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

To honour the memory of my great uncle, the once renowned but now unjustly forgotten Australian concert pianist Edward Cahill (1885-1975), the 2023 Sydney International Piano Competition have generously awarded the EDWARD CAHILL AWARD FOR THE BEST PIANIST IN THE  PRELIMINARIES RECITAL Donated by the Friends of Chopin Australia This prize and the overall 2nd Prize in the entire competition was won by the impressive Belarusian pianist  Uladzislau Khandohi Uladzislau Khandohi was born in Minsk, Belarus, to a family of musicians—dulcimer players. When his parents noticed him picking out melodies on the piano at the age of 7, they took him to music school, where he progressed quickly; he won his first grand prix (at the Mendzelevskaya Open City Competition for young pianists in Mogilev) at age 10, and the first prize of the Sviridov Competition for Young Performers in St. Petersburg a year later.   In 2013, he entered the Republican Music College of the Belarusian State Academy of Music, af

Today (5.00 pm August 1st 2023) I watched the extraordinarily moving and symbolic commemoration of the Warsaw Uprising on television simultaneously in the many ceremonial venues (including boats on the Vistula)  of the Warszawa Pamieta.  Someone once  asked me to express the nature of Poland in one word. I replied 'Resistance' . Such was the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.  What a huge commemorative event this has developed into …. but  I have  rather  mixed feelings  concerning leadership after studying this ill-fated heroism in detail for my book. The aircraft display flew directly over my home in Mlociny which was in Command Structure Area II - the northern districts Zoliborz and Bielany …. amazing really…..to hear and see these aircraft so close at low altitude vibrating the atmosphere on this poignant day of memories …. Rain was singularly appropriate for the melancholy of the recollection - a very few valiant survivors still struggle on with diminishing life.   The conflagratio