Following his August recital in San Francisco, Polish pianist and composer Tomasz Kamieniak came down to Los Angeles and visited the PMC. This Berlin-based musician came bearing several gifts that will expand our score and sound libraries.
Kamieniak As Composer
In the pride of place among the gifts is the set of solo piano pieces written by our guest, Dwa obrazy / Two Pictures, Op. 56. Premiered in Berlin in 2015, this small album was attractively published by Ars Musica. The score is graced by fine reproductions of two oil paintings by Szymon Gdowicz, City of Stars Pickers and Self Portrait as a Dead Bird, which also gave titles to the two largely contemplative piano compositions. The second score is Mr. Kamieniak’s effective piano transcription of Wojciech Kiar’s Muzyka rejsu [Sailing music] from the 1976 film, Smuga cienia [The Shadow Line], directed by Andrzej Wajda. These two publications will be the first compositions by Tomasz Kamieniak in our library.
In addition to these two scores, Mr. Kamieniak presented us with seven of his CDs, where he is featured as a pianist and composer. The first three recordings present Tomasz Kamieniak’s music and include a collection of his solo piano pieces gathered on the Acte Préalable CD AP 0190 release. They feature Am Rande des Tages, Op. 40, Buch der Illusionen, Op. 32, Meditationen, Op. 38 and Suite, Op. 37. The other Acte Préalable CD (AP 0202) contains more of Kamieniak’s piano works, including Buch der Geheimnisse, Op. 25 and Sonate, Op. 39 and the composer is a featured performer on these recordings as well.
The next recording, Tomasz Kamieniak—Utwory na klawesyn, is devoted to several harpsichord compositions by Kamieniak, performed on this CD by Anna Krzysztofik-Buczyńska. The selection here includes Koncert na klawesyn i orkiestrę smyczkową, Op. 78 [Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra], Sześć poważnych utworów na klawesyn lub fortepian, op. 47 [Six serious works for harpsichord or piano], Siedem bagateli na klawesyn, Op. 70 [Seven bagatelles for harpsichord], and Anioły kolorów, Op. 80 [The angels of color] for women’s choir and harpsichord, piano or harp. Collaborators on this disc include the Podlaska Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra led by Mirosław Jacek Błaszczyk and Combined Schools Women’s Choir of the Baczyński Lyceum in Białystok.
Kamieniak As Performer
The remaining four CDs given to us by Tomasz Kamieniak portray him as a devoted interpreter of interesting and largely forgotten solo piano repertoire. First here is a CD entitled Liszt—Polonicum issued by DUX Records (DUX 1789), featuring Liszt’s transcriptions of six Chopin’s songs as well as other smaller and rather obscure piano pieces. They include Mélodie polonaise, Album Leaf: Andantino in A-flat major, Festpolonaise, Deux polonaises de l’oratorio St. Stanislaus, “Polnisch” from the Weihnaschtsbaum, Mazurka brillante, among others. The last selection on this CD is Liszt’s excellent piano transcription of the Polonaise from Tchaikovsky’s opera, Eugene Onegin.
Józef Wieniawski (1837-1912), the younger brother of the famous violinist, Henryk (1835-1880), studied in Paris with such acclaimed masters as Pierre Zimmerman, Charles Valentin Alkan and Antoine Marmontel. He made his professional debut with his brother Henryk in Paris in 1848 and was universally recognized as one of Europe’s leading musicians after appearing in concerts with Franz Liszt in Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Leipzig, London, and Paris. Józef was also one of the first pianists (after Liszt) to perform all of Chopin’s Etudes in public, and for many years lived and taught at the Moscow Conservatory. Acclaimed as a superb chamber musician, Józef Wieniawski appeared in concert with many other great violinists, including Apolinary Kątski, Pablo de Sarasate, Henri Vieuxtemps, and Leopold Auer, as well as such world-famous singers as Marcella Sembrich or Pauline Viardot.
Józef Wieniawski was also a prolific composer. His piano works especially demonstrate his excellent grasp of piano textures and colors and testify to his prowess as a performer. Quite rightly Mr. Kamieniak decided to bring several of Wieniawski’s most attractive solo piano compositions by recording them for Acte Préalable CD (AP 0184) release several years ago. The selections on this disc include Ballade, Op. 31, Souvenir de Lublin, Op. 12, Valse de Concert, Op. 3, Sur l’océan, Op. 28, Deuxième Impromptu, Op. 34, Souvenir d’une Valse, Op. 18, Valse de Concert, Op. 30 and Polonaise, Op. 21.
Walter Rudolph Niemann (1876-1953) was a prolific German composer with well over a thousand works to his name. They were collected into 189 numbered opuses and certainly present a challenge to anyone who might want to record the complete works of this composer, arranger and music critic. Tomasz Kominiak here selected four extended works, beginning with Niemann’s Der Artushof: Suite aus Alt-Danzig, Op. 158. Composed in 1941, this suite has a tragic Polish connection: Danzig, also known as Gdańsk, an old Hanseatic League port city, became a focal point for the Polish-German conflict in the 1930s and was one of the places where World War II began. The other three compositions on this Toccata Classics CD (TOCC 0484) release include Niemann’s Jura-Sommer: Kleine Impressionen, Op. 119, Bunte Blumen: Sieben Impressionen, Op. 139, and Hamburg: Ein Zyklus von 13 Charakterstücken, Op. 107, all written between 1926 and 1934.
Born in Kyiv in 1937, Valentyn Silvestrov is a Ukrainian pianist and composer who was forced to flee his homeland and resettle in Berlin after the Russian invasion of his homeland in 2022. On this Brilliant Classics recording (BC 95921), Tomasz Kamieniak presents several of Silvestrov’s short piano cycles dating from the early 2000s. They include Four Pieces, Op. 97, Melodies of the Moments, Op. 145, Four Pieces, Op. 63, Two Waltzes, Op. 74, Three Pieces, Op. 80, Three Waltzes, Op. 62, Five Elegies, Op. 35 and Three Pieces, Op. 9.
As always, we are most grateful to all our donors and friends for enriching the PMC’s holdings. Many thanks, for the gifts and the visit! Dziękujemy!