• Four Videos on Górecki Symphony 4
In a week’s time, Nonesuch will release a recording of Górecki’s posthumous Symphony no 4 ‘Tansman Episodes’, both as part of a seven-CD Górecki retrospective and as a single CD. In the run-up to the...
View Article• A Discarded Lutosławski Page
What happened to the first draft of Lutosławski’s Third Symphony? (A numerically appropriate question for today, the third anniversary of his birth after the centenary in 2013.) Charles Bodman Rae...
View Article• New CD Note (Różycki/Hyperion)
In the last few of years of writing CD notes, I have unexpectedly been travelling back in time to Polish repertoire, little of which I knew. It began back in 1998, with a note on Paderewski’s Symphony...
View Article• Bôłt & 58th ‘Warsaw Autumn’ CDs
More Polish CD goodies came through the post this morning. First there was a selection of five new releases from the innovative Bôłt Records. I’m particularly intrigued by three CDs exploring...
View Article• In His Element
I’ve been meaning for a few weeks to mention a new recording of Górecki’s most challenging composition. In fact, it is only the second time that Genesis I: Elementi for three string instruments (1962)...
View Article• Lutosławski’s ‘didlumdi, didlumdaj’
On my visit to the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice last week – and what a terrific institution it is, both in terms of staff and students and of its buildings, old and new – I took...
View Article• ‘Warsaw Autumn’ 2016 news
The 59th ‘Warsaw Autumn’ takes place this year 16-24 September. Its central programme will be ‘multimedialny, parateatralny and parasceniczny’ (to borrow the Polish descriptions in the advance...
View Article• Katowice: New-Old Academy of Music
Earlier this month I paid a visit to the Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, at the invitation of Marcin Trzęsiok and Eugeniusz Knapik, to give a lecture during their annual open days. There was...
View Article• Katowice: Artists’ Memorial Walkway
One of the oddest developments in Katowice in recent years has been the erection of a series of sculptural memorials to the city’s creative past. Since 2005, fifteen figures have been so honoured,...
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