Friends of Chopin Australia - Rafal Luszczewski in Recital Thurs, 01 May 2025

If you are fortunate enough to be living in Australia, love the music of Fryderyk Chopin and wish to hear an outstandingly brilliant pianist and musician, make strenuous efforts to attend this remarkable recital

 https://www.friendsofchopin.org.au/rafael-luszczewski-in-recital

I have heard Rafal Luszczewski give many exceptional and well-received recitals in Warsaw, surely the informed critical home of many of today's greatest Chopin interpretations. The prodigious International Chopin Piano Competition will be launched once again later this year in Warsaw

Luszczewski is also to be commended on his many musical activities beyond recitals in a characteristically Polish cosmopolitan musical career embracing teaching, conducting superb Masterclasses and the extraordinary initiative of setting up Chopin piano competitions in South American countries. 

A unique individual and charming man who plays unencumbered by the inflated vanity of far too many concert artists

An exceptional, indeed for many Australians overwhelming, piece on this programme is his own personal arrangement for solo piano of the Warsaw Concerto by Richard Addinsell

The fine and affecting movie Dangerous Moonlight  uses this remarkable composition as a theme in this too often neglected film. The theme was convincingly written by Addinsell in the style of a Rachmaninoff concerto when the great Russian was unable to accept the cinema commission 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_Moonlight

The plot features a Polish concert pianist who is also a wounded fighter pilot during the Battle of Britain. This moving film and its theme transports us to convincing and poignant emotional heights. It is a magnificent and profound statement of the immense sense of Polish patriotism, honour and sheer courage in squadrons that were so shamefully treated at the conclusion of the war

No. 303 Squadron RAF "Tadeusz Kościuszko Warsaw" is one in question, famous for its many victories, valiant aeronautical and flying brilliance

Born on 14 April 1915, Jan Zumbach was a Polish fighter pilot who became an ace during the Second World War.

Merian Cooper and Cedric Fauntleroy

Do try and see the film before you attend the recital

After hearing Luszczewski give a performance of the concerto and others in the Steinway Salon in Warsaw before a select audience of ambassadors and Chopin connoisseurs, I wrote in my review: 

'Last night at the Steinway Salon in Warsaw I attended an excellent recital, a truly inspiring programme with much audience appeal, given by Rafal Luszczewski, a Steinway artist. 

Perhaps the finest Op.40 'Military' Polonaise I have ever heard. No cliché there, just Polish  nobility, passionate resistance and honour. His own arrangement of the Richard Addinsell Warsaw Concerto for solo piano was also magnificent, indeed overwhelming, but not yet recorded'