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• Total Immersion: Henryk Górecki
The Barbican Centre, London, has just announced its programme for 2015-16. Among the events are three BBC Symphony Orchestra ‘Total Immersion’ days devoted to Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (3 October 2015),...
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• ‘Warsaw Autumn’ Chronicle 2014
The days are long gone when the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ Sound Chronicle contained only Polish repertoire. The seven CDs of recordings from last year’s 57th festival have just been delivered by my postie and I...
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• Wartime Warsaw Recollections
Back in October 2014, I reported briefly on a new 4-CD boxed set of recordings of Polish music composed, for the most part, during World War II. Now a book of recollections has been published by the...
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• New CD Note (Szymański & Mykietyn/Hyperion)
This is the third CD by the Royal String Quartet for which I have had the pleasure and privilege of writing the booklet note. Following on from the RSQ’s recordings of string quartets by Górecki and...
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• Panufnik Revised: 1. Tragic Overture
With last year’s Panufnik centenary and this year’s imminent publications – an expanded reissue of his autobiography (Toccata Press) and the English-language translation of Beata Bolesławska’s 2001...
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• Panufnik Revised: 2. Nocturne & Lullaby
For the second of five articles on Panufnik’s revisions made after he had fled to England in 1954, I have combined two works from 1947: Nocturne and Lullaby. They remain two of his most enduring...
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• 6th Festival of Premieres, Katowice
Last November, the 21st to be exact, I visited the new and magnificent home in Katowice of NOSPR, the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra. The occasion was a performance of Shostakovich’s Fifth...
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• BBC R3: Bacewicz is COTW (25-29.05)
At last! In two weeks’ time, Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-69) will be BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week. Five programmes, each lasting an hour, will be broadcast 25-29 May, at 12 noon and again at 18.30....
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• Woodworm Don’t Like Your Music
I don’t think I have ever seen such a colourful series of titles for the BBC Radio 3 series Composer of the Week. Today, and for the rest of this week, it’s the turn of Grażyna Bacewicz, presented by...
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• Panufnik, Penderecki, Zubel
To add to forthcoming Polish music events in the UK, there are two celebrations this month, in Glasgow and Manchester. Next Saturday and Sunday (20-21 June), ‘Panufnik. A Celebration’ takes place at...
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• News from Nonesuch
Nonesuch Records has announced a number of Górecki releases for September 2015. Prime among them is a recording of the premiere of the Fourth Symphony, given by the London PO under Andrey Boreyko in...
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• Górecki/BBC SO: One Week To Go
This day next week – Saturday 3 October – the BBC Symphony Orchestra is hosting Henryk Górecki: Polish Pioneer, its first Total Immersion day of the 2015-16 season, with the participation of the...
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• Szmytka and Zubel (+) at Huddersfield
The programme of this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (20-29 November) has just been announced and the opening day’s concerts feature music by two of Poland’s most distinctive...
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• Górecki: Total Immersion (3 October 2015)
Before you ask, no, I don’t know why there’s an arty picture of flowers next to a flipped photo of the composer. And while I’m in a grump, I do not understand why, after I carefully vet a proof, a...
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• Górecki World Premiere, Kraków
A week today – on Wednesday 4 November 2015 – the last of Gorecki’s major posthumous works will receive its first performance, in Kraków. It is Sanctus Adalbertus, an hour-long ‘oratorio’ composed...
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• PWM 70 Supplement
The last (and only other) time that I was published in Tygodnik Powszechny (Catholic Weekly) was in the commemorative issue marking the death of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki five years ago. I’ve just been...
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• Górecki in wooden covers
I find it hard to believe that it is five years to the day that my irreplaceable friend, composer and life-force, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, died in Katowice. But rather than dwell on this loss, I have...
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• Zakopane crib
I’ve just unboxed, as I do at this time each year, a seasonal reminder that I bought in Zakopane in December 1998. I was there to celebrate Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s 65th birthday with his family and...
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• Dwurnik on the Pendereckis
The Polish artist Edward Dwurnik (b.1943) has produced what you might call an ‘interesting’ portrait to mark the golden wedding anniversary of Krzysztof Penderecki and his second wife Elżbieta. The...
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• 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...
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