RAPHAEL LUSZCZEWSKI TO PERFORM THE WARSAW CONCERTO HOSTED AT STEINWAY HALL, LONDON, ON WEDNESDAY, 9TH JULY 2025 AT 6:30PM
STEINWAY HALL LONDON
WELCOMES RAPHAEL LUSZCZEWSKI TO PERFORM THE WARSAW CONCERTO
HOSTED AT STEINWAY
HALL ON WEDNESDAY, 9TH JULY 2025 AT 6:30PM
Wednesday, 9th July
2025 at 6:30pm
STEINWAY HALL LONDON
WELCOMES RAPHAEL LUSZCZEWSKI TO PERFORM THE WARSAW CONCERTO
To reserve tickets
please be in touch with reception@steinway.co.uk
BIOGRAPHY:
Raphael Luszczewski’s
international career began at the age of 16 with a successful debut alongside
the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. Since 2003, he has been listed as a Steinway
Artist on the Steinway & Sons Artists’ Roster in New York,
which features some of the world’s finest pianists.
With a concert career
spanning over 25 years, Luszczewski has performed in many of the world’s
premier venues, including Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), the United Nations
Palace of Nations (Geneva), Warsaw National Philharmonic, Palau de la Música
(Barcelona), Victoria Concert Hall (Singapore), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Sala
Cecilia Meireles (Rio de Janeiro), Teatro Solís (Montevideo), and Linder
Auditorium (Johannesburg), among many others. He has also performed in
Australia’s leading venues, such as Verbrugghen Hall and Melba Hall.
He has been featured
at prestigious music festivals including the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland),
Chopin Festival (Poland), Oraniensteiner Festival (Germany), Primavera Viseu
(Portugal), l’Octobre Musicale (Tunisia), Cervantino Festival (Mexico), and
Chopiniana (Buenos Aires).
Luszczewski holds an
MD in Arts from the Karol Szymanowski Music University in Poland and a Doctor
of Musical Arts (DMA) from the Franz Liszt Music University in Germany. He is a
prize winner at several international competitions, including Clara Schumann
(Düsseldorf), Maria Canals (Barcelona), Luis Sigall (Chile), and the UNESCO
Dinu Lipatti Competition (Bucharest).
His discography
includes 10 CDs released by Polish Radio, Montblanc GmbH, Canyon Classics, and
DUX Recording Producers. He has also recorded for NPR, the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, and Japan’s Fujisankei Group.
Widely regarded as an
authoritative interpreter of Chopin’s works, his most recent album—Chopin:
Complete Ballades—received critical acclaim in professional music journals
in the UK and Luxembourg.
Luszczewski maintains
a versatile repertoire of more than 30 concertos for piano and orchestra and
has appeared with leading symphony orchestras across Europe, Asia, Latin
America, and South Africa.
He has been appointed
Honorary Professor at the National University of Costa Rica and has served as a
guest professor at institutions in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, China,
and across Latin America. He is also the founder and juror of Chopin piano
competitions in Peru and Ecuador.
As Sir James Galway OBE once remarked:
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. The Preliminaries are already in progress.
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. What a brilliant idea this turned out to be!
The fine and affecting romantic wartime movie Dangerous Moonlight (1941), also known as Suicide Squadron, uses this remarkable composition as a theme in this too often neglected film. A slightly sentimental movie but so what? It was made actually during wartime after all (1941) and is not an historical reflection. The Austrian actor Anton Walbrook is perfectly cast as the heroic concert pianist and Spitfire pilot torn between love and patriotic honour to fight for Poland.
The superb pianist on the soundtrack was the g reat Hungarian Lajos (Louis) Kentner. In 1932 he was awarded the 5th Prize in the 2nd International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. He later distinguished himself in bravura performances of Liszt compositions and Bartok concertos in London. In chamber music he was Yehudi Menuhin's partner. Menuhin wrote: '.....a very great musician, one of the last from the grandiose pianists from the world of Liszt, Busoni and early Rubinstein.' He performed often in Poland and served on many international juries including the International Chopin Competition. Perfect then for the Warsaw Concerto by Addinsell! Unaccountably, he was not originally credited for this remarkable role in the publicity for the film.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Kentner
The theme was convincingly and movingly written by Addinsell in the style of a Rachmaninoff concerto when the great Russian was unable to accept the cinema commission. 'The film's director had originally wanted to use Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, but this idea was either forbidden by the copyright owners or was far too expensive' (Roy Douglas)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_Moonlight (1941)
The plot features a Polish concert pianist who is wounded as a fighter pilot during the Battle of Britain and falls in love with an American war correspondent. This moving film and its fragmented 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 on VE Day at the conclusion of the war (the 80th anniversary is on May 8th 2025).
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Warsaw was 90% systematically destroyed in 1944 during WW II  Remind you of anywhere in 2025 ? Unfortunately yes - human progress ... towards the next conflagration ? |
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During the Warsaw Uprising August 1, 1944 – October 2, 1944 |
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2025 - Warsaw rebuilt It is a miracle the city exists at all today, quite apart from the miracle of Poland, given its fraught history of partition, flourishing as a sovereign nation within the European Union |
No. 303 Squadron RAF "Tadeusz Kościuszko Warsaw" was one so mistreated Polish squadron, famous for its many victories, valiant aeronautical and flying brilliance. Spitfires and Hurricanes were not simple aircraft to fly and fight.
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| Born on 14 April 1915, Jan Zumbach was a Polish fighter pilot who became an ace during the Second World War. |
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Merian Cooper and Cedric Fauntleroy  A Polish Spitfire at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford nr. Cambridge  The rarest of photographs…..the best fitters on Spitfires and Hurricanes were reputed to be Polish and developed a deep emotional connection with their machines. The loss of a machine caused severe anguish. Some may well be Polish in this picture …. |
Do try to see the film before you attend the recital
It is appropriate for our time
After hearing Luszczewski give an outstanding performance of the concerto in this dramatic arrangement for solo piano and other piano works 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, love and honour. His own arrangement of the Richard Addinsell Warsaw Concerto for solo piano was also magnificent, indeed overwhelming, but not yet recorded'
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