Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecień is having great success in his current lead role in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Georges Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles [The Pearl Fishers], produced by Penny Woolcock. According to culture.pl, the opera will be broadcast in HD in Poland on January 16 in selected venues, including Kino Praha and Teatr Studio in Warsaw, CK Zamek…Continue Reading Kwiecień Soaring at the Met
Poland’s Deputy Minister of Culture, Jarosław Sellin (pictured at right), has announced that overall spending on culture will increase by 9.5% in 2016, relative to spending levels for similar projects in 2015. Some more details about these spending increases include: art education by 5%, university art education by 5.5%, culture and protection of cultural heritage…Continue Reading Increased Cultural Spending Announced for 2016
The Witold Lutosławski Festival “Chain XIII” will be held from January 31 – February 13, 2016 in the concert halls of the National Philharmonic and Polish Radio Lutosławski Studioin Warsaw. Under the theme of “the musical friendships of Witold Lutosławski,” the Festival will be presented in five symphonic and chamber music programs, featuring great musicians from Poland and abroad and…Continue Reading Lutosławski Premiere at ‘Chain VIII’ Festival
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