The UK premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Seven Gates of Jerusalem inspired a four-day festival of Polish culture held at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. The Seven Gates: a Journey of Discovery festival (June 23-26) was filled with works by Polish composers from Szymanowski to Zubel and accompanied by film screenings and works inspired by Polish music. The Karol Szymanowski…Continue Reading 2015 in Review – Festivals
In collaboration with William Smialek, former PMC Director Maja Trochimczyk wrote the 2nd Edition of Frédéric Chopin: A Research and Information Guide for the Routledge Music Bibliographies Series (ISBN 978-0-415-99884-0). is an annotated bibliography concerning both the nature of primary sources related to the composer and the scope and significance of the secondary sources which deal with…Continue Reading 2015 in Review – Publications
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
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
2015 marks the 30th anniversary of the Polish Music Center at the USC Thornton School of Music—a library and cultural outreach center established in 1985 for the promotion of Polish music and culture that has no equal anywhere in the world. Read an overview of the anniversary in our Feb 2015 Newsletter. Poland’s premiere music publishers, Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne…Continue Reading 2015 in Review – Anniversaries