Classical Music in Poland and the Europe of Chopin - From the Reviewer's Notepad

Friday, 6 September, 7:00 pm
The Royal Castle – Great Hall
Plac Zamkowy 4

Józef Elsner – A Pole by Choice
The piano used in these concerts was a 1843 Broadwood 
Józef Elsner (1769-1854) was not only a composer and teacher of Chopin but founded the Warsaw Conservatory not long after the first European music Conservatory, the Conservatoire National de Musique, was founded in Paris. He contributed an inestimable amount to the growth and development of music in Poland as part of a more general education at the Main School of Music, a part of the Warsaw University. Elsner was a respected composer of opera and chamber music, grounded in the classical Germanic musical tradition through his studies as a young man in Breslau (Wroclaw) and Vienna. Most interestingly he was deeply influenced by the educational methods of the Swiss Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. He treated education as the planting and growth of a 'seed' that developed organically within the student. This was Elsner's attitud…

From Chopin to Moniuszko
All Photos Wojciech Grzedzinski

And so another fine edition of Chopin and His Europe (Chopin i jego Europa) concludes with a concert that was rather inspiring and certainly expressing optimistic signs for the future of orchestral music in Warsaw. Many fine concerts ahead!

01.09.19 Sunday 20:00 Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall Symphonic Concert Performers Alena Baeva violin Andrey Boreyko conductor Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra Program Witold Lutosławski Symphonic Variations
Probably, there are many works that can be indicated is symbolic final of the interwar period in music. However, perhaps the Symphonic Variations by Witold Lutosławski deserves a special place. The composer created this orchestral firework in 1936 and we can hear references to Szymanowski’s music in it. I was sonically overwhelmed by this performance and am constantly astonished at the vivid musical imagination, the scope of his sound palette, the range of emotional expression and sheer grandeur of this g…