Independence Polonaise Competition
Sinfonia Varsovia has announced a competition for Polish composers to write a gala polonaise commemorating the centenary of Poland’s independence. The submitted work for a full symphony orchestra should not exceed 10 minutes in length and there is no age limit for entrants. The three winning works will be performed during celebrations later this year and will be recorded by Sinfonia Varsovia. The aim of the competition is to expand Polish music literature and to give Warsaw residents music an excellent concert, but also to encourage performance of this Polish national dance.
The submission deadline is March 1 and competition rules and application are available in Polish here: www.sinfoniavarsovia.org/pl/warszawski-polonez-dla-niepodleglej-konkurs-kompozytorski.html. Presided over by Krzysztof Penderecki, the jury will also include composers Paweł Mykietyn, Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil, Paweł Szymański, and Agata Zubel as well as conductor Tadeusz Strugała and Janusz Marynowski, director of Sinfonia Varsovia. Funded by the Warsaw City Council and City President, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, together with Sinfonia Varsovia, the First Prize will be 50,000 PLN, the Second 30,000 PLN, and the Third Prize 20,000 PLN. Winners will be announced on June 4, 2018.
[Source: sinfoniavarsovia.org]
100 for 100!
Polish Music Publishers [PWM] has announced an ambitious initiative to honor Poland’s independence—“100 na 100. Muzyczne dekady wolności”—aiming to record and publish 100 works by over 80 Polish composers, written between 1918 and 2018. These works will be performed worldwide on 11 November 2018 in the most prestigious concert halls in Poland and across the globe.
The PWM Director and Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Daniel Cichy, plans for 11 concerts in Poland, starting at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11 in Kraków, and continuing on to Katowice (NOSPR), Wrocław (National Music Forum), and philharmonic halls in Szczecin, Poznań and Białystok, ending with an evening gala concert at the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw. Some of these concerts—as well as concerts in New York, Paris, Vienna, London and Tokyo—will be recorded by radio and television for live broadcast.
PWM is also planning to publish Danuta Gwizdalanka’s volume about Polish music during the past century and have it translated into eight foreign languages. This project is financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage under the multi-year “Independent Poland” program that runs until 2021.
The upcoming 135th anniversary of Karol Szymanowski’s birth (as well as his 80th death anniversary) will also be commemorated by PWM and the National Chopin Institute with a new edition of Szymanowski’s works prepared by Teresa Chylińska. Two other new books about Szymanowski—one by Danuta Gwizdalanka, showing the composer in a social, family and cultural context, and another by Teresa Chylińska, exploring the composer’s youthful years based on his correspondence and friendships—will also be published.
Aside from celebrating this year’s anniversaries, Dr. Cichy also mentioned that PWM will continue to publish a wide variety of Polish composers, starting from the modern classics (like Witold Lutosławski, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, or Wojciech Kilar), to the leading figures in Polish music today including Marta Ptaszyńska and Zygmunt Krauze. The PWM catalogue also includes works by younger composers like Aleksander Lasoń, Eugeniusz Knapik, Marcel Chyrzyński and Agata Zubel, as well as those just developing their careers, like Andrzej Kwieciński or Dobromiła Jaskot.
[Source: dzieje.pl]