitled “Contemporary Poland” at Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Led by maestro Łukasz Borowicz, the ensemble will be joined by soloists Burt Hara, clarinet and Agata Zubel, soprano. The 8:00 p.m. concert will be preceded by Upbeat Live, a pre-concert talk with…Continue Reading Polish Premieres at Disney Hall
From January 13 to February 13, 2016, the 2nd annual Villa-Lobos International Chamber Music Festival will be held in Southern California. Twelve concerts celebrating Villa-Lobos and other Latin American composers with emphasis on Ginastera this year in honor of his 100th birthday, will take place in Riverside, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Temecula, and Encinitas. One of the highlights…Continue Reading Villa-Lobos Festival Features Zebrowski
The month of December encourages world-wide a Holiday spirit of gift-giving, and this year especially the Polish Music Center found itself on the receiving end of many wonderful gifts and donations from our friends across the globe. Teresa Chylińska—the world’s leading expert on Szymanowski anda great friend of PMC—donated two important publications to us recently….Continue Reading 2015 in Review – PMC Donations
In late November and early December, PMC Director Marek Zebrowski was in Poland and Germany, stopping in Warsaw, Pułtusk, Julin, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Kraków, Kąśna Dolna, Berlin and Gdańsk, to meet with a number of government officials and leaders of various civic organizations, as well as colleagues in music publishing, libraries, music schools and universities. Director…Continue Reading PMC in Poland and Germany
The first concert played by the Warsaw National Philharmonic in its hall, newly-reconstructed after war-time destruction, was given on Feb 21, 1955. The recording of this historic concert—now digitally re-mastered by Grammy Award winning sound engineers Aleksander Nagórko and Andrzej Sasin—was released on Warner Classics under the title Warsaw Philharmonic Archives: The 1st Concert 1955 on Feb…Continue Reading 2015 in Review – Discography
The late Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s Symphony No. 4 “Tansman Episody”— the final version was orchestrated by Górecki’s son, Mikolaj Górecki—had its US Premiere on Jan 16-18, 2015 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall, led by maestro Andrey Boreyko with violin soloist Nikolaj Znaider. The World Premiere of Górecki’s Symphony No. 4 was performed by the London…Continue Reading 2015 in Review – Premieres
For two weeks in February, Jan Kalinowski and Marek Szlezer from the Kraków Music Academy conducted extensive research in the Polish Music Center’s Zygmunt and Luisa Stojowski Collection. On February 24, performing as the Cracow Duo, they presented a recital featuring works by Aleksander Tansman, Krzysztof Meyer, Tomasz Opałka (world premiere), and Frederic Chopin, among others. Read more from our March 2015 Newsletter….Continue Reading 2015 in Review – PMC News
2015 began with one-time performances of two rarely heard but groundbreaking operas, presented by the Poznań Opera Theatre. The first was Mieczysław Weinberg’s The Portrait, presented at the Moniuszko Auditorium on January 16, and the second was their production of Krzysztof Meyer’s Cyberiada (1967 – manuscript pictured at left), staged at the Grand Theatre-National Opera in Warsaw on January 18 From January…Continue Reading 2015 in Review- Performances
Paweł Buczyński, a composer and lecturer at the Chopin Music University, and member of the Polish Composers’ Union, died January 5 at the age of 62. Professor Andrzej Koszewski died in Poznań on February 17 at 92. A renowned composer of choral music and a musicologist, he was also a professor of composition at the Poznań Music…Continue Reading 2015 in Review – Obituaries
One of the newest installments in Google’s Cultural Institute initiative is the exhibit Witold Lutosławski 1913-1994, an interactive exploration of the life and works of the famous Polish composer, through images and text. This is the third Cultural Institute exhibit to be curated by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute/Culture.pl. There was a strong Polish presence at the January 29…Continue Reading 2015 in Review – News