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

"Cease, anxious world, your fruitless pain" (1687) Henry Purcell Song Z 362 I f one was fortunate enough to be present at the recent Warsaw recital by the great pianist Grigory Sokolov , one is taken unresisting through deep valleys and alpine pastures of music. It is an inspired voyage within a timeless musical landscape of immense variety and scope.   Tonight we passed through two centuries of musical inspiration of the highest order and guidance.   Certainly historically we are presently in dire need of reminders of the creative and beautiful rather than the destructive, brutal and ugly in human nature. We need daily to summon up the courage required to face current human adversities of many types and complexions, most of them deeply tragic.  The recital was therapeutic and uplifting in its way. His playing expresses the deepest humanism, creativity and maturity in conceiving an appropriate profundity of musical interpretation, a direct metaphysical connection to th

Ignacy Jan Paderewski (6 November 1860 – 29 June 1941) starring as himself in the innocent and lyrical film  Moonlight Sonata  (1936). Highly recommended. For those of you who have written to me concerning my absence as a reviewer and internet commentator in this competition, thank you. Disappointingly, I have simply not been engaged again for the competition. And yes, I was very fond of writing for this remarkable and uniquely inventive musical event over the past ten years. Justified policy development and modernization for the contemporary world takes precedence. Tempus transit gelidum   The Canadian pianist, musicologist and writer Jarred Dunn has taken my place, a musician far more musically qualified and locally known in Bydgoszcz. He comments on performances and arranges high level musical contacts and interviews online locally with the jury, competitors, conductors and professors in the US and Canada. His work appears to be an engaging and constructive new connection and is fun