'Begin with Bach' - The Chopin and His Europe Festival (Chopin i jego Europa Festival ) Warsaw, Poland 20 August - 6 September 2025

 

'Begin with Bach'

The Bach House in Eisenach [Bach's birthplace] Thuringia, Germany

A quite extraordinary J.S.Bach portrait as generated  by computer (not AI) from his skull, contemporary paintings and descriptions

We begin and end this year's 'Chopin and his Europe' Festival with Bach.The brilliant composer, who occupies a very important place in the Chopin universe, will also be present in an important, sometimes in an unobtrusive way, on each day of the festival events.

The programme of this year's Festival is created with the intention of presenting Chopin's works in a multifaceted context of music from Bach to Lutosławski. The 29 concerts will be filled with Polish and European music in the interpretations of traditionally two stylistic trends: contemporary and historically informed.

The Bach House in Eisenach [Bach's birthplace] Thuringia, Germany

An important aspect will therefore be historically informed performance, represented in 2025 by soloists and ensembles with well-deserved reputations; performances will include: 

Dmitry Ablogin, laureate of the 1st International Chopin Competition on Historical Instruments with the Freiburger Barockorchester (with both Chopin concertos), Giovanni Antonini's Il Giardino Armonico (Felix Janiewicz's Violin Concerto No. 5 interpreted by Alena Baeva), a leading Polish ensemble of this performance style: Martyna Pastuszka's {oh!} Orchestra (with Felix Janiewicz's Violin Concerto No. 4, interpreted by Chouchane Siranossian, and Beethoven's Piano Concerto in B-flat major, performed by Tomasz Ritter, winner of the First Chopin Competition on Historical Instruments). 

We will also hear, after a long break, Concerto Köln with a particularly interesting juxtaposition: Janiewicz's Third Concerto in violin (with Evgeny Sviridov) and piano version, commissioned by the Institute and presented for the first time (with Tomasz Ritter). 

Martin Nöbauer, a young pianist with an interesting personality, finalist of the 2nd Chopin Competition on Historical Instruments, will play his debut recital at the Festival. 

A special place in the programme – which is a kind of reference to the 20th Festival – is occupied by two Bach recitals by Władysław Kłosiewicz, who will perform both volumes of Bach's Das Wohltemperierte Klavier on the harpsichord. This unique work, so important in Chopin's teaching practice, found its continuation in Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues, arranged analogously to the Bach cycle in two volumes. Yulianna Avdeeva will present them at the festival in two recitals, creating an interesting context of creator-participant (it is worth remembering that Shostakovich took part in the First International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in 1927) and performer-winner.

'Chopin and his Europe' is pianism of the highest order; the year of the Chopin Competition will see its triumphs: alongside Yulianna Avdeeva (three times, including a very special chamber programme with Krzysztof Chorzelski dedicated to Andrzej Tchaikovsky), Bruce Liu will play with the Apollon Musagète Quartet (including Schubert and Mozart), Dang Thai Son and the young Sophia Liu will play both Chopin concertos with Marek Moś's Aukso Orchestra; with this ensemble, Kyohei Sorita and Aimi Kobayashi will perform Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos (the same concert will feature the first performance of Lutosławski's Partita in the version for cello, interpreted by Andrzej Bauer); in recitals, we will hear Kate Liu, Eric Lu, Ivo Pogorelic (in a programme including Bach and Chopin) and Ingrid Fliter (Chopin recital).

There will also be many virtuosos not associated with the Competition, notably Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko, who will perform Karol Szymanowski's Fourth Symphonie concertante and Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand with Sinfonia Varsovia under Bassem Akiki; Benjamin Grosvenor will give a recital (including Schumann's Fantasia in C Major) and Piotr Anderszewski will give a Brahms recital.

The space of sophisticated chamber music will be rounded off by the Hagen Quartet with Mao Fujita, making its festival debut (in a programme featuring Brahms and Shostakovich), and the resident quartet Belcea (another interestingly formatted programme featuring works by Mendelssohn, Mozart and Dvořák's Piano Quintet in A Major – with Alexander Melnikov).

The festival will open, as has been the tradition for several years now, with a violin recital by Fabio Biondi at the Basilica of the Holy Cross, an honourable, symbolic gesture by this great artist whose contribution to the promotion of Polish music in the world cannot be overestimated. The series of festival concerts will close with a recital – also in the Holy Cross Basilica and also Bach – by the eminent Belgian cello virtuoso, Roel Dieltiens.

An important element of the Festival will be the presentation of the Polish participants in the forthcoming Chopin Competition: as in the case of the previous edition of the Competition, five recitals with the participation of 10 pianists are planned in the Basilica of the Holy Cross; these concerts are organised in cooperation with the Mazovian Institute of Culture. 

Traditionally, selected concerts will be available for streaming online on the YouTube channel of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, as well as in broadcasts and rebroadcasts on Polish Radio 2. Closer to the date of the Festival, we will provide information on the broadcasting schedule.

The full detailed programme of the festival is available here

https://festiwal.nifc.pl/en/2025/kalendarium/

Recital Reviews

Profile of the Reviewer Michael Moran : https://en.gravatar.c atom/mjcmoran#pic-0 

All artists' photographs by Wojciech Grzędziński / NIFC

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I unfortunately was not unable to attend or review recitals until the evening of 22nd August 2025

Reviews were posted in reverse order of live performance (latest recital first to appear). This saved  readers the labour of scrolling way down the site after each recital to read the latest review

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SATURDAY 6.09 9:00 p.m.

Basilica of the Holy Cross

Special cello recital

ROEL DIELTIENS

The pillar in the Holy Cross Church, Warsaw, containing the heart of Chopin

This recital, as a Bach conclusion at the highest musical level, was an uplifting and musically perfect and appropriate conclusion to this entire remarkable and unique festival. As such the unaccompanied Bach Cello Suites are beyond criticism on a night occupying a domain of music that transported us quite beyond the outstanding interpreter, our guide.

In so many ways, the entire sacred atmosphere of this church, which contains the heart of Chopin, contributed poignantly to lifting our hearts, spirit and consciousness beyond the mindless strife of the present world. Chopin feared being buried alive and wished his heart removed after death. Presently, we grimly find ourselves buried alive under suffocating earth, gasping for escape from airless confinement beneath the lowest moral values of human nature. Where will our hearts lie?

Here, during a festival that opened and concluded with mighty Bach, we contemplated in sublime music, the highest in human creative inspiration which will hopefully continue to light and fuel future fires of hope and redemption in the soul.

J.S.Bach at his birthplace in Eisenach

Programme

Domenico Gabrielli [1659–1690]

Ricercare No. 7 (1689)

Johann Sebastian Bach [1685–1750]

Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008 (1723)

Prélude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Menuet I

Menuet II

Gigue

Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007 (1723)

Prélude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Menuet I

Menuet II

Gigue

Cello Suite No. 4 in E flat major,

BWV 1010 (1723)

Prélude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Bourrée I

Bourrée II

Gigue

A thought after my visit to Bach's birthplace, Eisenach

A selection of Bach's collection of religious texts used as a source for his Cantatas, Passions and Masses at his birthplace, Eisenach

6.09 SATURDAY 6:00 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hal 

Piano recital

IVO POGORELIC 

The 'scandals ' associated with this pianist are so well known I shall not try your patience here by recounting them. Even at the outset, it was obvious conventional concert formalities had been rethought. As the audience began to assemble, Ivo Pogorelić remained seated at the piano in street clothes experimenting with touch and sound. He later appeared 'formally attired' in a simple white dress shirt and black bow tie - no jacket. Considering the radicalism of his thinking, I saw it as a divertingly ironical, intelligent and rather amusing judgment on his role.

Many years ago in the late 1960s I was writing so-called avant-garde literature. 'Indeterminate Texts' they were called. I admired the so-called French Nouveau Roman of Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor and the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. This movement influenced the Nouvelle Vague  cinema of Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and François Truffaut. In music - Boulez, Stockhausen, Kagel, Pousseur, Xenakis and Messiaen long before my close knowledge of the standard eighteenth and nineteenth century classical keyboard repertoire of say Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin and Couperin. 

Pogorelić had musically taken my consciousness back to that rather exciting world of new exploratory dimensions. In 1968 I spent some time as an 'observer' at Stockhausen's Cologne Courses for New Music with the Australian composer David Ahern, which rather altered my musical appreciation and indeed musical life in some ways, attending many important premieres of Stockhausen's music.

The term avant-garde referred at that time to groups of intellectuals, writers, and artists who voiced ideas and experimented with artistic approaches that challenged the current cultural values. They also shared certain ideals or values which manifested themselves in the non-conformist lifestyles they adopted, a variety of Bohemianism and Surrealism. Stockhausen wrote of his work on Beethoven entitled Opus 1970:  '...to hear familiar, old, pre-formed musical material with new ears, to penetrate and transform it with a musical consciousness of today.' A composer is always limited in the full expression of his ideas by the notation which leaves so much up to the interpretative instrumentalist. Penderecki invented an entirely new notation to express his personal musical ideas.

Where then does that invisible line of individualism interpretation lie, a line that cannot be crossed. The frontier may well have been crossed here a number of times. Significant deviation from the Urtext is today considered unforgivable and remains the ethos of much current performance practice. Standardization of interpretation through teaching, performance and  ubiquitous recordings is common. Composers themselves often forbid the slightest deviation from their scores and the indications contained therein. Yet when one hears them perform, their view of their own creations can be surprising. Rachmaninoff's concerto recordings are rather free in interpretation - who am I to argue?

He showed great courage or supreme arrogance in delivering any wide-ranging deviations. These have been reduced in extent it seemed to me. But we did listen intently ...we were provoked into serious thought...which often does not happen in conventional performances of well-known works. During his 'deconstructions', harmonic transitions, emphasis of seemingly irrelevant detail, we often felt marooned. But we listened. 

I felt we were witnessing a portrait of his own, deeply individualistic, internal musical landscape, filtered through a fraught and sensitive life experience. His remarkable performance of the Chopin sonata in B-flat minor Op.35 and this entire recital winged far beyond the customary and forced one to think outside the conventional interpretative carapace.

MM: I have quoted and occasionally paraphrased extracts from a particularly enlightening interview entitled 'I rejected what I was told' that Pogorelich had with pianist, music critic and teacher Igor Torbicki 19.10.2023 

MM Motivation

IP: Pianists were looking for instrumental solutions on their instrument which are hard to come by, difficult to conquer, to comprehend. And I was never afraid of that. So that is what I'm doing, if one wants to understand what I'm doing.

MM: On recordings

The great pianist and musical artist Grigory Sokolov clearly feels the same as he only releases live recordings

IP: There is less freedom in the recording. it's an artificial thing. Consider that recording is something artificial. It's a box. Information goes into it and out of it, speaking in simple terms. In it, I cannot take as much freedom as I can take on the concert stage. There can be no improvisation. Recordings are documents rather than anything else.

I (MM) conceive time as a spiral and not linear in nature

Hence for me great creative artists of the past are our contemporaries (certainly if one takes geological time as a scale).

They are not 'past masters' but part of an eternal presence 

IP: Because I think that Bach, for example, is contemporary. I think that Beethoven is contemporary.

MM: Establishing the invisible line that divides the composer's intention and the personal freedom of the interpretive artist. The line must not be crossed without unacceptable distortion of intention and musical speech but where does it lie ?

IP: But what I have to is to do justice to composers. I have to be respectful to them. And in order to be respectful, I have to find this golden line. Go inside, try to touch their inspiration. And then interpret it on the piano. 

François Boucher - Allegory of Music 1764

MM: The vital cultivation of sound and tone

Teachers tend to neglect this conduit for a composer's and interpreter's individual voice

In his book The Art of Piano Playing (English translation, London 1973) the great Heinrich Neuhaus devotes an entire substantial chapter on Tone production (pp 54-82).

The chapter opens:  Music is a tonal art. It produces no visual image, it does not speak with words or ideas. It speaks only with sounds.

Chopin in lessons with his pupils concentrated on the production of a beautiful tone on the Pleyel which required 'work'

Q IT: What do you think has changed the most in your playing since the time of Chopin Competition?

IP: The real question is the quality of sound. Now, the quality of sound is not a result of inspiration, it's a result of hard work: listening and searching. And this is how you enter into the beautiful world of sounds. And it's all sound, Bach is sound, Chopin is sound .... And that is what’s important when you listen to my recordings – the quality of sound. And clarity. It doesn't come easily

The sound. I was constantly searching for sound variety. The quality of sound is also related to time. It does not exist as a result of inspiration or some kind of spontaneous relation. Instead, it’s mathematically calculated, and it exists within its time. It’s born, it lives, and it perishes.

So, the sound has a slot, like an airplane. The tower confirms to the pilot: “now it's your time for takeoff”. And he cannot do it together with other pilots, so there cannot be 10 flights departing at the same time. It's the same thing with sound.

Bach said that playing the piano is touching the key at the right moment. It's not only that. It's also about the right touch so that each sound has its own voice, role, and also forms a part of the sound picture. It becomes a part of a chord, harmony and melody at the same time.

That is why the school of Franz Liszt is superior to other piano schools. Because Liszt treated the piano both as an orchestra and as a human voice. That started with Beethoven. Liszt developed it further. He is responsible for the piano becoming the king of all instruments.

Chopin did his part, also experimenting with sound. Chopin did not specialize in fugues nor any orchestral composition... But on the piano, he reached enormous heights thanks to his imagination and introspection.

Q. IT: Since we’re talking about interpretation and sound, I wanted to ask you.. 

IP: I was now talking specifically about the quality of sound. Young people like to copy. And then they come to a difficult moment if they try to copy any recordings including my own... They listen to them a hundred or a thousand times, but they can't really reproduce them. They don't have the knowledge of how to get the sound out of the piano. And it's an anatomical thing.

Q. IT: Purely physical?

IP: Controlled by your ears and by your intellect. But in reality, there is a strict protocol that comes from anatomy. Strong muscles, connections, fingers. Then the shape of hand – sphere, like a cupola, St. Peter’s Cathedral. Centre of power in the hand. You see? [presents his hand in the playing position] Three principal muscles. Fingers are attached to muscles, they don’t play from air. It’s easy to illustrate, but very difficult to implement.

Certain lines have been broken by the first and second World Wars. Centers of culture, where the art of performing was really brought up, where competition existed, and where artists functioned, were dispersed. People emigrated.

So, certain European cultural centers just stopped existing. They were deserted. Many people emigrated to the United States, for example. Of course, they planted some seeds, but the ambience was different. The architecture of piano schools was threatened and finally destroyed. Centers of power, of piano playing knowledge like Saint Petersburg or Vienna stopped existing. World Wars interrupted their development completely.

Q. IT Do you think it's possible to rebuild those centers of piano playing?

IP: No. It would take centuries. We would need a new Beethoven, a whole new set of things. Technology is also standing in the way.

I was almost 16 or 17 years old when I realized that I knew nothing about the piano. I said to myself: “you want to fly and you don't even know how to walk”. And that changed everything. Doors of knowledge and culture were suddenly open to me. This is a fact of life, of destiny. 

Q. IT:  On the other hand, it seems like in history of music there are some people that were tremendously successful in passing on their knowledge with virtually complete success. One of them was Nadia Boulanger. At certain point it seemed that almost everybody who studied with her, thanks to her knowledge, was capable of achieving their artistic goals 

IP: She probably had a rare talent in communication, but she was also a woman. That's very important. It's easier to learn from a woman than from a man, because there is a different ego.

And she had the capacity, capability to awaken the talent in others, to encourage them. [...] she was an expert in polyphony. It came naturally to her. [...] And also to spend time, follow and lead a talented person, help him to reach another step, another level. It takes a lot of time and dedication.

Q. IT :Why do you choose to perform from scores on stage?

IP: Why not? I spend so much time with these scores. There are so many markings on them, so many variations and shades of my work. A score is the part of my work. I don’t see any reason why I should not be using them. When you play solo, maybe it’s less needed. But while playing with an orchestra, just like yesterday, it should be there.

Indeed, part of brain’s capacity is occupied with remembering musical text [...] More like a mirror. With it, the brain is less occupied.

For the full interview :

https://prestoportal.pl/ivo-pogorelich-i-rejected-what-i-was-told

Programme

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [1756–1791] 

Fantasia in C minor, K. 475

Adagio in B minor, K. 540

Fantasia in D minor, K. 397

As mentioned, the beautiful tone, refinement  and velvet touch of this pianist remain unsoiled by time. The tempo was far more considered, almost passive but then it had the character of an improvised Fantasia and a sense of 'searching'. I felt his to be rather an introverted meditation, conception or vision without excessive drama or sufficient expressiveness. The D minor Fantasy on the other hand was almost over expressive compared to more customary 'domestic' renderings.

Ludwig van Beethoven [1770–1827]

Beethoven Pathétique’ Sonata 
First Edition (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn)

Piano Sonata in C minor ‘Pathétique’

Op. 13 (1799)

Grave – Allegro di molto e con brio

Adagio cantabile

Rondo. Allegro

Such a difficult task to speak of it! Charles Rosen opens his analysis with a quotation from Wilhelm von Lenz in 1855: 'We should not have to speak about this work after the suffering it has gone through for fifty years in boarding schools and other institutions where one learns to play the piano. Is the name of Beethoven heard there by chance? [...] Let us hasten to say that it simply magnificent.

The popularity, indeed familiarity, of this great work already seemed under threat after publication in 1799. There was a danger to its full appreciation as a deeply tragic, yet courageous utterance, only fifty years after its conception.

Beethoven may well have been at least partially inspired to write this sonata by Schiller's treatise on tragic art, Über das Pathetische. Schiller concludes that tragedy is not only the simple presentation of melancholy but contains elements of moral resistance. Tragedy does not accept the negative outcome of reversal as final but creates 'effigies of the ideal' or utopian aspirations. When contemplating the Sonate pathétique as an interpreter, one should bear in mind Schiller: '...suffering bound up with sensibility and with the consciousness of our inner moral freedom, is tragic sublimity.'

The opening meditative Grave phrases by Pogorelich were tremendously commanding. He evolved a rather deliberate tempo in the Allegro di molto con brio which in its dramatic 'earthly' contrasts, transformed Beethoven's inner passions and the unexplored heat of disillusionment expressed in the Grave opening, into firm emotional resistance. We oscillate between poles of feeling. 'The master's gaze and a cosmic wind haunt the music.' (William Kinderman).

Although beautifully lyrical and poetic in singing tone, the Andante cantabile was rather static in its development of utopian aspirations. Here Pogorelich descended into a deep, bordering on introspective, even painful, internal monologue. I yearned for a more 'resistant', joyful Rondo. Allegro. I felt the sweeping scales did not sufficiently move us emotionally from reflection to action. During this movement, Beethoven in his composition recalls phantoms of the meditative lyricism of the Adagio.  However, determined resistance wins the day and overcomes human obstacles

I felt Pogorelich could have made far more of the philosophical depth contained within this already over-familiar work. The most profound  interpretation I have heard is a recording made in 1945 by Rudolf Serkin, a pianist who possessed a rare insight into the heart of Beethoven's exploration of the human condition.

Intermission 

Fryderyk Chopin [1810–1849 

Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 55 No. 2 (1843)

The Paris critic Hippolyte Barbedette, one of Chopin’s first biographers, wrote of Chopin's Nocturnes ‘are perhaps his greatest claim to fame; they are his most perfect works’. That is how they were seen in Paris during the mid nineteenth century. Barbedette explained the reason for their success as follows: ‘That loftiness of ideas, purity of form and almost invariably that stamp of dreamy melancholy’. There are inspired long legato lines in this 'meditation' based on the rise and fall of ardent emotion

Although played and expressed in with his memorable superb tone and touch, perhaps Pogorelić could show a deeper insight into the fluctuation of sentiments reflected in these subtle waves of melody.

Mazurkas, Op. 59 (1845)

No. 1 in A minor

No. 2 in A flat major

No. 3 in F sharp minor 

All pianists fond of Chopin should learn to dance the mazurka and polonaise!

One needs to examine the nature of dancing in Warsaw during the time of Chopin. Almost half of his music is actually dance music of one sort or another and a large proportion of the rest of his compositions contain dances.

Dancing was a passion especially during carnival from Epiphany to Ash Wednesday. It was an opulent time, generating a great deal of commercial business, no less than in Vienna or Paris. Dancing - waltzes, polonaises, mazurkas - were a vital part of Warsaw social life, closely woven into the fabric of the city. There was veritable 'Mazurka Fever' in Europe and Russia at this time. The dancers were not restricted to noble families - the intelligentsia  and bourgeoisie also took part in the passion.

Chopin's experience of dance, as a refined gentleman of exquisite manners, would have been predominantly urban ballroom dancing with some experience of peasant hijinks during his summer holidays in Żelazowa Wola, Szafania and elsewhere. Poland was mainly an agricultural society in the early nineteenth century. At this time Warsaw was an extraordinary melange of cultures. Magnificent magnate palaces shared muddy unpaved streets with dilapidated townhouses, szlachta farms, filthy hovels and teeming markets.

By 1812 the Napoleonic campaigns had financially crippled the Duchy of Warsaw. Chopin spent his formative years during this turbulent political period and the family often escaped the capital to the refuge of the Mazovian countryside at Żelazowa Wola. Here the fields are alive with birdsong, butterflies and wildflowers. On summer nights the piano was placed in the garden and Chopin would improvise eloquent melodies that floated through the orchards and across the river to the listening villagers gathered beyond.

Of course he was a perfect mimic, actor, practical joker and enthusiastic dancer as a young man, tremendously high-spirited. He once wrote a verse describing how he spent a wild night, half of which was dancing and the other half playing pranks and dances on the piano for his friends. They had great fun! One of his friends took to the floor pretending to be a sheep! On one occasion he even sprained his ankle he was dancing so vigorously!

He would play with gusto and 'start thundering out mazurkas, waltzes and polkas'. When tired and wanting to dance, he would pass the piano over to 'a humbler replacement'. Is it surprising his teacher Józef Elzner and his doctors advised a period of 'rehab' at Duszniki Zdrój to preserve his health which had already begun to show the first signs of failing? This advice may not have been the best for him, his sister Emilia and Ludwika Skarbek, as reinfection was always a strong possibility there. Both were dead not long after their return from the 'cure'.

Many of his mazurkas would have come to life on the dance floor as improvisations. Perhaps only later were they committed to the more permanent art form on paper under the influence and advice of the Polish folklorist and composer Oskar Kolberg. Chopin floated between popular and art music quite effortlessly.

Here in the Op.59 set we were drawn into the world of Chopin's nostalgic and poetic dreams in an affecting rendition of these ‘most beautiful sounds that it is possible to produce from the piano’ (Ludwig Bronarski). Let me allow Mieczysław Tomaszewski describe the third of these Mazurkas in F sharp minor which 'drags one into the whirl of a Mazurian dance from the very first bars, with its sweeping, unconstrained gestures, its verve, élan, exuberance, and also, more importantly, the occasional suppressing of that vigour and momentum, in order to yield up music that is tender, subtle, delicate...' 

The three late Mazurkas Op. 59 (1845) were played by Pogorelich in a highly poetic and nostalgic vein with his usual luminous control of tone colour, touch and emotion. In many ways these were the finest aspects of the recital. However, I feel Poles prefer a slightly ‘rougher’, more rhythmically urgent, atmospheric mazurka, even if sublimated by Chopin. 

Piano Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 35 (1839)

Grave. Doppio movimento

Scherzo

Marche funebre

Finale. Presto

The Grave opening chords certainly announced in a melancholic mood that this work was to be preoccupied with the nature of death and not a stroll in the park. In the opening Allegro maestoso, Pogorelich gave us a significant degree of emotional commitment to this remarkable movement. There was some weight, strength and menace present here. One could not, did not wish to, escape the imagery of the  galloping horse.

One should reflect after this comment, that movement during Chopin’s time was restricted either to walking, horse or carriage. So when a composer wished to impart movement to a piece of music he could not envisage all of the extraordinary modes of travel we have at hand.

Of the Scherzo, the great Polish musicologist Tomaszewski comments: ‘…one might say that it combines Beethovenian vigour with the wildness of Goya’s Caprichos.’ I felt it could have been lighter in its flash of consciousness, more energetic in this shift from exuberant life towards inevitable doom.

The beautiful trio took us singing into the further dimension of ardent dreams which made the Marche  funèbre such a shocking jolt from the force of destiny. Pogorelich adopted quite a fast yet successful metaphorically doom-laden tempo. The reflective trio of the Marche was only at moments a convincing contrast of innocence, love and purity blighted by the reality of death (Chopin was terrified of being buried alive – often horrifyingly possible in those primitive medical times). Tomaszewski continues perceptively: ‘The Sonata was written in the atmosphere of a passion newly manifest, but frozen by the threat of death.’ 

A deep existential dilemma for Chopin speaks from these pages written in Nohant in 1839. The pianist, like all of us, must go one dimension deeper to plumb the terrifying abyss this sonata opens at our feet. Pogorelich failed to take me into these dark realms very often. 

Of the Presto which concludes the work, his extraordinary articulation and sound in this curious polyphonic utterance transported me into another dimension. Chopin wrote characteristically with intentional irony of the ‘chattering after the march’ leaving Schumann to write in philosophical and literary frustration: ‘The Sonata ends as it began, with a riddle, like a Sphinx – with a mocking smile on its lips’. 

An outstanding and brilliantly thought-provoking recital that celebrates remarkable individualistic musical thought - rare enough today.

5.09 FRIDAY 8:30 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Symphonic concert

ALENA BAEVA violin

IL GIARDINO ARMONICO

GIOVANNI ANTONINI conductor

Program

Feliks Janiewicz [1762–1848]

Violin Concerto No. 5 in E minor (1803–1807)

This concerto is the finest for me of his set of five. The opening Largo is dark and a touch forbidding. The Allegro. Moderato is highly emotional, dramatic and a subjective Sturm und Drang melody and put me in mind of the Mozart D minor piano concerto in its intense emotionalism. This or even the premonitory energy within Verdi overture to La Forza de Destino. Mozart admired Janiewicz greatly. In fact, Mozart’s 19th-century biographer Otto Jahn speculates that his lost Andante in A major K470 written at this time may have been composed for Janiewicz.

Michael Kelly, a famous tenor, wrote that while in Vienna he was privileged to hear one of the foremost violinists in the world: ‘...a very young man, in the service of the King of Poland, he touched the instrument with thrilling effect, and was an excellent leader of an orchestra. His concertos always finished with some pretty Polonaise air; his variations were truly beautiful.’

The composition certainly sets the individual soaring virtuoso violin part as a superb display piece against the orchestra. The woodwinds were especially seductive, impressive and romantic. Tremendous virtuosity was displayed by all the orchestral soloists and ensemble.

The long, polyphonic, virtuosic cadenza in this first movement is dazzling and absolutely sensational, rather like a prized piece of decorative Sevres porcelain displayed in a solitary cabinet in a Parisian museum. No surprise Paganini was impressed by Janiewicz. I felt Baeva was technically completely dominant and exciting in her virtuoso execution. The incredibly physically active conductor Giovanni Antonini remained convincing in his flourishes with the remarkably inspiring orchestra.

Baeva presented the Adagio as an affectingly lyrical, poetic and emotionally touching pastoral melody of love,  gliding effortlessly above pizzicato orchestral strings. A warm, uncomplicated alluring love song. I could imagine a superb concert including this piece in the Bath Assembly Rooms where it may well have been played. Another picturesque venue may well have been the Pleasure Gardens of Vauxhall and Ranelagh in London.

This extraordinarily long lyrical period by the soloist led magically attaca (no pause) into the spirited and exuberant Rondo. Allegretto. This conclusion suited Baeva well and her instinctive sense of rhythm and dance. The movement emerged as rich in unmistakable folkloric, Jewish-Ukrainian dancing elements and a physical joy. There was a beautiful balance maintained here between the virtuosic violin soloist Baeva and the minimalist pizzicato orchestral writing and accompaniment under Antonini.

I felt at times I could have been in Kazimierz in Kraków during a late evening klezmer concert in a tavern. The accelerando  conclusion was exciting and uplifting in gaiety. the entire concerto came across as both dramatic and theatrical and as a result highly entertaining.

I cannot imagine why this concerto, in a fine performance by an exceptional violinist such as we heard tonight, has not been absorbed into the conventional repertoire. Such pleasure would be taken in hearing the sheer tuneful, ornamented virtuosity. We do not always need to inhabit the 'dark night of the soul' in a concert hall! Here we had a balance of temperament, the unalloyed ideal of Sturm und Drang.

For more on the remarkable Polish virtuoso violinist Felix Janiewicz and his long period in Edinburgh  musical life planting the seeds of the today's Edinburgh Festival - if you have time, here is an illustrated presentation ....

http://www.michael-moran.com/2022/09/felix-yaniewicz-music-and-migration-in_7.html

Largo – Allegro moderato

Adagio

Rondo. Allegretto

Ludwig van Beethoven [1770–1827]

Joseph Willibrord Mähler: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1804/05, oil on canvas, Vienna Museum

Symphony No. 3 in E flat major ‘Eroica’ (1803)

Op. 55

Pages from the Heiligenstadt Testament

Beethoven was by the time of the 'Eroica' almost profoundly deaf and was communicating using the depressing conversation books. It is well to remember a passage from the Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802:

My misfortune is doubly painful to me because I am bound to be misunderstood; for me there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live almost alone, like one who has been banished; I can mix with society only as much as true necessity demands. If I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me, and I fear being exposed to the danger that my condition might be noticed. Thus it has been during the last six months which I have spent in the country. By ordering me to spare my hearing as much as possible, my intelligent doctor almost fell in with my own present frame of mind, though sometimes I ran counter to it by yielding to my desire for companionship. But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone standing next to me heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life - it was only my art that held me back. (Heiligenstadt Testament © Translation John V. Gilbert)

Allegro con brio

Marcia funebre. Adagio assai

Scherzo. Allegro vivace – Trio –

Scherzo

Finale. Allegro molto – Poco

andante – Presto

In many ways not only was this composition revolutionary at the time but the performance I heard this evening was a revelation, in fact a revolution in orchestral sound quality and depth of interpretation. Beethoven began writing the 'Eroica' in Heiligenstadt, Vienna. He  lived in this touristic spot from April to October 1802 while coming to terms with his growing deafness that had actually caused him to contemplate suicide. The closeness to Nature he experienced healed him psychologically. He evolved in composition what he called 'a new path' and struck out upon it with renewed courage. The revolutionary 'Eroica' symphony was one result of this catharsis. 

It is instructional to read the comments by the French composer Hector Berlioz from À travers chant, 1862 :

It is wrong to tamper with the description placed at the head of this work by the composer himself. The inscription runs “Heroic Symphony to celebrate the Memory of a Great Man.” In this we see that there is no question of battles or triumphal marches such as many people, deceived by mutilations of the title, naturally expect; but much in the way of grave and profound thought, of melancholy souvenirs and of ceremonies imposing by their grandeur and sadness—in a word, it is the hero’s funeral rites. I know of few examples in music of a style in which grief has been so consistently able to retain such pure form and such nobility of expression. 

From the powerful opening chords, doubtless symbolizing images of battle together with heroic 'masculine' themes, I felt enveloped in a revolutionary sound world created by the period instruments of Il Giardino Armonico under Giovanni Antonini. The contrast with the sound of the 'Eroica' created by a modern orchestra was dramatic. I will not bore you by examining each movement in detail but make a few observations as I listened to this remarkable, rejuvenated performance.

The ensemble were clearly possessed of extraordinary unity, cohesiveness and almost symbiotic connection with their conductor. All performed as one living musical organism. There was great urgency and forward momentum in their playing and a remarkable instrumental transparency revealed within the orchestral sound. The instrumentalists were pointedly apparent - for example, the remarkable accuracy of the natural horns and brass.

The revolutionary imaginative genius of Beethoven became increasingly, even disturbingly apparent in this extraordinary performance. One could imagine without great effort the shattering effect the work must have had on the original listeners. I have heard Giovanni Antonini is compared in spirit and almost demonic possession to Toscanini. He has the same striking amalgamation of passionate drive and astute perceptiveness. Antonini has a profound understanding of the revolutionary nature of the 'Eroica' as drama, when he brings a fertile imagination to  bear on it. He projects that understanding into an orchestral performance that 'glows white in the furnace' (Richard Osborne). 

The legato he evoked from the orchestra was affectingly expressive. I began to feel that Beethoven had entered a curious autumnal relationship in his relationship with the figure of Bonaparte, a fading green leaf once deeply admired in spring. This brought me emotionally close to his intimate embrace of Nature. His increasing love for the music of that natural force is so obvious in the Pastoral symphony. 

His disillusionment with Napoleon was devastating for him. The orchestral fugal entry was magnificent and monumental. I was unexpectedly brought close to tears, something that is rarely aroused in Beethoven except perhaps during some of his late chamber works. The tympani added a percussive nobility of splendour and the force of freedom attempting to rise.

I felt the dynamic control of Il Giardino and Antonini was almost unearthly in skill. The detaché plating elevated the dance rhythms to the heights of sensibility. At this point the almost uncannily and certainly magical pitch accuracy, texture and timbre of the natural horns swept me away. The string pizzicato at pp dynamic was so elegant I often felt words were utterly inadequate to express how I felt within my emotional centre. 

This performance convinced me once again that musical feeling occupies a spiritual realm beyond language to engage, inaccessible to any other medium other than of itself containing its own life. The contrapuntal polyphony seduced my mind and heart in unaccustomed ways. 

The audience were hypnotized by the magnitude and new domain of sound, this rare and penetrating performance of such a familiar work. A true revelation in music, sound and imaginative conception. Surely one of the highlights of the festival for me.

THURSDAY 4.09 8:30 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

KATE LIU

 Program

Fryderyk Chopin [1810–1849]

Nocturne in F- Major Op. 15 No. 1 (1830–1832)

James Huneker (1857-1921), the renowned American music critic, writer and pianist, author of a book devoted to Chopin, wrote of the Nocturne genre:

‘Something of Chopin’s delicate, tender warmth and spiritual voice is lost in larger spaces. In a small auditorium, and from the fingers of a sympathetic pianist, the nocturnes should be heard, that their intimate, night side may be revealed. […] They are essentially for the twilight, for solitary enclosures, where their still, mysterious tones […] become eloquent and disclose the poetry and pain of their creator.’

The Nocturnes surely must be imagined as a musical poetic reflection and internal emotional agitation that takes place at night when the imaginative mind operates in relative silence and isolation at a different and sometimes fantastical level of consciousness. Chopin lived in a world without electricity. Just imagine this for a moment … The Nocturnes should retain a sense of improvisation in the internal exploration and discovery of sensibility.

The first dozen bars of the Nocturne in F minor Op.15 No.1 were written into the album of Elizabeth Sheremetev. The opening theme is melancholic and elegiac in which Liu adopted a contemplative tempo and  ‘sang’ affectingly on the piano. The moment she begins to play we are convinced of her musicality and more than that. This delicate, fey lady is a musical phenomenon and an extraordinary pianist. I have written of her remarkable recitals often over the years on this website.

During the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition, Warsaw, 1-23 October 2015 she was placed 3rd. At that time I had the curious vision of an immensely precocious Chopin savant whilst listening and watching her. Without doubt, hers always becomes one of the most extraordinary Chopin recitals. This pianist seems to be in touch with some force outside of herself, transfigured by the music magnetically and metaphysically, taken over by a musical 'voice' and almost cosmic natural force, if that does not sound too fanciful. She connects us to 'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower' in the words of that great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

Listening to her I was reminded of a description of a Chopin  performance. In Paris he acquired new aristocratic students in 1847 such as the immensely talented Maria Aleksandrovna von Harder (1833-1880), a precocious 14-year-old Russian-German pianist from Saint Petersburg. She took lessons from Chopin almost every day during 1847 and up to his departure for England in April 1848. 

She wrote: '....when he was in pain, Chopin often gave lessons by listening in the office adjacent to the drawing-room .... his hearing, sensitive to the subtlest shadings, immediately recognized which finger was on a given key.'  In 1853 Hans von Bülow described her playing to Liszt, an approach that she surely must have partly imbibed from Chopin  '...one of a kind . . . full of all the whispers . . . phenomenal, transient and sudden changes in tempo, unlike what you usually hear in concert halls. Luminous, interwoven, wonderful melodies emerged like miraculous swan songs.'

Nadia Boulanger was once asked what made a great as opposed to an excellent performance of a piano work. She answered 'I cannot tell you that. It is something I cannot describe in words. A magical element descends.' This is certainly the case with Kate Liu.

This atmosphere of poetic nostalgia in this nocturne soon gave way to a depiction of the dark night of the soul and turbulent emotions. The contrast in atmosphere was profoundly meaningful and at times intensely lyrical. Liu seemed to explore the darker regions of the heart in a dramatic fashion. These agitated passages led the narrative back into the melancholy aura from which they emerged.

Berceuse in D-Flat Major Op. 57 (1844)

This work can surely be considered ‘music of the evening and the night’. The Chopin Berceuse is possibly the most beautiful lullaby in absolute music ever written. The manuscript of this cradle-song masterpiece belonged to Chopin's close friend Pauline Viardot, the French mezzo-soprano and composer.

Perhaps this innocent, delicate and tender music was inspired by his concern with her infant daughter Louisette. George Sand wrote in a letter ‘Chopin adores her and spends his time kissing her on the hands’ Perhaps the baby caused Chopin to become nostalgic for his own family or even reflect on a child of his own that could only ever remain an occupant of his imagination.

Liu's interpretation with her sensitive and musical fingers, contained a poignant  tenderness, refinement and poetry replete with the purity of innocence. The work hovers hesitatingly between piano and pianissimo.

The Berceuse, composed and completed at romantic Nohant in 1844, appears to constitute a distant echo of a song that Chopin’s mother sang to him: the romance of Laura and Philo, ‘Już miesiąc zeszedł, psy się uśpiły’ [The moon now has risen, the dogs are asleep]. (Tomaszewski). In view of this tender genesis of infancy, it is well known Chopin loved children and they loved him.

For me the work does speak of a haunted yearning for his own child, a lullaby performed in his sublimely imaginative mind, isolated and alone. No, not a common feeling about the work and possibly over-interpreted on my part, but what of that ...

Johannes Brahms [1833–1897]

The young romantic Brahms

Ballades, Op. 10 (1854) 

No. 1 in D minor (Andante)

No. 2 in D major (Andante) 

No. 3 in B minor (Intermezzo. Allegro) 

No. 4 in B major (Andante con moto)

These works were composed by Brahms in his early years - he was merely 21 years old. The Ballades, Op. 10, are lyrical pieces written by Brahms as a young man dedicated to his friend the German conductor, composer and musician Julius Otto Grimm. Their composition signaled in part a poetic, amorous and long-lived affection for the pianist and composer Clara Schumann. She helped Brahms launch his career but failed to respond in a manner he might have adored and achieved emotional fulfillment.  Brahms conceived of the genre rather differently from the arguably more famous Chopin Ballades.

Brahms's ballades are arranged in two pairs of two, the members of each pair being in parallel keys. The first ballade in D minor was inspired by a Scottish murder ballad "Edward" found in a collection Stimmen der Völker in ihren Liedern compiled by Johann Gottfried Herder. A mother questions her son about blood on his 'sword' and he finally admits that it is his brother, or his father, whom he has killed. 

Liu gave an extraordinary psychological exploration of this work as no other I have ever heard. She once again gave me the uncanny feeling that she had become a medium or savant for Brahms. She expressed in some of these works his most internal, almost feminine romanticism, his thoughts of unrequited romantic and filial love. She clearly performed them as if they were created by a young spirit, mired in the emotional throes of yearning love but collecting himself in the end to continue with an active life. 

The highly intellectual musical construction was allied to a moving, evolving, organic, internal emotional landscape. Determination allied to the unreality  of dreams. Brahms yet remains beset by memories and romantic aspirations as he was in his mature life. Liu compelled us to listen closely and gave us a quite visionary experience of these familiar early works.

Intermission

Alekander Scriabin [1872–1915]

Sonata in F sharp minor, Op. 23 (1897–1898)

Drammatico

Allegretto

Andante

Presto con fuoco

This sonata was completed in the summer of 1898 on a country estate at Maidanovov, before his period of future financial security as a piano professor at the Moscow Conservatoire. He was an imaginative, excellent teacher ranging in subjects from Bach to contemporary works including his own.

‘This chord should sound like a joyous cry of victory, not a wardrobe toppling over!’

The Third Sonata is a large-scale, four-movement work. Liu certainly gave the work the qualities of a polyphonic symphony of epic proportions in the strength of the harmonic transitions in the first Drammatico movement. 'Heroically assertive' music to use the words of the commentator Simon Nicholls.

Several years after publication Scriabin issued a rather mystical ‘programme’ for each movement (as he was wont to do as a result of his obsession with literature and mystical poetry). Some musical academics have indicated that the writer might not be Scriabin but his second wife, Tatyana Schloezer.  However, Scriabin certainly approved of the descriptions:

States of Being:

a) The free, untamed soul passionately throws itself into pain and struggle

b) The soul has found some kind of momentary, illusory peace; tired of suffering, it wishes to forget, to sing and blossom—despite everything. But the light rhythm and fragrant harmonies are but a veil, through which the uneasy, wounded soul shimmers

c) The soul floats on a sea of gentle emotion and melancholy: love, sorrow, indefinite wishes, indefinable thoughts of fragile, vague allure

d) In the uproar of the unfettered elements the soul struggles as if intoxicated. From the depths of Existence arises the mighty voice of the demigod, whose song of victory echoes triumphantly! But, too weak as yet, it fails, before reaching the summit, into the abyss of nothingness.

I found Liu's performance was full of high emotional intensity. Technically her pedaling was a miracle that 'unclouded' the dense writing to reveal the structure and polyphony. The second Allegretto movement replaces the traditional sonata scherzo and trio. The beginning is indicated to be played with soft pedal.

The description of the Andante third movement above is an appropriate description for Liu's approach. Lyrical and divine innocent poetry was expressed here by her in a radiant aureole of sound. The pianist Mark Meichik, a Scriabin pupil who later gave the first performance of the Fifth Sonata, reported that the composer’s playing of this passage sounded ‘as if the left hand melody were accompanied by silvery tinklings or shimmerings’; and when Elena Beckman-Shcherbina played it to the composer, Scriabin called out: ‘Here the stars are singing!’

The ‘uproar of the elements’ or tumult and turmoil of the Presto con fuoco  finale was created by Liu in a relentless left-hand figuration and troubled chromaticism. I was reminded of the chromaticism of Wagner in Tristan, even Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht written shortly after. In this final movement Liu became truly symphonic and orchestral in the power she produced from the instrument. A tremendous performance with a close in a mood of representative Scriabinesque intransigence.

César Franck [1822–1890]

Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, FWV 21 (1884)

This Franck work was well described by the writer and music critic Adrian Corleonis as ‘an elaborately figured, chromatically inflected, and texturally rich essay in which doubt and faith, darkness and light, oscillate until a final ecstatic resolution.’  

After hearing a piece by Emmanuel Chabrier in April 1880, the Dix pièces pittoresques, Franck observed 'We have just heard something quite extraordinary -- music which links our era with that of Couperin and Rameau.' The forms Prélude, Choral and Fugue here are clearly symbolic of their Bach inspired counterparts. The motives are obviously related to the Bach Cantata 'Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen', and also the 'Crucifixus' from the B minor Mass. César Franck transforms these with his own unique solutions and cyclical form. 

The influence of the organ and his many years composing sacred texts are obvious here. The pianist Stephen Hough in a note remarked "Alfred Cortot described the Fugue in the context of the whole work as 'emanating from a psychological necessity rather than from a principle of musical composition' (La musique française de piano; PUF, 1930)." The work was finally premiered in January 1885.

Kate Liu gave a magnificent, powerful and authoritative performances of this work. She transported me into the opulent sound world of the organ effortlessly on the Steinway. She managed to extract a full, all stops out, opulent organ timbre, texture and density from the piano as well as great delicacy when required. An appropriately noble and grand atmosphere roused deep spiritual emotions from this secular musical construction.

The nervously agitated toccata-like Prelude had an  irresistible rhythmic forward momentum.  The emotions of anguish and pain leading to personal redemption were poignantly expressed in the Choral.   The work became a spiritual journey from darkness into the light of dawn.  Finally in the highly complex and embattled Fugue, suffering is resolved into the triumphant Choral theme once again – like a great chiming of bells.

An instant standing ovation for this rather slight, fey lady who projected us into another world of immortal spiritual consciousness, far from that of our benighted times.

As an encore she played Bach’s chorale “Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit” [God's time is the very best time from the Actus Tragicus] in György Kurtág’s arrangement. To conclude with Bach is just as significant and inevitable as to 'Begin with Bach' after all!

THURSDAY 4.09 5:00 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Symphonic concert

CHOUCHANE SIRANOSSIAN violin

TOMASZ RITTER  fortepiano

{OH!} ORCHESTR 

MARTYNA PASTUSZKA violin

Artistic director

Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [1756–1791]

 Portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of 13 in Verona, 1770

School of Verona, attributed to Giambettino Cignaroli (Salo, Verona 1706-1770)

Symphony no. 20 in D major, K. 133 (1772)

This symphony was composed in 1772 by the sixteen year-old Mozart.  The Allegro bursts upon us with three opening energetic  notes and then the entrance of trumpets. Was this some degree of Mozart's notable teenage rebellion against the dreaded elders? These energetic opening chords and the development are an exciting new departure for symphonies of the time. In the Andante  a charming civilized solo flute often plays with violins. This elegant, sweet and delicate  statement stands out as the focus of the movement.

Martyna Pastuszka and the {Oh!} Orchestra, although charming in execution of this early Mozart do not overdo the dynamism of the symphony offering us a classical balance tht Mozart had begun to erode. The Menuetto was rather slight and short but maintains a rather conventional forward movement. The Finale Allegro  bounds along in contrapuntal spirited style, the texture again lifted by the addition of trumpets. I felt the {Oh!} Orchestra grasped the essential youthful exuberance of this last Salzburg symphony well.

Feliks Janiewicz [1762–1848]

Violin Concerto No. 4 in A major (c.1797)

Chouchane Siranossian

I traveled to Edinburgh towards the end of June 2022 and among the many adventures and museums visited, I managed to be there for the opening of a remarkable exhibition at the Georgian House. I live in Warsaw in Poland, move in musical circles there, but had never encountered this artist. I was astounded at the discovery.

[The anglicized spelling of his name and surname that he favoured in Edinburgh begins with 'Y' (Felix Yaniewicz) rather than the Polish  'J' (Feliks Janiewicz)]

I met and had a long instructive conversation with the exhibition curator Josie Dixon. She assembled and wrote an excellent article on Felix Yaniewicz, her ancestor and a Polish virtuoso violinist, composer and businessman who was the catalyzing founding force behind the present, world-renowned, Edinburgh Festival. But this was in 1815!

Mozart admired Janiewicz greatly. In fact, Mozart’s 19th-century biographer Otto Jahn speculates that his lost Andante in A major K470 written at this time may have been composed for Janiewicz.

Michael Kelly, a famous tenor, wrote that while in Vienna he was privileged to hear one of the foremost violinists in the world: ‘...a very young man, in the service of the King of Poland, he touched the instrument with thrilling effect, and was an excellent leader of an orchestra. His concertos always finished with some pretty Polonaise air; his variations were truly beautiful.’

I felt the opening Moderato movement to be reminiscent of Mozart although there was not an overwhelming melodic line. I felt Siranossian brought a seductive charm and elegance to this affecting music. The virtuosity that Janiewicz wished to display and Paganini commented upon was clear in this movement and a tribute to the command of the instrument by Siranossian. On occasion I felt he gave an East European or almost Jewish flavour to the violin writing which carried strong contemporary associations here in Warsaw.

Siranossian gave a poignant, singing line in the Adagio movement. She featured a yearning charm that never became mawkish or overly sentimental. Janiewicz's writing for the instrument is emotionally eloquent which she utilized to the full to transfix the audience. 

The final Rondo. Allegretto  was a dance full of great love and joy! No philosophical torture here ! I have yet to trace the origins of this catchy, simple and mercurially foot-tapping peasant tune. The orchestra under Pastuszka were never tempted to dominate the truly virtuoso violin part, preventing it from shining glitteringly as it certainly would have done originally to the point of shock and did tonight. A beautiful dynamic balance was managed and maintained between soloist and orchestra. The transition to the minor key as the work closed was affecting to the sentiments of the heart.

As an encore Siranossian played a rousing, dancing part of the final movement of the Janiewicz  5th concerto known as klezmer which brought back fond memories of their 2023 performance.

For more on the remarkable Polish virtuoso violinist Feliks Janiewicz and his long period in Edinburgh  musical life planting the seeds of the Edinburgh Festival today - if you have time, here is an illustrated presentation ....

http://www.michael-moran.com/2022/09/felix-yaniewicz-music-and-migration-in_7.html

Ludwig van Beethoven [1770–1827]

Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15 (1798) 

Allegro con brio

Largo

Rondo. Allegro

'I have a real aversion to all out piano concertos (...Beethoven's are not so much concerts as symphonies with obbligato piano)' This description by E.T.A. Hoffmann does encapsulate the essential nature of Beethoven's concertos.

This concerto in C major asserts pressure on the formal pattern of Mozart concertos. The silent tutti introduction to the first movement  Allegro con brio contains rather powerful themes. Then Ritter and the orchestra unleashed quite an amount of period energy, wit and emphasis. He presented Beethoven as a rebellious youth wishing to break the bounds of Beethoven's model Mozart. I noticed immediately a rare, attractive dynamic balance between soloist and orchestra which persisted throughout. This is a rare occurrence in my experience.  Ritter tended to rush a little on the 1849 Erard but the long, substantial cadenza (some phrases possibly improvised) was excellent for this movement and an admirable period addition.

Ritter 'sang' the Largo  song in a majestic cantabile and achieved a substantial musical stature and proportions for the long and majestic movement. This affecting 'song' was accompanied by the gentlest of strings. The principal clarinet was particularly eloquent against gentle piano trills and accompaniment sections.

The Rondo. Allegro  burst upon us with terrific energy from a virtuosic Ritter and the orchestra. An infectious sense of dance rhythm and high spirits filled the hall. At the end of this finale the tempo slowed for a small cadenza, answered by a poignant solo oboe in Adagio tempo. The contained energy was then precipitously released by the full orchestra in its original tempo toward the concerto’s culminating chords. The audience were quite overwhelmed by the expression of this triumph of the spirit and went wild with applause and shouts of approbation.

A highly enjoyable and unique concert and the triumph of a rather unknown violin concerto, period performance, conducting, orchestration and the Erard piano. 

WEDNESDAY 3.09 7:00 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Piano recital

ERIC LU

Program

Fryderyk Chopin [1810–1849]

A reproduction of a fragment of a picture depicting Chopin painted by Ludomir Sleńdziński (1951?)

Polonaise-Fantasy in A flat major, Op. 61

The Polonaise-Fantaisie contains all the troubled emotion and desire for strength in the face of the multiple adversities that beset the composer at this late stage in his life. This work, the first in the so-called ‘late style’ of the composer, was written during a period of great suffering and unhappiness. He laboured over its composition. What emerged is one of his most complex of his works both pianistically and emotionally.

Eric Lu gave us a thoughtful. analytical performance of this mature Chopin work in many ways. I could not help reflecting, however, that further analysis of the varied emotional landscape would have been beneficial.

Chopin produced many sketches for the Polonaise-Fantaisie and wrestled with the title. He wrote: ‘I’d like to finish something that I don’t yet know what to call’. This uncertainty surely indicates he was embarking on a journey of compositional exploration along untrodden paths. Even Bartok one hundred years later was shocked at its revolutionary nature. The work is an extraordinary mélange of genres and styles in a type of inspired improvisation that yet maintains a magical absolute musical coherence and logic.

Chopin leads us through a succession of extraordinary scenes and events. I felt Lu could have made the fantasy element of the work more prominent so that we received a more spontaneous 'searching' improvisational survey of the composition which clearly offered Chopin many psychological obstacles. They pass in successive train through the imagination of any listener or pianist who can selflessly give himself in a meditative trance to this hypnotic music, the composition flickering on the screen of the mind. I feel one has an imaginative experience bordering on the cinematic.

Chopin completed it in August 1846. The reception was one of confusion and even upset. As Jachimecki stated: ‘the piano speaks here in a language not previously known’. Frederick Niecks’s judgment was that the Polonaise-Fantasy ‘stands, on account of its pathological contents, outside the sphere of art’.

 The work reminds me incontrovertibly of lines from Byron's poem of 1816

The Dream

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream 

The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,

The beings which surrounded him were gone,

Or were at war with him; he was a mark

For blight and desolation, compass’d round

With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mix’d

In all which was served up to him, until,

Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,

He fed on poisons, and they had no power,

But were a kind of nutriment; he lived

And made him friends of mountains: with the stars

And the quick Spirit of the Universe

(excerpt)

Lord Byron's Dream (1827)  Sir Charles Lock Eastlake PRA (1793 – 1865) Tate Gallery London

Piano Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 35 (1839)

The Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 35, composed in the summer of 1839 at Nohant, was published in Paris and Leipzig in the spring of the following year. It was not given a dedication. Personal experiences were transformed into the music which arose and grew organically around a Funeral March, possibly originally inspired by patriotic sentiment. The sonata was written in the atmosphere of a blooming sensual passion frozen by the reality of death as an internal monologue conversation concerning the nature of existence. The great Polish musicologist Tomaszewski describes the opening movement of this sonata Grave. Doppio movimento perceptively:

‘The Sonata was written in the atmosphere of a passion newly manifest, but frozen by the threat of death.’ A deep existential dilemma for Chopin speaks from these pages written in Nohant in 1839. The pianist, like all of us, must go one dimension deeper to plumb the terrifying abyss that this sonata opens at our feet. 

Grave-doppio movimento

I felt Lu could have executed the  opening four chords of the Grave in a more measured way, melancholic from the beginning. The opening is not an announcement but the creation of a funereal atmosphere. One felt it was the prelude of a disturbed mind facing the reality of death. One hears in them tragedy, menace, gnawing questions and oracular judgment. These words have been used by monographers to describe these opening bars of the B flat minor Sonata, all too often passed over cursorily by young pianists, understandably inexperienced with life's darker inevitabilities. Such language recognizes they contain the kernal of tragedy. What follows is a powerful premonition.

Lu unfolded the doppio movimento like a restless narrative ballade. A feeling of propulsion evoked a galloping horse. Chopin himself was reputed to be an indifferent horseman, an ability of immense importance for any nineteenth century gentleman. One should reflect after this comment that movement during Chopin’s time was restricted either to walking, horse or carriage. So when a composer wished to impart movement to a piece of music he could not envisage all of the extraordinary modes of travel we have at hand. The urgency and ominous passage of a rider, occasionally even in a reflective even nostalgic mood, yet galloping inexorably towards his doom. I still felt a certain classical restraint of emotion which is so important to this work.

I felt Lu could have made the contrasting 'song' within this movement warmer and more lyrical, even embracing moments of ecstasy.

The first movement of the sonata concludes with a series of chords played fff. One must remember on an immense modern Steinway, this conclusion will be of gargantuan and exaggerated dimensions played at that dynamic. One must consider Chopin's dynamic markings should be performed at one dynamic step lower for his Pleyel than in our modern, inflated sound world.  His indications in the music interpreted literally on a modern instrument, often distort the reception and the emotional impact and meaning of his specified dynamic.

The doppio movimento contains within it immense dark thoughts and żal, confronting us with our demise. żal, an untranslatable Polish word in this context, meaning melancholic regret leading to a mixture of passionate resistance, resentment and anger in the face of unavoidable fate. Lu hastened along here, occupied in his musical imagination with a moderate yet horrified contemplation that was atmospheric in its contrast of dreams and grim reality - much the way life presents itself.

Scherzo

the tortuous tension is maintained in the Scherzo. 'In the midst of life we are in death' emerged as an undiminished sentiment, a message only temporarily assuaged by the lyric and poetic contrasting nature of the trio which emerges from silence. The Polish musicologist Zdzisław Jachimecki sees ‘demonic features’ in it. And indeed, according to Tomaszewski, one might say that it combines Beethovenian vigour with the wildness of Goya’s Caprichos. 

Concerning the metaphysical possibilities for Chopin, he wrote to Solange Dudevant (1828 – 1899), the daughter of George Sand, from Scotland (Johnston Castle) on 9 September 1848:

 ‘When I was playing my Sonata in B flat minoramidst a circle of English friends, an unusual experience befellme. I executed the allegro and scherzo more or less correctly [Chopin was always self-critical] and was just about to start the [funeral] march, when suddenly I saw emerging from the half-opened case of the piano the cursed apparitions that had appeared to me one evening in the Chartreuse [on Majorca]. I had to go out for a moment to collect myself, after which, without a word, I played on’.

George Sand confirms in her Majorcan memoirs Chopin’s neurotic and unstable imagination.

Marche funébre

A properly eloquent tempo and dynamic for the Marche funèbre is difficult to achieve. So many people seem to think it ought to accompany an imaginary military band with a heavy dull tread lacking in poetry. However pall bearers in a cemetery move and sway with the heavy bier rather in slow motion. I felt as always the tragic inevitability of death for all of us, a deep and haunting melancholy, an almost childish innocence within the cantabile nocturnal central section, a forlorn cry of the soul facing its inevitable destiny.

Lu gave particularly pregnant silences between movements which gave time for reflection to fully absorb the dark emotions and implications about to be unfolded in the Marche funébre.

His deliberate tempo gave immense existential weight to the utterance, avoiding the customary inflated dynamics for crude, operatic effects. The lyrical cantabile possessed a feeling of the desperate reality of memory of the departed and dreams of what might have been. However, I felt a need for even more poetic contemplation of the grey and mysterious realities of death but this may be indicative of my own febrile imagination. Chopin was terrified of being buried alive – often horrifyingly possible in those primitive medical times.

Finale. Presto

I feel this movement more as a frantic, hysterical  but submerged and sublimated panic of the mind, the disorientated mental reaction one feels as a sensitive human in the mysterious face of death. 'Wind over the graves' is far too prosaic an interpretation. More a musical stream of consciousness expressed in baroque counterpoint of superb virtuosity. Lu convincingly presented it in this hectic counterpoint manner. 

Chopin wrote characteristically with intentional irony of the ‘chattering after the march’ leaving Schumann to write in philosophical and literary frustration: ‘The Sonata ends as it began, with a riddle, like a Sphinx – with a mocking smile on its lips’.

The extreme succinctness of the B flat minor Sonata suggested a comparison to the great Polish composer Witold Lutosławski - ‘it’s like a sculpture hewn from rock’  rather than four unruly children as Schumann perceived it.

Intermission

Polonaise in B flat major, Op. 71 No. 2  (1828) 

This rarely performed work, written in 1828, rests on the cusp of change. It shows Chopin beginning to introduce personal moods and emotions into his work and move away from conventional expressions in the shackles of previous forms and genres. The shadows of Polish nationalism hover over the work even suffusing its charming melody.

This Polonaise seems to be one of the documents of an imminent breakthrough. It was composed in the virtuosic style brillante. Really it is a piece of chamber music for an intimate room. As Frederick Niecks noted, in Chopin’s music from that time ‘The bravura character is still prominent, but, instead of ruling supreme, it becomes in every successive work more and more subordinate to thought and emotion’. This work admirably reconciles the conventional with the original, the coquetry of the salons with the approaching Romantic watershed (Tomaszewski)

Lu gave an excellent account of the style brillante work even if lacking slightly in finesse, deep sense of the nature of the polonaise rhythm and the rather Polish ‘classical’ polonaise genre.

Piano Sonata in B minor, Op. 58 (1844)

This sonata is one of the greatest masterpieces in the canon of Western piano music. I had heard Lu perform this sonata not long before at the Duszniki Zdrój Chopin festival. As interpretations labored and thought over for years by pianists, lifetimes in some cases, I see no reason to completely review his interpretation in a few varied details once again.

Lu opened the sonata dramatically and polyphonically but with immense clarity and controlled power which is a hallmark of his execution at the keyboard. The opening Allegro maestoso was dramatic but revealed poetry and moving lyricism.

One should feel here that Chopin was embracing the cusp of Romanticism, yet at the same time hearkening back to classical restraint - le climat de Chopin as his favourite pupil Marcelina Czartoryska described it. The Trio did have a beautiful legato cantabile that made the piano sing.

The Scherzo revealed all the glistening articulation Lu was capable of, being energetic with a Mendelssohnian atmosphere of Queen Mab fairy lightness. The Trio again displayed a warm Chopin cantabile. 

The transition to the Largo was not sufficiently expressive and Lu was rather heavy for my conception of this profound moment. Here, however, we began with him an exquisite extended nocturne-like musical voyage taken through a night of meditation and introspective thought. This great musical narrative, an emotional landscape we travelled through, an extended and challenging harmonic structure, was presented as a poem of the reflective heart and spirit. I felt his playing was tonally refined and transported us with spiritual introspection, enveloping us in a mellifluous dream world.

The Finale. Presto ma non tanto  was certainly a tremendously powerful expression in its headlong flight though the threats and obstacles that life heartlessly throws up before us. He approached this movement with tremendous virtuosity which benefits its emotional impact, not unlike a rhapsodic narrative Ballade in character. Again Tomaszewski cannot be bettered:

Thereafter, in a constant Presto (ma non troppo) tempo and with the expression of emotional perturbation (agitato), this frenzied, electrifying music, inspired (perhaps) by the finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony…’ 

As encores two Chopin waltzes - The C sharp minor Op.64. No.2 and the A-flat major Op.42 

Eric Lu appears courtesy of Warner Classics

Part II

TUESDAY 2.09 7:00 p.m 

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hal 

Piano recital

YULIANNA AVDEEVA

I found both parts of this recital magnificent and astounding in parts. I cannot go into an analysis of each Prelude & Fugue here, but I will make some general observations. A number were gentle-toned, rather introverted and alluringly Chopinesque works. Others contained dark, premonitory openings which were not ambiguous, knowing the history of Russia at that time and the attitude to 'culture'. Tragedy and introverted yet expressive harmonies. 

Avdeeva has an immense range of articulation, dynamic variation and rhythmic control. Her fugues seemed to contain the energy of the cosmos and were quite fantastic in dynamic impact. The timbre, colours and texture she was able to almost suffocate my diatonic, harmonic musicality and take my breath away. I was aware of the ringing of Orthodox bells in certain works.

Impressionistic waves of sound brought me to the shores of a great ocean, moving in abstract arabesques. Dramatic hammer blows put me in mind of  the Russian proverb: 'The heavy hammer forges strong steel but breaks fine glass.'  Black dynamism and destruction alternated with ethereal ppp (ultra pianissimo) bliss. 

The historically reminiscent polyphony that recalled Bach was always clear and transparent despite the incredibly powerful musical imagination of Shostakovitch and the mercurial execution by Avdeeva. Hell and Elysium. The Sacred and Profane in life. The close of the recital was a triumphant assertion of creative life with visionary rubato, phrasing, breathing and tremendous dynamics.

Almost instant standing ovation and wild cheering.

A deeply moved member of the audience following this magnificent recital

Her Encore was the riveting Prelude & Fugue in C-sharp minor by Shostakovitch.

 

• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Pentatone
• Label ‏ : ‎ Pentatone
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08DCWMPVZ
• Country of origin ‏ : ‎ Germany
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 2

Program Part II

Dmitry Shostakovich [1906–1975]

24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (2) (II) (1950–1951)

No. 13 in F sharp major

(Moderato con moto – Adagio)

No. 14 in E flat minor

(Adagio – Allegro non troppo)

No. 15 in D flat major

(Allegretto – Allegro molto)

No. 16 in B flat minor

(Andante – Adagio)

No. 17 in A flat major

(Allegretto – Allegretto)

No. 18 in F minor

(Moderato – Moderato con moto)

No. 19 in E flat major

(Allegretto – Moderato con moto)

No. 20 in C minor

(Adagio – Moderato)

No. 21 in B flat major

(Allegro – Allegro non troppo)

No. 22 in G minor

(Moderato non troppo – Moderato)

No. 23 in F major

(Adagio – Moderato con moto)

No. 24 in D minor

(Andante – Moderato)

Part I

MONDAY 1.09 7:00 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Piano recital

YULIANNA AVDEEVA

Program Part I

The link is to an excellent article from the programme book, in English, by Piotr Wojeciechkowski  on the chequered evolution of this great work and the Bach associations. Far better than I could write.  

As a Westerner, I do not know the work, its Russian cultural history or that of Shostakovitch sufficiently intimately to give a balanced critical view 

https://app.box.com/s/ynqx02v600xohv7v3xca6jo72q245n75

Dmitry Shostakovich [1906–1975]

24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1) (1950–1951)

No. 1 in C major

(Moderato – Moderato)

No. 2 in A minor

(Allegro – Allegretto)

No. 3 in G major

(Moderato non troppo – Allegro

molto)

No. 4 in E minor

(Andante – Adagio)

No. 5 in D major

(Allegretto – Allegretto)

No. 6 in B minor

(Allegretto – Moderato)

No. 7 in A major (Allegretto

poco moderato – Allegretto)

No. 8 in F sharp minor

(Allegretto – Andante)

No. 9 in E major (Moderato

non troppo – Allegro)

No. 10 in C sharp

minor (Allegro – Moderato)

No. 11 in B major

(Allegro – Allegro)

No. 12 in G sharp

minor (Andante – Allegro)

I consulted my notes on Avdeeva and her performance as the controversial winner of the 2010 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. This Shostakovitch work bear strong structural resemblance to the cycle of keys of Chopin Preludes and of course the Bach WTC. 

My description is of her Chopin performance but the observations could well apply to the absolutely magnificent performance I heard tonight.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

I felt Avdeeva might very well win the competition from the first moment I heard her as you will see from my blog - Day 4  Stage 1 October 6 2010.  I predicted this (no great achievement considering her enormous talent) but why could not others hear it ?  

If you know anything about playing the piano you would agree with this eminent jury of famous and even legendary pianists. She does wonderful and varied 'technical' things with the instrument. Her tone was the rounded and golden sound of the Russian school. Hardly anyone these days mentions 'tone' and 'touch' in their criticism (concerned as they are with accuracy, structure and expression above all) yet for Chopin these were the first things he concentrated on with his pupils. 

Her touch had tremendous authority,  great variety and refinement. She understood and expressed both the terrifying latent power and the profound sensitivity of Chopin and expressed them in a chiaroscuro manner - great contrasts of light and dark which many may feel is foreign to the Chopin aesthetic.  As Schumann once famously described Chopin's music "Cannons among flowers." With Avdeeva these polarities are indeed the case - real cannons (her power) among real flowers (her sensibility).

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

SUNDAY 31.08 7:00 p.m

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Chamber concert 

BRUCE LIU piano 

APOLLON MUSAGÈTE QUARTET

PAWEŁ ZALEJSKI violin

BARTOSZ ZACHŁOD violin

PIOTR SZUMIEŁ viola

PIOTR SKWERES cello

Program

Josef Suk [1874–1935]

Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale

‘St Wenceslas’, Op. 35a (1914)

I found this Medieval Hymn, although performed ardently, rather a serious, melancholic beginning to a festival recital. Perhaps parallels of suffering were to be musically established with the present Ukraine war. It encapsulated a national struggle by the Czech lands against domination by invading foreign powers and was performed often in quartet form and subsequently orchestrated. First of all, hope that the Great War would liberate them from the Austro-Hungarian dominance, then from the German occupation during the Second World War. 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [1756–1791)  

Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478 (1785)

Allegro

Andante

Rondo

The G minor Piano Quartet K478, completed on 16 October 1785, was considered at the time to be too difficult to be played! Its fraught financial record is a glimpse of unpleasant realities despite its musical perfection.

In the G minor Piano Quartet, eighteenth-century players and listeners had to content not only with an unfamiliar and technically demanding medium of this masterpiece (both string and keyboard parts were beyond most amateur players), but also with one of Mozart’s most harmonically involved and passionate first movements. Liu dominated the virtuoso keyboard part with ease and some engaging dialogue was established between the trio and piano. At times however, I did feel his Mozartian articulation (if I may invent such a term) could have been more pronounced and less legato in running passages.

The opening Allegro could have been far more dramatic, given the nature of what became known as the dark G minor 'fate motif'. After the first movement coda, the B flat Andante could also have been rather more sensuousness in its considered expressiveness and refined passage-work that calms the listener.

Unusually for a Mozart work set in a minor key, the Rondo. Allegro is written in a blithe, unclouded G major. This was by far the most successful movement of this performance and was packed with energy, life and irresistible drive. Liu and the trio worked with immense gaiety. This Rondo was executed with excellent and exciting charm and elegance (consider Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos). A chain of wonderful tunes is assembled 'which could have come straight from the mouth of Papageno'. This performance finally became the redeeming delight of the pleasure seeker or sybarite, dominating darkest fate or destiny !  

INTERMISSION

Robert Schumann [1810–1856]

Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44 (1842)

Allegro brillante

Scherzo. Molto vivace

Allegro ma non troppo 

This piece was written for the composer's young bride Clara Wieck not long after they overcame many family obstacles to be married in 1840. It acknowledges her virtuoso piano playing and their mutual love of Bach and each other.

The opening Allegro brillante by everyone involved was joyful, spirited, sensitive and energetic. Such a wonderful 'song' , a heartrending theme rises for the opulent cello of Piotr Skweres (Gennaro Gagliano cello from 1741). So simple, lyrical and full of the expression of young ardent love and affection. Were dark clouds forming however? 

There is agitated apprehensiveness of disappointment in this music, quite inspiring this movement with waves of pure emotion enveloping us. I remembered the wonderful Swedish film Fanny and Alexander (1982) where this work featured. Absolute, unadulterated Romanticism infuses the piece which I felt Liu and the quartet could have emphasized further. There was a good dialogue and shared phrasing between pianist and string players in the passionate music.  

The In modo d'una marcia. Un poco largemente  gave me the feeling of hesitant heartbeats of unforeseen obstacles to love, hesitant breaths of apprehension in the nervous system. Also an ardent wave of erotic desire seemed to explode in emotional surges, chambers of the heart that fill and overflow. This sensual agitation settles into lyrical dreams which the ensemble brought to a poetic conclusion.

The Scherzo: molto vivace sparkled along with Liu's playing of great fluency and high  technique. Images of horses galloping through the night to imagined lover's trysts came into my imagination. Is this an imagined coming together of lovers? The composer's mercurial temperament was clear.  

In the Finale Allegro ma non troppo with this ensemble there were some rhapsodic moments of intensity and rich timbre as harmonies were explored. Some reflective slowing of tempo contrasted with robust physical energy expressed through variations in tempo and dynamics. The profound influence of Bach on Schumann was highlighted in the contrapuntal conclusion.

To this listener the ensemble playing seemed to have grasped the quintet. The conclusion of the piece was fine in its romantic triumph.

SATURDAY 30.08 8:30 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Piano recital

PIOTR ANDERSZEWSKI

The recital by Piotr Anderszewski,  as an icon and legend in his own time, was richly anticipated in Warsaw. Every true musician in the audience with a romantic sensibility was breathless in imaginative flight as Anderszewski was about to deeply link us to the heart of these late Brahms masterpieces. I felt sure he had arranged the order of performance according to some inner secretive labyrinth of feeling, a dark art of interpretative narrative known only to himself. 

I will write in rather general terms about the twelve compositions, only occasionally individually. This was the review I wrote at Duszniki Zdrój on August 7th for his recital of the same programme. 

The history of these works has not changed of course. Little in his interpretation had altered except I felt overall this recital the Brahms was even more sensitive and poetic. The Béla Bartók 14 Bagatellen fur Klavier, Op. 6 Sz. 38 were relatively unchanged in my memory. Both pianist and listener were of course in a different psychological and physical condition to two weeks prior. This condition aspect of concert life is too often overlooked.

The acoustic of the Filharmonia in Warsaw is quite different to the Chopin Manor in Duszniki. The Shigeru Kawai instrument was even more beautiful in sound than I remember from Duszniki.

What a treasure to be given the opportunity to hear these sublime works again!

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) 

'By the way, has it struck you that I have clearly said my farewell as a composer?’, Brahms asked his publisher, Fritz Simrock, in September 1894. 

For some years Brahms had regarded his life’s work as over. He confided to his friend Eusebius Mandyczewski (the future editor of his collected works) that his recent attempts at  large-scale projects had come to nothing, and that he was now perhaps too old to continue. The following year, in what had become his favourite summer resort of Bad Ischl in the Salzkammergut region of Austria, Brahms wrote his will. But in 1892, again in Ischl, Brahms began work on the twenty piano pieces that make up the four collections published as his Opp 116-119.

Much of the music of Brahms’s final years seems to be permeated with apprehensions of death.  He saw many of those closest to him die: his sister Elise and his long-standing friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg in 1892; the singer Hermine Spies (at the age of only thirty-six) the following year; and in 1894 the Bach biographer Philipp Spitta, the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow and the surgeon Theodor Billroth.

Klavierstücke Op. 119 (1893) 

Intermezzo in B Minor

The sound Anderszewski drew from the piano was a sound glowing with refinement, tone, richness and texture from his first touch on the superb Shigeru Kawai instrument.

Intermezzo in C Major

Strength in adversity was expressed here, yet overall the spirit remained joyful

The last piano work of Brahms was written in Bad Ischl in 1893. It is in four 'movements' although Anderszewski played only two in this segment.

 

Clara Schumann wrote in her diary after receiving the pieces Op. 118 and Op. 119

 

'It really is marvelous how things pour from him; it is wonderful how he combines passion and tenderness in the smallest of spaces.'

 

In a letter from May 1893 to Clara Schumann, Brahms wrote of the first in B minor :

 

I am tempted to copy out a small piano piece for you, because I would like to know how you agree with it. It is teeming with dissonances! These may [well] be correct and [can] be explained—but maybe they won’t please your palate, and now I wished, they would be less correct, but more appetizing and agreeable to your taste. The little piece is exceptionally melancholic and ‘to be played very slowly’ is not an understatement. Every bar and every note must sound like a ritard[ando], as if one wanted to suck melancholy out of each and every one, lustily and with pleasure out of these very dissonances! Good Lord, this description will [surely] awaken your desire!

 

This Intermezzo in B minor is emotionally unsettled, full of the reflective anguish of past unrequited love, moments of anger and resistance followed by final resignation. These are moments of Arcadian bliss followed by happy memories of calm refection cultivated in the consoling refuge of age. Anderszewski was most affecting in this work and clearly understood the inner emotional life of it. 

 

I can only describe the mood of the Intermezzo in C major with the opening stanza of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem as Anderszewski presented it

 

To a Skylark

 

Hail to thee blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert-

That from heaven or near it

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art

 

You cannot be taught to feel. You cannot be taught sensibility. The ability to express with integrity a wide range of human emotions comes only from within the heart. It is a gift of God made up in music of innumerable microscopic hesitations and accelerations, indeterminate fluctuations of dynamic and phrasing, subtle variations of articulation, a wide palette of colours and nuance, a tone and touch that emerge organically from within the soul. Such profound and refined musical gestures are instinctive aspects of character and cannot be learned. Piotr Anderszewski possesses all of these characteristics.

Wilhelm Furtwängler once said that 'an interpreter can render only what he has first lived through.'

Klavierstücke Op. 118 (1892) 

Intermezzo in A Minor

Intermezzo in A Major

The autumnal Brahms 6 Klavierstücke Op. 118 (1893) have always been close to my heart. In a letter to the conductor and composer Franz Lachner Brahms wrote (concerning the 1st Movement of the Second Symphony): 'I am, by and by, a severely melancholic person …black wings are constantly flapping above us'. 

Dedicated to Clara Schumann, they were written at Bad Ischl during his summer sojourn and are probably his most well-known piano compositions nowadays. Julius August Philipp Spitta, a German musicologist, wrote to Brahms of these miniatures after receiving the score, 'They are the most varied of all your piano pieces and perhaps the richest in content and depth of meaning …'. Concentrated, intense and expressive, this group are a portrait of his internal emotional landscape.

View of Bad Ischl with the imperial villa in the foreground, steelplate engraving, 19th century - L. Rohbock / A. Fesca

(Copyright courtesy of Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.)

These are among the last compositions by Brahms and he seems to have conceived them as a coherent whole. It is hard to overlook the presence of the spectre of death that inhabits them. The group speaks volumes to me of the transient nature of human existence, but more of a proud philosophical resignation to the inevitability of destiny than a sensationalist expression of terror, despair and melancholy in the face of our mysterious journey to oblivion.

The passionate outbursts of the first Intermezzo in A minor has such an affirmation of life in those rich chords, then the fading away and decay. Anderszewski expressed passionate recollections with intense regret. In the second sensitively played Intermezzo in A major, he savoured the desperate yearning and eloquent harmonic transitions of the Andante teneramente, the expressive dynamic variations and poetry, so lovingly embracing the long legato lines of transient affections. This ardent work has all the rhapsodic yearning and longing of a nocturne on the nature of mortality and lost love.

Fantasien Op. 116 (1892)

Intermezzo. Andante in A Minor

Capriccio. Allegro passionato in G Minor 

Intermezzo. Adagio in E Major

Intermezzo  Andante con grazia ed intimissimo sentimento in E minor 

Fantasias, Op 116 is a curious title for a collection of pieces consisting of three capriccios and four intermezzos. Brahms had used the same labels of ‘capriccio’ and ‘intermezzo’—again to indicate a division between agitated and more serene pieces—for the individual numbers of a similar collection he had composed some fourteen years before; these earlier pieces had appeared under a more neutral banner as eight Klavierstücke, Op 76.

Anderszewski seemed to understand that words are utterly insufficient to describe the pure music of emotion, those regretful contemplations expressed in music over lost love. These emotions become eloquent in the sarabande-like melancholy of the Intermezzo. Andante in A Minor with its fleeting, shadowy middle section. Passionate regrets take hold of the soul and heart in the Capriccio. Allegro passionato in G Minor with its grandiose trio. The Intermezzo. Adagio in E Major is in the style of a nostalgic, bittersweet minuet. Andante con grazia ed intimissimo sentimento is the evocative marking of the in E minor Intermezzo which Brahms originally called a nocturne. This composition is one of his most perfect and moving of these 'miniatures'. I felt a hesitant unrequited heart plagued by  arrhythmical missing beats.

I felt Anderszewski captured such rarefied feeling very well indeed, intimacy retained as requested by the composer. I was transported into that other world Brahms explores, beyond the physical into the metaphysical and spiritual.

Intermezzi Op. 117 (1892)

Andante con moto in C-Sharp Minor 

The Op.117 Intermezzi are unsurpassed in the expression of profound sadness and dejection. This work, containing passionate musical denials and sacrifice, was composed in 1892. They are intensely poetic and introspective works which Brahms thought of as  'three lullabies for my sorrows'.

The Andante con moto in C-sharp minor is thought to be inspired by Gottfried von Herder’s poetic lines 'Oh woe! Oh woe, deep in the valley…' with its rather angular yet mysteriously rich atmosphere. When Brahms unsurprisingly sent this set of Intermezzi to Clara Schumann, she wrote 'In these pieces I at last feel musical life stir once again in my soul.

Anderszewski adopted a reflective tender touch with a great deal of poetic sensibility for these masterpieces, expressive of regretful emotions. They speak directly to the heart of the turbulent emotions of unrequited love and romantic loss. 

His phrasing, tempo, dynamics were all profoundly expressive. Regrets were recalled, those griefs that cannot be reversed. He carried us into different emotional layers and shifting moods ranging from remorse to anger to resignation. The nostalgic remembrance of past joys and dark thoughts was close to unbearable in this conduit, this direct communication with the composer.

Klavierstücke Op. 119 (1893) 

Rapsodia in E-Flat Major

Anderszewski brought a cry of resistance against destiny or fate in his conception of this work. I felt much 'masculine' anger and regret here. He seamlessly joined this to Intermezzo Op. 117 (1892) Andante non troppo e con molto espressione in B-Flat Minor. One felt that the love that carried one aloft into magical space could not be experienced ever again. Beautiful cantabile. One felt the inflexibility of destiny like iron shackles even with gentle gestures of  tenderness.

Defiance, resolution certainly yet philosophical acceptance of destiny lay at the heart of this work. Anderszewski brought a magnificent fluctuating melancholic mood of acceptance together with an almost joyful defiance as he built a valedictory cathedral of the human emotional landscape, a type of existential expostulation at the conclusion 'Yet I am!'

Intermezzo Op. 117 (1892)

Andante non troppo e con molto espressione in B-Flat Minor

(See above description of Op.117)

The profound expression of the aged Brahms, a face etched by experience of life

Klavierstücke Op. 118 (1892) 

Intermezzo in E-Flat Minor

Anderszewski was heart-breakingly poignant in the opening to the conclusion of this first part of his recital. The valedictory final piece of this Op.118 is an integrated meditation on the acceptance of destiny and fate. The Intermezzo in E-flat minor begins with the theme of the Dies Irae of the Christian requiem. The spectre of death enters and recurs in the work in various guises. 

Here we begin to inhabit another world far beyond this one. A strenuous, heroic yet tragic averral of the force of life briefly emerges but the terminal expression of resignation in death concludes pianissimo. Anderszewski, taking us with him, inhabited the world of a metaphysical medium in this scarcely bearable extinction of life.

(See also above historical description of Op.118)

INTERMISSION

In the introduction of the score for the Fourteen Bagatelles op. 6, Béla Bartók described his compositional style as 'a reaction against the exuberance of the romantic piano music of the 19th century, a style stripped of all unessential decorative elements, deliberately using only the most restricted technical means.' The Bagatelles were composed in 1908 and reflect Bartók’s elaborate new musical language which evolved between 1904 and 1908. 

This was a combination of folk and contemporary techniques and ideas. These years also indicate the beginning and the development of his folk music interest and the evolution of a new compositional style for piano catalyzed by his ethno-musicological research.

I had first heard Anderszewski perform this work at the 19th CHOPIN AND HIS EUROPE FESTIVAL in Warsaw in August 2023. In this magnificent performance tonight, conjoined surprisingly, musically and creatively with Brahms, I could present an analysis of each under the fingers of Anderszewski. However,  my feelings have not greatly changed in the interim. For brevity, I will choose those pieces that moved me greatly both in 2023 and now (below).  

In 2023 the sheer sound palette and refinement of his performance of the Andante was astonishing. The Lento and Andante sostenuto were emotionally deeply expressive. The Allegro betrayed such exuberant energy! The Rubato gave me a deep sense of spontaneous yet calm improvisation and invention at the moment of performance. 

The last two Bagatelles refer to Bartok's recently sundered relationship with the beautiful 19 year old violinist Stefi Geyer Elle est morte. Lento funebre ('She is dead') and   Valse: Ma mie qui danse. Presto ('My love dances'). In these two pieces Anderszewski was intensely effective in communicating the mystery, poverty and melancholy of death and then the exuberant expression of the older man's unrequited love. Yet there remained a final glorious affirmation of life.

Béla Bartók (1881–1945) 

14 Bagatellen fur Klavier, Op. 6 Sz. 38 (1908)

1. Molto sostenuto

2. Allegro giocoso

3. Andante

Creation of a dream in astonishing sound

4. Grave

5. Vivo

Anderszewski presented the lively aspects of a charming life

6. Lento

Dreams gave way to grey reality

7. Allegretto molto capriccioso

Anderszewsky presented this as slightly neurotic

8. Andante sostenuto

The triumph of creative imagination

9. Allegretto grazioso

He presented this with elements of psychological disconnection

10. Allegro

A rather manic and violently muscular interpretation

11. Allegretto molto rubato

We were able to take a breath after the previous transports

12. Rubato

The irregularity of this piece was really quite extraordinary with Anderszewski

13. Elle est morte. Lento funebre

A lugubrious and dark presentation

14. Valse: Ma mie qui danse. Presto

The final glorious affirmation of life. Is the pianist requested in the score to call out in triumph at the conclusion of this most extraordinary work ? Did I simply imagine these things from Anderszewski ?

This was a truly sublime performance that elevated Bartok and his new, reduced and concentrated compositional style to the expressive heavens of immortality.

The young Béla Bartók in 1899

The young and beautiful Stefi Geyer (1888-1956)

His encores were the first two mazurkas, in A minor and A-flat major, from Op. 59 by Chopin and the Sarabande from the Partita No. 1 in B-flat major BWV 825 of Bach

SATURDAY 30.08 5 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Chamber Hall

Piano recital

MARTIN NÖBAUER

fortepiano

Program

Ludwig van Beethoven [1770–1827]

Sonata in C sharp minor (‘Moonlight’),

Op. 27 No. 2 (1800)

Adagio sostenuto

Allegretto – Trio

Presto agitato

Piano Sonata in B flat major

(‘Hammerklavier’), Op. 106 (1818)

Allegro

Scherzo. Assai vivace

Adagio sostenuto

Introduzione. Largo – Fuga. Allegro

risoluto

Maria Szymanowska [1789–1831]

Polonaise in F minor (1819-1820)

Intermission

Fryderyk Chopin [1810–1849]

Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49 (1841)

Mazurkas, Op. 50 (1841–1842)

No. 1 in G major

No. 2 in A flat major

No. 3 in C sharp minor

Impromptu in G flat major, Op. 51 (1842)

Ballade in A flat major, Op. 47 (1841)

A modicum of instrumental history of the Polish Bucholtz piano used in this recital 

On 19 September 1863 ‘the ideal was brought low on the pavement’. Chopin had been dead for 14 years, Buchholtz for 26. Had they lived, that symbolic moment would have been painful for both of them. On that September Saturday in 1863 in retaliation for an assassination attempt, (a failed one at that), the Tsarist governor Count Fyodor Berg and Tsarist soldiers plundered and looted the Zamoyski Palace at 67 Nowy Świat Street. The apartment number 69, belonging to the Barciński family, also fell victim to their barbarism.

Half a century earlier, around 1815, a certified organ-maker Fryderyk Buchholtz opened a piano-making workshop in Warsaw. Its first seat was at 1352 Mazowiecka Street. The manufacturer soon became considered the best in  Congress Poland, in a large part thanks to its excellent performance at local industrial fairs in 1823 and 1825. A friend with the owner, Fryderyk Chopin was a frequent visitor at the workshop, where he would often play his newest pieces to his friends. After 1825 the Chopins bought a Buchholtz grand piano, which took the pride of place in their new apartment in the Krasiński Palace in Krakowskie Przedmieście and was used by young Fryderyk to compose his first great pieces, including his famous Piano Concerto in F minor. On 2 November 1830 Chopin left Warsaw; three days later he left his homeland forever. After his parents’ death, the grand piano was inherited by Fryderyk’s sister Izabella Barcińska. As mentioned above, on 19 September 1863, plundering the Zamoyski Palace, Tsarist soldiers threw the Buchholtz piano ‘out the window’.

The instrument on which teenage Chopin composed his first great pieces, including both his piano concertos, shattered into fragments on the pavement.  Only a few instruments of the Buchholtz label have survived to today – all in a state rendering their ‘resurrection’ impossible. Using available prototypes, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, which is a guardian of Chopin’s legacy and holds a collection of several instruments of the period, commissioned a copy of the Buchholtz grand piano. It was constructed by Paul McNulty, one of the best makers of historical pianos in the world. The first performance of the Piano Concerto in F minor by the composer was on 17 March 1830 at the National Theatre in Krasińskich Square on the Buchholtz piano.

This instrument is a copy of a grand piano by Fryderyk Buchholtz of Warsaw from c.1825–1826, held in the Museum of Local History in Kremenets, Ukraine.

It was based on the Viennese model which was popular at that time (built by the leading Viennese maker Conrad Graf, among others, and also employed by Polish makers). It was characterized by a case with rounded corners, resting on three turned column legs. The copy made by Paul McNulty is pyramid rosewood veneered, straight double-triple strung, with a Viennese action, hammer heads covered with several layers of leather, wedge dampers and a 6½-octave keyboard with the compass C1–f4. This keyboard is broader than the original Buchholtz keyboard (6 octaves, F1–f4), with several additional notes in the bass, making it possible to perform the works Chopin was writing in the late 1830s. This piano also has four pedals operating following stops: una corda, moderator, double moderator and damper.

FRIDAY 29.08 7:00 p.m. 

Ballroom of the Royal Castle in Warsaw 

Harpsichord recital

WŁADYSŁAW KŁOSIEWICZ

program 

Johann Sebastian Bach [1685–1750]

Das wohltemperierte Klavier (II) (1744)

My observations are really rather similar on  Book II to those on Book I of the the WTC I made on Monday 25.08 7:00 p.m. Please scroll down if you are ignorant of them. Kłosiewicz encountered some difficulties with the keyboard of the Neupoert/Blanchet copy but my admiration remains boundless for his courage and musical insights.

THURSDAY 28.08.2025 7:00 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Symphonic concert

DMITRY ABLOGIN fortepiano

FREIBURGER

BAROCKORCHESTER

GOTTFRIED VON DER GOLTZ

leader and artistic director

Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [1756–1791]

Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527

[Poster by Ryszard Kaja]

The programme of this concert was in many ways a deeply thought-provoking meditation on the contrasting nature of love. The amoral, at times violent, sensual love of carnal desire, with its calculated, cynical manipulation of feeling is contrasted in this programme with pure innocent infatuation, the beautiful unrealistic, romantic dreams from afar, those of early illusioned love. The merciless eagle and the lyrical skylark. 

This oscillation of dreams inevitably giving way to grim reality, is a constant inspiration within much of the music of Fryderyk Chopin. The remarkable juxtaposition in the opening of the decadent, debauched character of Don Giovanni as revealed in the Overture, immediately recalled to my mind the entire dramatic opera of Mozart, a story with which we are all familiar. The contrast with the Larghettos  within the Chopin concerti  emerged with added strength.

On a purely musical level Chopin had already written in 1827 at the age of 17 the highly entertaining, scintillating Variations in B flat major on a theme from Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’ (‘Là ci darem la mano’), Op. 2.  This work was a compositional musical exercise to produce a set of variations for piano with orchestral accompaniment set by his teacher Józef Elsner when Chopin was a student of the Main School of Music in Warsaw.

He succeeded magnificently. The piano score was written in a demanding glittering bravura style brilliant, popular at the time. Schumann in his first music review made the famous judgment on the young Chopin  'Hats off, gentlemen – a genius!'  The young Chopin clearly understood the psychological dynamics of the opera but perhaps not the deeper implications. I was rather drawn to the more serious contrast of its true emotional significance with his later personal, highly romantic feelings. 

The overture was usually the last task to be accomplished when Mozart wrote an opera. Constanze drew attention to Mozart's constant postponement of the Don Giovanni task until the night prior to the premiere - whilst she kept him awake! The orchestra possibly sight-read the score. Finishing compositions at the last moment while the ink and sand were still wet was quite common in his compositional approach. Work always predominated over his health.

The power of this ensemble was immediately clear from the terrific opening premonitory chords. The lurking presence of evil and drama were clearly expressed with energy as was the yet concealed presence of the future abyss of fire. The instrumental cohesion of this fine orchestra, their singular and accurate intonation and instrumental 'tightness' as a band, were instantly clear to the ear.

Fryderyk Chopin [1810–1849]

Concerto in F minor, Op. 21 (1829–1830)

Maestoso

Larghetto

Allegro vivace

We moved on to be presented with the imagination of an innocent youth of musical and pianistic genius who had not yet fully experienced the emotions of mature love. Certainly not those feelings contained in this Mozart premonition, the thorns and possible gratuitous violence of a narcissistic sensualist.

‘As I already have, perhaps unfortunately, my ideal, whom I faithfully serve, without having spoken to her for half a year already, of whom I dream, in remembrance of whom was created the adagio of my concerto’ (to Tytus Woyciechowski, 3 October 1829).

The Concerto in F minor Op.21, the first of Chopin’s two concertos (though published as the second), was written between the early autumn of 1829 and the early spring of the following year. The first performance took place for a group of friends in the Chopin family drawing room at the Krasiński Palace on March 3, 1830. Karol Kurpiński, the  Polish composer and pedagogue, conducted a chamber ensemble. Full orchestral forces were rare in the performance of concertos in Warsaw in the early 19th century. Our music world is comparatively overwhelmed with riches in terms of full orchestra availability in a multiplicity of recordings.

Dimitry Ablogin chose to conduct the orchestra from the piano. He began with an improvised prelude in F minor, an accurate performance practice of the day that prepared the listener's ear harmonically for the key of the work that was to follow.

This opening Maestoso heralded an elegant, graceful and noble Chopin, interpreted in a moderate tempo, a Chopin clearly influenced by Mozart and Hummel.

I have always felt that the outer movements revolve like two glittering, enchanted planets around the moonlit, sublime melody of this central Larghetto movement. Here we have a pure a love song inspired by the soprano Konstancja Gładowska, Chopin's object of distant fascination. Liszt regarded the movement as 'absolute perfection'. Many feel it is the most beautiful love song ever written. The Larghetto moved the heart, as it inevitably does, in dramatic lyrical contrast to the more superficial style brillant movements that precede and follow it. 

This movement was emotionally affecting in its interpretation by Dimitry Ablogin. He utilized carefully graded dynamics and eloquent phrasing. He was performing on a fine Paul McNulty copy of the Polish Bucholtz piano, a type that Chopin was fond of as a youth.

I strongly felt this love poem as a youthful yearning for the unattainable dream before the tigers of experience begin their feast. An entire emotional, chiaroscuro  landscape unfolded as if one was contemplating a painting of unfulfilled desire by Watteau. His rubato and broken chords, occasionally arpeggiated, were most expressive as were the delicate as lace fiorituras.  The agitation and doubt of reality, always an accompaniment to the soul of love, were moving in contrast. Tenderness and charm were also in this view of the civilized aspects of this reading. Ablogin was refined, subtle, tenderly expressive and yet eschewed any sign of cloying sentimentality. 

The Allegro vivace finale was full of the joyfulness of youth and the glistening optimism of the style brillant. Joseph Conrad (Józef Korzeniowski), the Polish writer of genius who chose to write in English, exclaimed in his story 'Youth' what is an apt description of what might apply accurately to this movement: 'The glory of it!'.

Ablogin excited us with the exuberance of a stylized dance of the kujawiak provenance.  His arousing style brillant  developed what might be described as civilized agitation. Delightfully delicate touch, perfect accuracy and brilliant articulation cascaded over us like pearls on glass, a true jeu perlé. The great Polish musicologist and pedagogue Mieczyław Tomaszewski writes of this movement:

A different kind of dance character – swashbuckling and truculent – is presented by the episodes, which are scored in a particularly interesting way. The first episode is bursting with energy. The second, played scherzando and rubato, brings a rustic aura. It is a cliché of merry-making in a country inn, or perhaps in front of a manor house, at a harvest festival, when the young Chopin danced till he dropped with the whole of the village. The horn signal and its hunting character was brought off to perfection.

Intermission

Bernado Belotto - Warsaw from Praga Fields

Fryderyk Chopin

Concerto in E minor, Op. 11 (1830)

Chopin had wasted no time in composing his second piano concerto (despite the lower opus number), the E minor Op.11. One can feel an increased authority and fluency in this concerto as his compositional abilities matured.

In many ways, it also revolves like planets around the sun, this exalted Romanze. Larghetto central movement. He elucidated its inspiration to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski: ‘Involuntarily, something has entered my head through my eyes and I like to caress it’. 

He was clearly still emotionally preoccupied with the idealized young singer Konstancja Gładowska. ‘Little is wanting in Gładkowska’s singing’, he wrote to his friend following her performance in the Italian Ferdinando Paer’s opera Agnese, 

‘She is better on stage that in a hall. I shall say nothing of her excellent tragic acting, as nothing need be said, whilst as for her singing, were it not for the F sharp and G, sometimes too high, we should need nothing better’. 

In the same letter written to Tytus in May 1830, Chopin describes the nature of this pivotal movement of this work. 

‘The Adagio for the new concerto is in E major. It is not intended to be powerful, it is more romance-like, calm, melancholic, it should give the impression of a pleasant glance at a place where a thousand fond memories come to mind.’ 

One cannot help wondering about the source of these 'fond memories' and imagining the romantic nature and occurrences that may have given rise to them.

The opening phrases of the Allegro maestoso of the E minor concerto were eloquent and dynamically affectingly expressive. Ablogin used the Bucholtz to create an extensive range of colour, timbre and articulation to create a texture that is really beyond words to describe. Beauty is a feeling within, not a concept one can determine and tie down in mere words.  

It was certainly grand in the soloist's conception but I felt the orchestra was rather too dense in tonal expression to form a creative balanced dynamic partnership with the elegant fastidiousness of this pianist. His phrasing, expressiveness and musical breathing were intensely musical. He executed with facility the memorable, at times spine-tingling, legato style brillant of the youthful Fryderyk Chopin.

To project sensitivity in performance in such an immense hall is not without almost insurmountable difficulties. Embellishments and decorative fiorituras  were added succesfully and expressively in spontaneous, inventive period performance style. The movement was expressive melodically and with sensitivity. At times I felt he was composing the work in real time rather than interpreting a past inspiration ....

The Romance. Larghetto for me was highly refined in terms of beauty, tone and musical phrasing. I felt beneath there was an expression of future hope concealed within the adoration and unreality of illusions within this infatuation. Some of the individual players in the orchestra dominated proceedings occasionally which was disturbing. However, I felt here we had a poetic Aeolian of the piano rather than the harp, a delicate effect of extreme pianissimo sound that was often used to describe Chopin's own playing. His own teacher Elsner mentioned this lack of forcefulness sacrificed to lyricism. Such dynamics are possible on a period piano such as a Bucholtz but not on modern, homogenous instruments.

It was often observed that Chopin played with a much lower relative dynamic than we are used to today i.e. forte for him was perhaps mezzo-forte for us or even softer. This together with and as a result of the limitations of the instruments of the day means the dynamic scale of the work is not gigantic. Pianissimo on a Pleyel or Bucholtz is the barest perceptible whisper. Berlioz once described Chopin's own playing 

'....the utmost degree of softness, piano  to the extreme, the hammers merely brushing the strings, so much so that one is tempted to go close to the instrument and put one's ear to it as if to a concert of sylphs or elves.'  (Quoted in Rink, Sampson,Chopin Studies 2 p.51). 

The Rondo. Vivace was possessed of a style brillant exuberance second to none and sparkled with wit, humour, infectious dance rhythm and the delights of watching white caps on a wind-whipped, sunny ocean blue. Here we had a true impressionist painting in sound. The movement closed in a triumphant gesture in a varied palette of tumultuous sound. To my mind we had penetrated the lighthearted, carefree energetic temperament that characterized the young Chopin.

Highly enthusiastic applause and then as an encore, the orchestra and Ablogin returned to the touching Larghetto of the F minor concerto, Chopin's first utterance of love. What a contrast to Don Giovanni, but then Chopin's own tragic destiny had yet to unfold.

This rendition was an even more moving and poignantly engaged performance than the original he gave us within the concerto. Arpeggiated chords, additional fiorituras as delicate as Bruxelles lace, intense yearning were all expressed here. The bassoon obbligato was especially beautiful.

So much in responding to this delicate lyricism, psychologically, receiving this musical gift, rests in one's own personal experience of life and love. Depth of feeling is relative and cannot be quantified as 'correct' or 'normal'. The judgment of a musical phrase as sentiment or 'just sentimentality' depends so much on the development of personal character. This particular Larghetto for me was truly hypnotic. The audience sat in a pregnant, perfect silence as the last ultra pianissimo sounds faded into the Warsaw night.

WEDNESDAY 27.08.2025 8:30 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Symphonic concert

EVGENY SVIRIDOV violin

Concertmaster

TOMASZ RITTER Historic fortepiano

CONCERTO KÖLN

HANNAH FREIENSTEIN cello,

artistic director

Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [1756–1791]

Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546 (1788)

The theme of the festival is 'Begin with Bach' was accomplished in an interesting way by Concerto Köln by opening their concert with the Mozart Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546 (1788). It is impossible to believe that the immense and learned Matterhorn of music that Bach represents would not have impacted on Mozart's consciousness. The galant style of his compositions were in stark contrast to the 'antique' strict polyphony of Bach which lay at the heart of the mid-eighteenth century dualistic division  that involved creative music.  

The influence certainly fertilized Mozart's imagination in this Fugue written for two Claviers, later arranging it for string orchestra and finally adding an Adagio introduction.  After their marriage, Constanze had exerted a great deal of pressure on Mozart to compose fugues and write them down as she adored them, 'the most artistic and beautiful things in music.' 

Naturally Mozart understood the significance of Bach under the tutoring of Baron von Sweiten. He arranged pieces for friends from the Well-Tempered Clavier for performances in the baron's music room. Despite Bach being one of the broad amalgam of musical influences on Mozart, he never deeply affected his late eighteenth century compositional personality and voice.

This C-minor work is startlingly original and emotionally disturbing in a similar way I find to the D minor piano concerto K 466 and even the Overture to Don Giovanni. The commitment of the Concerto Köln to ensemble performance and sheer cohesion of sound was clear from the outset. I have followed Concerto Köln for many years through the constant evolution of the band. The quality of integrated sound and virtuosity has always remained at the forefront. And so it was this evening. The interpretation of this work was noble and dauntingly, even alarmingly, pregnant with existential meaning and energy.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Divertimento in D major, K. 136/125a

Allegro

Andante

Presto

The Divertimento in D major, K. 136/125a was one of an early group of 'quartets' written in Salzburg in early 1772. The work is a what one might consider a symphony for strings without oboes and horns.  The virtuosity required for the first movement was fluently dispatched by Concerto Köln. My spirits were instantly lifted from beneath the shadow of mere transitory current events. This was a transparent performance of perfect intonation and rhythmic drive. 

The second Andante movement was perfumed with refined elegance, grace and tender sensitivity in the Italian style of the day. 

The Presto finale possessed all the correct buffo character of a symphonic conclusion. Concerto Köln emerged as a brilliant ensemble of great exuberance and cohesiveness. A truly joyful flight, winging above or perhaps, for the philosophically enlightened, even enveloped within reality. The delightful Italian temperament was evident for possible entertaining presentation in the salon of Count Firmian, the Governor-General of Milan.

Feliks Janiewicz [1762–1848]

Feliks Janiewicz (1823-1848) 
(Image courtesy of The Friends of Feliks Janiewicz)

Violin Concerto No. 3 in A major (c. 1791)

Allegro

Adagio

Rondo

The work opened with a simple, affecting melody on the solo violin. I was immediately transported to the atmosphere of the Bath Assembly Rooms where such a work may well have been performed. The work has many demanding virtuosic passages which even attracted the attention of the 'devil' of the instrument, Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840). I did feel the Adagio could have had more of a singing quality. The Rondo  on the other hand was a tumultuous delight - a dance confection of a foot-tapping order. I found it melodically quite galvanizing.

For Feliks Janiewicz [1762–1848] himself and the Violin Concerto No. 3 in A major (c. 1791) I would refer you to an extensive post I wrote after a visit to Edinburgh and was astounded to discover this extraordinary musical compositional talent. 

His name here is in the Polish spelling. English spelling is slightly different !

http://www.michael-moran.com/2022/09/felix-yaniewicz-music-and-migration-in_7.html

Intermission

 Feliks Janiewicz (1762-1848)

Violin Concerto No. 3 in A major

arr. by Sebastian Gottschick for piano and orchestra

Allegro

Adagio

Rondo

The transcription of the Feliks Janiewicz violin concerto for piano and orchestra is absolutely masterly. A gate to a relatively unknown Polish composer has been opened onto a new garden of delights. To paraphrase slightly a line from a fairy story by Oscar Wilde: A delicious perfume came to us through the open casement.  This is how this transfigured work struck me.

The pianist Tomasz Ritter (winner of the 1st International Chopin Competition on period instruments) performed on an Erard instrument of 1849 with taste, virtuosity and panache in an engaging transformation of this violin concerto. His inspiring sound, together with the remarkable timbre of Concerto Köln on their own on period instruments, presented the concerto in a new musical dimension. This was all revealed on the same evening, which enabled accurate comparisons of style and medium. The Rondo and its jaunty rhythms became irresistible.

Josie Dixon, Curator of ​Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh, descendant of Feliks Janiewicz and the period pianist  Tomasz Ritter

Tomasz Ritter and Paul McNulty discussing the intricate nature of the  Erard piano

A gate to a beautiful garden has been opened. Agin in the words of Oscar Wilde's fable: 'Through a little hole the children had crept in .... We have not witnessed a replacement, merely a magical complementary vision of the work that raises it into another world of sensibility.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Symphony No. 29 in A major (1774)

K. 201/186a

Allegro moderato

Andante

Menuetto

Allegro con spirito

After the passionate agitation of the G minor symphony K.183 (the first in a minor key Mozart wrote), here in 1774 we have the third in the superb triad of what might be erroneously termed  'early' symphonies. They are scored for  forces of strings, oboes and horns. Economy of means produces masterpieces, not so the superfluity we 'enjoy' in 2025.

What miracles of Mozart were produced through the musical hands of the Concerto Köln, all standing in an upright posture to play. 'The new spirit shows itself in all the movements.' observes Alfred Einstein. An Andante not dissimilar to a string quartet movement. A Minuet of violent contrasts and an Allegro con spirito  that, brought into musical being by Concerto Köln, was replete with spirito, drama and sheer excitement. 'What an immense distance he had travelled from the Italian sinfonia' continues Alfred Einstein.

Another singular, remarkable evening in Polish musical life, unique in my experience.

Lt to Rt balcony front row: Sebastian Gottschick arranger of the concerto for piano, Stanisław Leszczyński, Artistic Director of the Festival, Josie Dixon, Curator of  Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh, descendant of Feliks Janiewicz and Orlando her son

26.08 TUESDAY 7:00 p.m. 

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Symphonic concert

HOMAGE TO 

JANUSZ

OLEJNICZAK

Please browse through this post I devoted to Janusz on his unexpected death

http://www.michael-moran.com/2024/10/the-passing-of-janusz-olejniczak-1952.html

If you would like to further your understanding of the sound world inhabited by Chopin himself (the historical and cultural context is vital) I suggest listening to two contrasting pieces (the Mazurka in B flat minor Op. 24 No. 4  and the so-called 'Revolutionary'  Etude Op. 10, No. 12 in C minor) via this link below. They are performed on an 1831 Pleyel in this now rare recording by perhaps the most poetic and soulful of the Polish pianists - Janusz Olejniczak  

Download at:   http://www.box.net/shared/kxdzfyhr60

DANG THAI SON*  piano

SOPHIA LIU**  piano 

AUKSO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Of THE CITY OF TYCHY 

MAREK MOŚ  conductor

This was a particularly affecting concert as it was dedicated to the memory of the visionary Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak much loved in Poland for his personality and fine musicianship.

The 'Begin with Bach' piece selected today before the main concert was the Minuet from the Orchestral Suite in B minor BWV 1067 performed with charm and grace by the Auskso Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy without conductor.

Program

Fryderyk Chopin [1810–1849] 

Concerto in E minor, Op. 11

Allegro maestoso

Romance. Larghetto

Rondo. Vivace 

Chopin had wasted no time in composing his second piano concerto (despite the lower opus number), the E minor Op.11. In many ways it revolves like planets around the sun, an exalted Romanze. Larghetto central movement. He elucidated its inspiration to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski: ‘Involuntarily, something has entered my head through my eyes and I like to caress it’. 

He was clearly still emotionally preoccupied with the idealized young singer Konstancja Gładowska. ‘Little is wanting in Gładkowska’s singing’, he wrote to his friend following her performance in the Italian Ferdinando Paer’s opera Agnese, 

‘She is better on stage that in a hall. I shall say nothing of her excellent tragic acting, as nothing need be said, whilst as for her singing, were it not for the F sharp and G, sometimes too high, we should need nothing better’. 

In the same letter written to Tytus in May 1830, Chopin describes the nature of this pivotal movement of this work. 

‘The Adagio for the new concerto is in E major. It is not intended to be powerful, it is more romance-like, calm, melancholic, it should give the impression of a pleasant glance at a place where a thousand fond memories come to mind.’ 

One cannot help wondering about the source of these 'fond memories' and imagining the romantic nature and occurrences that may have given rise to them.

The prodigious talent of the young (17) Canadian-Chinese lady Sophia Liu was evident from the opening phrases of Allegro maestoso of the E minor concerto. It was certainly grand in conception but I felt the orchestra was rather too dense in tonal expression to form a creative balanced dynamic partnership with the elegant fastidiousness of the soloist. Her phrasing, expressiveness and musical breathing were intensely musical. She quite correctly cultivated the memorable legato style brillante of the youthful Fryderyk and was more than conventionally expressive in emotional range for one so tender in pianistic years.

The Romance. Larghetto for me was highly refined in terms of tone and musical phrasing but I felt I needed further submersion in the dream world of illusioned, adolescent infatuation or 'love' if you will. She added some of her own embellishments and decorations as per period performance but I felt they could have been more organically integrated as a natural outcome of the melodic line rather than appliqué. 

There was a certain cultivated artificiality in this movement. These remarks remember, come at the highest level of truly remarkable, even unique, keyboard facility and are actually mere quibbles on the part of this aged critic! Here is a writer who has already, long ago, passed through many of life's phantom desires, disappointments and pendant joys!

The Rondo. Vivace was possessed of a style brillante exuberance second to none and sparkled with wit, humour, infectious dance rhythm and the delights of a cascading , pure mountain stream. However, I felt on occasion that the conductor Marek Moś and the Tychy orchestra had not penetrated the lighthearted, carefree energetic temperament that characterized the young Chopin.

A radiant and at times dazzling performance.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The Warsaw premiere audience numbered around 700.  ‘Yesterday’s concert was a success’, wrote Chopin on 12 October 1830 to Tytus ‘A full house!’  Two young female singers also performed at the concert conducted by that controversial figure in Warsaw musical life, Carlo Soliva. Contemporary programming was unimaginably different to 2025. After the Allegro had been played to ‘a thunderous ovation’, Chopin sacrificed the stage to a singer [‘dressed like an angel, in blue’], Anna Wołkow. Typical of the pressing personality of Soliva, she sang an aria he had composed.

The other young singer was Konstancja Gładkowska. Chopin wrote as descriptively as always: ‘Dressed becomingly in white, with roses in her hair, she sang the cavatina from [Rossini’s] La donna del lago as she had never sung anything, except for the aria in (Paer’s) Agnese. You know that “Oh, quante lagrime per te versai”. She uttered "tutto desto” to the bottom B in such a way that Zieliński (an acquaintance) held that single B to be worth a thousand ducats’. 

This 'farewell' concert was only three weeks before Chopin left Warsaw and the subsequent November 1830 uprising burst upon the city. ‘The trunk for the journey is bought, scores corrected, handkerchiefs hemmed… Nothing left but to bid farewell, and most sadly’. Konstancja and Frycek exchanged rings. She had packed an album in which she had written the words ‘while others may better appraise and reward you, they certainly can’t love you better than we’. Only two years later, Chopin added: ‘they can’ which speaks volumes.

An introductory book on the concertos and their context I cannot recommend more highly: 

Chopin - The Piano Concertos by John Rink (Cambridge Music Handbooks 1997)

Intermission

Bernado Bellotto, called Canaletto - View of Warsaw from the Praga district, 1770

Fryderyk Chopin

Concerto in F minor, Op. 21

Maestoso

Larghetto

Allegro vivace

‘As I already have, perhaps unfortunately, my ideal, whom I faithfully serve, without having spoken to her for half a year already, of whom I dream, in remembrance of whom was created the adagio of my concerto’ (to Tytus Woyciechowski, 3 October 1829).

The first performance of Chopin's first piano concerto, this one in F minor,  took place for a group of friends in the Chopin family drawing room at the Krasiński Palace on March 3, 1830. Karol Kurpiński, the  Polish composer and pedagogue, conducted a chamber ensemble. Full orchestral forces were rare in the performance of concertos in Warsaw in the early 19th century. Our music world is comparatively overwhelmed with riches in terms of full orchestra availability and such a multiplicity of recordings.

From the Maestoso outset, Đặng Thái Sơn set the correct thoughtful, reminiscent tone when announcing that this half of the program would be dedicated to the memory of Janusz Olejniczak.   

The outer movements revolve like two glittering, enchanted planets around the moonlit, sublime melody of the central Larghetto movement, a love song inspired by the soprano Konstancja Gładowska, Chopin's object of distant fascination. Liszt regarded the movement as 'absolute perfection'. The Larghetto moved the heart, as it inevitably does, in dramatic lyrical contrast to the more superficial style brillant movements that precede and follow it. 

This concerto was always performed in preference to the E minor concerto by Janusz Olejniczak. His profound plumbing of its inspiration was remarkable and never to be forgotten once heard. This movement was deeply moving in its interpretation  by Dang Thai Son as an expression of recalled love by all those in the hall who had been emotionally carried aloft by Olejniczak's Chopin performances in the past. Dang Thai Son was refined, subtle, tenderly expressive and yet eschewed any sign of cloying sentimentality. 

The Allegro vivace was full of the joyfulness of youth and the glistening optimism of the style brillante. Joseph Conrad (Józef Korzeniowski), the Polish writer of genius who chose to write in English, exclaimed in his story 'Youth' an apt description of what might apply accurately to this movement: 'The glory of it!'.  

The movement excited us with the exuberance of a stylized dance of the kujawiak provenance. Janusz Olejniczak with his keen sense of humour and vibrant temperament for life, would have never wanted us to linger too long in the 'slough of despond' remembering his passing. Dang Thai Son's delightfully delicate touch, perfect accuracy and brilliant articulation cascaded over us like pearls on glass, a true jeu perlé. The great Polish musicologist and pedagogue Mieczyław Tomaszewski writes of this movement:

A different kind of dance character – swashbuckling and truculent – is presented by the episodes, which are scored in a particularly interesting way. The first episode is bursting with energy. The second, played scherzando and rubato, brings a rustic aura. It is a cliché of merry-making in a country inn, or perhaps in front of a manor house, at a harvest festival, when the young Chopin danced till he dropped with the whole of the village. The horn signal and its hunting character was brought off to perfection.

The faultlessness and integrity of this brilliant musical concerto performance shone through the dismal clouds of remembrance to take us unresistant to the sunny recollections of musical truth and beauty, a beauty beyond language to engage.

As an encore, with perfect discrimination, Dang Thai Son chose the Chopin  Nocturne in C-sharp minor, known as the Lento con gran espressione. This work was incomparably played by Olejniczak as a favorite encore. To my sensibility, he performed it with greater interpretative depth than any other pianist in my experience. 

The audience of the great hall were reduced to complete, heartrending silence. Dang Thai Son took his hands from the keyboard and sat there in silence for some minutes. In this a way he took us on a journey of communion with the universal musical soul of Janusz Olejniczak.

As a resuscitation of life, Sophia Liu and Dang Thai Son (pupil and teacher) then played a remarkable duet encore for four hands as another encore. The finest, most sparkling rendition of the Variations in D major on a Theme by T. Moore I have ever heard.

A remarkable musical evening that will remain permanently in my musical memory.

MONDAY 25.08 7:00 p.m.

Ballroom of the Royal Castle in Warsaw 

Harpsichord recital

WŁADYSŁAW KŁOSIEWICZ

Program 

Johann Sebastian Bach [1685–1750]

Das wohltemperierte Klavier (Book I) (1722)

I remember in the distant past, if one mentioned playing and studying Bach’s  Das Wohltemperierte Klavier one was almost looked at askance as ‘a dull intellectual’ and further, interested in dreaded mathematics! How times have changed under the influence of say Myra Hess (1890-1965) and Rosalind Tureck (1913-2003). I will not venture to open the Pandora's Box of Bach concerning these works performed on either clavichord, harpsichord or piano.

Polish composers musicians have always been deeply attached to the original keyboard music of Bach, often on period instruments in historically informed performance. Chopin adored J.S.Bach and played these works before giving concerts and also in maintaining useful practice and polyphonic elements in his compositions. He probably had in mind the cycle of keys in Das Wohltemperierte Klavier when he conceived the group of Preludes Op.28. 

An amusing story ...

One evening after a recital in Paris where the great Polish pianist and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski had included some Bach in his recital programme (as he often did), a female admirer came up to him and said in French (the story is even more amusing in that language)

"This Bach that you play Monsieur Paderewski, it is very nice music. Does he still compose?" 

Paderewski, terribly alert mentally, without batting an eyelid replied 

"Madame, this gentleman Bach you so love has been decomposing for two hundred and fifty years." 

Her reaction to this quip is forgotten. 

Aleksander Michałowski (1851–1938) was a Polish pianist, pedagogue and composer who, in addition to his own remarkable abilities (testified by his many historic recordings), had a profound influence upon the teaching of piano technique particularly the works of Chopin and Bach. He founded what might be loosely termed the 'Polish School'.  

Michałowski had a large number of gifted pupils who became great concert pianists in their own right (the great harpsichordist and pianist Wanda Landowska, Vladimir Sofronistsky, Mischa Levitzki, the brilliant Boleslaw Kon and Heinrich Neuhaus (teacher of Richter and Gilels) were among the most famous). 

Bach presented Das Wohltemperierte Klavierwork 'For the use and profit of young musicians who are anxious to learn, as well as for the enjoyment of those who are already expert in the art.' - as it was presented to us. The work is simultaneously absolute music and pedagogic text. The first volume betrays great variety of Baroque figuration and dance rhythms, composed over a long period of time.

I cannot possibly test your patience by examining each prelude and fugue of Book I individually. I will not analyze in detail the interpretation of each by the eminent harpsichordist Władysław Kłosiewicz.

However, certainly these works, all masterpieces, deserve the closest possible analytical attention. If you have ever seriously studied the piano or harpsichord, Bach is the kernal of instruction by any great teacher.

Kłosiewicz courageously performed the entire Book I without a break which in itself is a concentrated musical feat of a high intellectual order and possibly not advisable. His execution on the Neupert/Blanchet faltered only occasionally. The entire audience remained silent and attentive throughout what may have been two hours of concentrated listening to learned harpsichord music. Such a huge listening development in stamina from the past! This too indicates Kłosiewicz's ability to hypnotize us with superb sound in that, for the harpsichord, acoustically perfect ballroom.

Five Paul McNulty fortepianos in the exquisite Ballroom of the Royal Castle, Warsaw

Lt. to Rt.   J.A.Stein (ca.1788); A. Walter (ca.1792); C.Graf (ca. 1830); J. Pleyel (1830); L. Boisselot(1846)

The Ballroom of the Royal Castle, an aesthetically overwhelming room, is a superb musical venue for the performance of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier . It is a period perfect setting for such a magnificent masterpiece. This contributed  much to our emotional involvement and enjoyment.

Domenico Merlini (1730-1797)

(Chiesa San Martino, Castello, Italy)

Domenico Merlini (1730-1797), the distinguished eighteenth-century Italian architect from Brescia, who brought Palladianism to Poland, together with the Dresden-born architect Jan Christian Kamsetzer (1753-1795), designed it in the second half of the Neo-classical eighteenth century. They benefited from the valuable allegorical guidance of the Polish King Stanisław Augustus. 

The room contains miraculously preserved elements of the original stucco work, the rescued statues of Apollo and Minerva by André Le Brun and a sculptural composition depicting a timely allegory of Justice and Peace, mired as we are in a period of gruesome war. The original Royal Castle was methodically demolished by the Nazis with explosives placed by architects. It was restored by skilled artisans and raw labour by the entire population of Warsaw and beyond, mainly for free. New gold leaf now glisters from every crevice in a blaze of mirrored chandeliers in a overwhelming appearance similar to when construction was just completed. 

A magnificent and rare evening. One slowly became convinced, as the musical tapestry unfolded, of Bach as essentially a religious composer. He was a profound humanist. This emerges from his deepest psyche, yet not from any formalized expression of belief in any specific creed, despite his devotion to the Lutheran faith.

Kłosiewicz gave us such an extraordinarily uplifting evening that managed to regenerate my faith in creative human nature in the face of the profoundly negative and threatening aspects of our benighted times.

SUNDAY 24.08 7:00 p.m.

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Symphonic concert

AIMI KOBAYASHI** piano

KYŌHEI SORITA** piano

ANDRZEJ BAUER*** cello

RADOSŁAW KUREK* piano

ŁUKASZ HAJDUCZENIA* narrator

AUKSO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Of THE CITY Of TYCHY

MAREK MOŚ conductor

Programme

As the motto of the festival is 'Begin with Bach' the concert opened almost surprisingly for me with the so-called 'Air on a G string' from the Orchestral Suite No.3 (BWV1066). This was not mentioned in the programme and was performed  with sweetness, tenderness and subtlety by the orchestra without a conductor. The orchestra was 'led' only by the charming female concertmaster.

Arnold Schönberg [1874–1951]

Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, Op. 41 for

string orchestra, piano and narrator *

Arnold Schönberg by Egon Schiele

I had never heard this work or even knew the Byronic poem on which it is based. In fact, I did not even know of its existence. However, what was clear, was of it being a topical polemic. Contemporary commentary by artists is welcomed in view of the appalling nature of current world events and apparent political paralysis. We hover on the threshold of a world war and witness the increasing emergence of merciless, dubious, lawless figures on the political landscape.

It is a most impressive and timely work, an inspiration to programme it. The part of the narrator or reciter was fluently taken by the gifted and highly talented Polish baritone Łukasz Hajduczenia. Certainly the English language is a trial to non-native speakers and Hajduczenia was fulfilling in this demanding role. His diction was occasionally in need of attention but wrestling as a 'foreigner' with Polish I am full of sympathy. 

A most impressive performance was also accomplished in this challenging work by the Ausko Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy under their inspiring conductor Marek Moś.

The Ode to Napoleon, Op. 41 by Arnold Schönberg, originally for string quartet, piano, and narrator, was completed on 12 June 1942. The narrator takes the text from Lord Byron and his 1814 Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte. The catalyst for the composition and its current relevance was the abdication of Napoleon and his exile to Elba. Other similar works by Schönberg employing a narrator with ensemble are  Sprechgesang or Sprechstimme  Pierrot lunaire or Erwartung.

Lord Byron had announced in January 1814 that he would absolve himself from the writing of poetry. However, Napoleon’s abdication once again fertilized his compulsion to write. The announcement of the abdication came on 9 April and on 10 April, Byron wrote to his publisher, John Murray, that he’d written an ‘ode on the fall of Napoleon’.

‘Tis done—but yesterday a King!

And armed with Kings to strive—

And now thou art a nameless thing:

So abject—yet alive!

( from Stanza I)

The lament condemns Napoleon (stanza 11) for not ‘dying as honour dies’. Napoleon escaped from Elba after 11 months of exile, reached Paris on 20 March 1815, and was finally defeated at Waterloo before his final exile to the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena before his death in 1821. Needless to say, the modern Napoleon for Schönberg was Adolf Hitler.

Schönberg specified that the narrator had to be a ‘singer of high musicianship’ since the part required a precise spoken rhythm to fit with the piano and the string quartet.

The work was composed during the Second World War as a protest against tyranny.

'Schoenberg heard the Ode live in its original form only at a rehearsal preceding the concert in honor of his 75th birthday (13 September 1949) in Los Angeles. The speaker was William Schallert, I was the pianist, and the quartet was led by Adolph Koldofsky. In a special coaching session with the speaker, Schoenberg, his dark eyes flashing expressively while he recited lines from the work, emphasized, above all, their dramatic and expressive values. The inflections of pitch, marked so carefully in the score, were treated in a secondary manner. The main impression of the Ode was, and remains, one of powerful dramatic expression.' (Notes by Leonard Stein)

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

In an introduction in English titled “How I Came to Compose the Ode to Napoleon,” Schönberg described both the creation of the work (commissioned by the League of Composers) and its orientation to Beethoven’s Eroica and Wellington’s Victory: “I know it was the moral duty of intelligencia [sic] to take a stand against tyranny. But this was only my secondary motive. I had long speculated about the more profound meaning of the [N]azi philosophy.”

Schönberg’s pupil Leonard Stein recalls that his teacher oriented his shaping of the declamation to the diction of Winston Churchill, whose voice he had heard on the radio, and made a connection between the conception of op. 41, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and Roosevelt’s declaration of war on Japan.  (Arnold Schönberg Centre, Vienna). Hajduczenia's resonant baritone dealt with these unique vocal challenges most admirably and impressively.

Byron was adored in the United States as a Bohemian, adventurer and freedom fighter. Schönberg was deeply committed to that popular image of the poet. He was also concerned with tyranny and the promise of democracy and human dignity as in the past. This Ode is, apart from being a musical composition, also a type of 'concealed' political manifesto (as are many musical compositions including some by Chopin) using a symbol-laden composing technique; when the narrator declaims the words “the earthquake voice of victory,” motivic musical recollections of the Marseillaise and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony emerge. 

So one must pose the question, in the midst of World War II, why did Schoenberg turn to Napoleon, of all celebrated historical figures and even select the poetry of Byron for inspiration? Well, the great British Romantic poet had written an iconoclastic poem concerning Napoleon Bonaparte and was deeply disillusioned by his metamorphosis from freedom fighter into dictator. Arnold Schönberg transformed Byron's critical ode into a didactic musical work for strings, piano, and a narrator.

If thou hadst died as Honour dies,

Some new Napoleon might arise,

To shame the world again—

But who would soar the solar height,

To set in such a starless night

(from Stanza 11)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

[1756–1791]

Mozart (1756-1791) and his sister Nannerl (1751-1829) with their father Leopold (1719-1787)

Concerto in E flat major for Two Pianos **

K. 365/316a

Allegro

Andante

Rondo. Allegro

We have been so fortunate in brilliant young couples performing Mozart double concertos in Warsaw!  Eric Lu and Kate Liu in the 2023 Chopin and His Europe Festival and now Aimi Kobayashi and Kōhei Sorita in this same Double Concerto by Mozart K365 in 2025.

After returning from compositional work at Paris and Mannheim, Mozart wrote this concerto to amuse himself and his sister Nannerl. There is an intense and energetic playful 'family' dialogue between the two pianos with each other and the orchestra. Mozart was a light-hearted fellow and not a tormented soul. Aimi Kobayashi and Kōhei Sorita made full use of their pleasure performing together, which became a delight for us all.

The scholar Alfred Einstein writes of the work which I cannot compete with for succinctness: 'In general, the Concerto is a work of happiness, gaiety, overflowing richness of invention and joy in itself, and thus is evidence of how little the secret of creative activity has to do with personal experience, for it was written just after the bitterest disappointments of Mozart's life.'

This concerto was full of youthful joyfulness from the beginning Allegro to the end with these two performers. I strongly felt the historical and delightfully artificial social atmosphere of eighteenth century Vienna. I felt a degree of that artful Viennese Gemütlichkeit and charming conversational tone, the vocal nature of many of the musical phrases, the playful musical questions and answers thrown between the pianos, the gaiety of the musical competition erupting between brother and sister. A musical accomplishment effortlessly achieved by Aimi Kobayashi and Kōhei Sorita.

The second movement is marked Andante by Mozart which avoids any emotional complication or arguments between brother and sister as might occur in an Adagio which often evokes lost romantic love. 

Throughout their performance I could hear operatic arias in cantabile passages which, I am sure, is what Mozart intended. The expressiveness lies in the magic of the phrasing and the infinitesimal hesitations of conversational musical speech as the music tenses and relaxes. I felt both these Japanese pianists were in an ebullient, irrepressibly joyful mood, particularly in the Rondeau Allegro final movement. I imagined each as if drinking a flute of musical champagne, the Mozart notes rising like an insistent festive mousse.

Witold Lutosławski [1913–1994]

The noble and fastidious face of  the Polish composer Witold  Lutosławski 
25 January 1913 -  7 February 1994 

Partita for violin and orchestra ***

arr. Andrzej Bauer for cello and orchestra

Allegro giusto

Interludium

Largo

Interludium

Presto

It was during my earliest remarkable encounters with Poland and working not living in Warsaw in the early 1990s that I first encountered the music of Witold Lutosławski. Already ill with cancer and frail, in his last public performance he conducted his Fourth Symphony at the 1993 Warsaw Autumn Festival. I have never forgotten this profound musical experience. 

Witold Lutosławski is without doubt a truly great modern composer in many genres, predominantly for me his piano concerto performed by Krystian Zimerman. The first memory that springs into the viewfinder of my mind hearing his astounding work were my experiences during the avant-garde year of revolution 1968. 

During those years I was in Paris writing my own experimental 'indeterminate' avant garde texts influenced by the style of the Nouveau Roman literary movement (Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet). I was deeply interested in the contemporary classical music of Messiaen, Nono, Berio, Dallapiccola, Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Pousseur, Stockhausen, Boulez, Kagel and Xenakis. I now tend to agree with Penderecki that the avant-garde movement in the arts oftentimes led these deeply imaginative artists into a creative cul-de-sac.

In 1968 I also attended as an observer many of the classes and premieres given by the German electronic composer Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne (Courses for New Music). I continued with my own literary work but heavily influenced by the structure and scope of contemporary classical music, the Nouvelle Vague cinema, Nouveau Roman literature, German Expressionism and French Symbolist poetry. 

The 25th January 2013 was the sole previous occasion on which I heard this piece live. It was during the Lutosławski Centenary concert at the Warsaw Filharmonia. One of the world's great musicians, the bewitching and elegant virtuoso violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter had come to Warsaw to perform works that Lutosławski had dedicated to her and to receive a medal and a statuette for her selfless musical work and extra-musical philanthropy. 

The sound she produced was like gossamer threads woven around us. Breathtakingly beautiful. This cello transcription by the great Andrzej Bauer took us to yet another dimension of interpretation. Unconventionally melodic, the work appeared as yet another example of Lutosławski's by now perfected 'controlled aleotoric' compositional method (despite the apparent inner contradiction of such a term). Then the Interludium for Orchestra (1989). 

This composition is really one of the most remarkable orchestral works I have ever heard. The brilliant Andrzej Bauer on the cello and the Ausko Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy under their inspiring conductor Marek Moś can scarcely be compared to Mutter and the Warsaw Philharmonic under Antoni Wit and neither should they be. All musical performances are unique.

His transcription creates a different sound world and a gear shift in sensibility. I recall Mutter stood like some variety of statuesque musical Venus who had wandered out of Botticelli's Primavera, a discreet garland of exotic flowers ascending from the hem of her black gown.  

Addressing the audience in German after the concert, she observed: 

'Witold Lutosławski is a gift from God. It was 1985 when I first encountered his music, and it was a turning point in my life - he opened a window into the future. It was very fortunate. For me, Witold Lutosławski created the most perfect music.'

If you can excuse my personal musical 'madeleine cake', this fine performance  by Andrzej Bauer  of a marvellous, although aurally demanding work, set me back on the wandering 'lawless' roads of my musical youth.

Saturday 23.08.25

19:00

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

MAO FUJITA  piano

HAGEN QUARTET

LUKAS HAGEN violin

RAINER SCHMIDT violin

VERONIKA HAGEN  viola

CLEMENS HAGEN cello

 Dmitry Shostakovich [1906–1975]

String Quartet No. 3 in F major, Op. 73 (1946)

Allegretto 

(‘Blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm’)

Moderato con moto  

(‘Rumblings of unrest and anticipation’)

Allegro non troppo  

('The forces of war unleashed')

Adagio 

(‘In memory of the dead’)

Moderato 

(‘The eternal question: why? and for what?’)

The Third String Quartet was Shostakovich’s sole composition during the year 1946. He dedicated it to the members of the Beethoven Quartet, who gave the first performance in Moscow on the 176th birthday of Beethoven, December 16, 1946.

Living in Warsaw in Poland, so close to the war raging mercilessly in Ukraine, it was next to impossible for me to divorce myself from the symbolic and expressive significance of this performance by a Russian composer of genius. However I am Australian with no slavic blood or family memory of the convoluted, bloody history of this part of Europe. I can only give you my impressions as a Westerner listening to Western musicians perform Russian music. My particular filter. In addition, my personal preoccupation with the music of Fryderyk Chopin colours my thoughts and musical imagination. So many of his compositions were inspired by the nostalgic emotions of a Polish exile and the anger aroused by war.

Critical performances of this work in peacetime are mainly directed towards appreciation of the composition as pure, courageously adventurous, chamber music. However, the Borodin Quartet, one of the leading Soviet ensembles of their day established in 1946, the first year of peace, insisted the subtitles being appended to the movements in all their performances. 

One cannot help but feel convinced that, although the titles have never been published in an edition of the music, application to the present situation in Europe would achieve the approval of the composer. They not so mysteriously fit the nature of the music:

I: 'Calm unawareness of the future cataclysm'

II: 'Rumblings of unrest and anticipation'

III: 'The forces of war unleashed'

IV: 'Homage to the dead'

V: 'The eternal question: Why? And for what?'

The Hagen Quartet reflected an unassailable peak of professionalism as an ensemble yet with many flashes of soloistic brilliance and expressive inspiration. The beauty of the ensemble sound on their period original instruments, created by the greatest of makers, was remarkably rich in this hall.

The structure of this challenging quartet is unusual (five movements, with themes from earlier movements recalled in the finale). Much of the writing is chromatic and unsettling without a clear tonal focus.

The opening Allegretto moved me into childhood thoughts with its innocence, delight and clear lack of the intimations of the darker of life experiences. The carefree play of a child before the tigers of experience begin their feast. There are even moments of irony here. Shostakovich does indicate a dolce opening for the performers which the Hagen Quartet managed with inspiration. The second theme evolves as a lugubrious premonition.

There is a deep sense of unease in the second movement  Moderato con moto, music with a sense full of foreboding. There is an almost sensual memory of a phantom waltz which dissolves into a muted instrumental silence.

Aggression and the tumult of battle is the dominant emotion of the third movement Allegro non troppo. The quartet takes one almost physically by the throat and ear in a violent attempt to create in sound the horrifying explosive weaponry of modern war. This was magnificently achieved by the Hagen with the limited volume of four instruments in a quartet rather than the battery of a full orchestra. This movement was brought to threatening life by means of their cohesive collective ensemble of dynamics, intonation, tone, timbre and texture.

The expressive fourth movement Adagio ('Homage to the dead') was a profoundly moving, extended Passacaglia. One almost without resistance, was forced by memory to recall in the mind's eye the limitless and oppressive video footage of destruction, war dead and maimed that we are confronted with daily in Ukraine. I was put in mind of the human anguish contained in the late quartets of Beethoven.

These powerful emotions proceed without hesitation into the Moderato finale. The cello’s dark, sensual theme is accompanied by pizzicato harmonics on the viola. Shostakovich recalls themes from earlier in the work and the quartet dissolves enigmatically through scarcely perceptible ppp into almost unbearable yet beautiful silence. 

This hiatus was preserved for contemplation by the Hagen for some time after the concluding sound drifted into the ether. The conviction was inescapable that in 2025 this immortal quartet, performed by such great instrumentalists, contained vastly more than 'pure music'. Marked morendo (fading away to die) by Shostakovich, it seemed, at least to me, a tragic expression of the ghastly reality that confronts us today.

Johannes Brahms [1833–1897]

Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 (1861–1864)

Allegro non troppo

Andante, un poco adagio

Scherzo. Allegro – Trio

Finale. Poco sostenuto – Allegro non

troppo – Presto, non troppo

The Brahms Quintet has had a chequered career in gestation to say the least! Steve Lacoste in a note for the LA Philharmonic wrote movingly and revealingly: 'The development of Brahms’ Piano Quintet is not unlike the metamorphic journey of the butterfly from larva to cocoon to its final emergence as a miraculous winged creature.'

In autumn 1862 Brahms sent Clara Schumann the first three movements of a quintet in F minor for two violins, viola and two cellos—the same ensemble that Schubert used for his great C major Quintet D 956. Her response was warmly enthusiastic:

'What inner strength, what richness in the first movement, with the first subject immediately seizing hold of you! How beautifully written for the instruments—how easily I can picture them neatly bowing away … How bold the transition at letter B, how intimate the subsidiary first subject, then the second subject in C sharp minor, then the development of the latter and the transition back to the first subject again, and how wonderfully the instruments blend together, and that dream-like passage at the end, then the accelerando and the bold, passionate ending—I can’t tell you how moved I am by it, and how powerfully gripped. And what an Adagio—it sings and sounds blissful right up to the last note! I start it over and over again, and don’t want to stop. I like the Scherzo very much, too, only the trio seems somewhat very short to me? And when will the last movement arrive?

Brahms sent the work to his friend and musical mentor the violinist Joseph Joachim. ‘It is’, Joachim commented to Brahms, ‘a piece of the greatest significance, full of masculine strength and sweeping design—that much is immediately apparent to me.' However, Joachim had reservations about the effectiveness of its scoring. Brahms then remodeled it as a sonata for two pianos. Clara Schumann was shocked after receiving it ‘I can hardly believe what you write to me about your quintet!’, she told Brahms on 10 March 1864. Brahms finally recast it as a piano quintet.

When Hermann Levi heard the work in its latest recast quintet form he told Brahms on November 5, 1865:

The Quintet is beautiful beyond words. Anyone who did not know it in its earlier forms of string quintet and two-piano sonata would never believe that it was not originally thought out and designed for the present combination of instruments… You have turned a monotonous work for two pianos into a thing of great beauty, a masterpiece of chamber music…'

Levi thought it the most significant chamber work since the death of Schubert, whose structural influence is present. Brahms also seems to recall  the opening bars of Beethoven’s Appassionata Piano Sonata Op 57.

The Hagen Quartet approached the work with an almost grandiose masculine command of Brahms.  I was reminded at times of the great Amadeus Quartet that I grew up with in my youth, presented in those days as the very pinnacle among string quartets. With the strong contrasting timbre of the piano played by this talented young Japanese artist against the strings, glorious melodies were permitted to emerge and, at times, created an almost symphonic palette of colour, dynamics and expression. The contrapuntal nature of much of the composition was revealed transparently. 

Despite this monumental nobility of utterance, I felt at times a distinct lack of subtle lyric expressiveness that Brahms weaves into all his compositions. I will not analyze each movement, save to say that the Hagen and Mao Fujita, in a passionate and triumphal conclusion to the Brahms, made a conclusive statement of the power of music to overcome any obstacles perversely erected by humanity. The scale of creativity they brought to the work prompted me from my seat in an unaccustomed standing position to applaud!

No encore was offered, which I felt simply confirmed this concert as not a 'performance' by artists but as a spiritual therefore musical, honoring of a tragic and valiant nation embroiled in an unprovoked war. 

Friday 22.08.25

20:30

Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall

Alexander Melnikov piano

Belcea Quartet

Passion, coupled with precision, unheard-of expressiveness and pure emotion characterize the concerts of the Belcea Quartet. With the Romanian violinist Corina Belcea, the Korean-Australian Suyeon Kang on second violin, the Polish violist Krzysztof Chorzelski and the French cellist Antoine Lederlin, four different artistic provenances meet and unite to create unique excellence.

Program:

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

Fugue in E flat major, Op. 81 No. 4

This Fugue is the earliest of four pieces grouped together for publication  but not by Mendelssohn himself. The work was composed in 1827, when he was only 18 years old. Mendelssohn’s astonishingly precocious gifts, arguably on a level with Mozart or even greater, were obvious from the outset in this counterpoint and fugal writing. Beethoven's last quartets had a deep effect on the young composer. In many ways it is tribute to Mendelssohn's idols Bach and Beethoven and an extraordinarily appropriate choice for this festival.

The Pass of Killicrankie as sketched by Mendelssohn on his famous Scottish tour of 1829 (MS. M. Deneke Mendelssohn d. 2, fol. 19). 

Capriccio in E minor, Op. 81 No. 3

The Capriccio in E minor (Op. 81 No. 3) was composed in 1843 while Mendelssohn was in Leipzig.  The movement starts out with a barcarolle sung on the first violin with superb intonation (an unmatched feature of Belcea), tone, texture and beauty by Corina Belcea. Mendelssohn then creates a fugue in the style of J.S. Bach. This was in likely homage to Bach which Mendelssohn’s resuscitation of the St. Matthew Passion changed the direction of musical appreciation of the great composer. 

The Château de Chillon (23 Dec 1843).
This tiny watercolour by Mendelssohn measures only a few centimetres across (MS. M. Deneke Mendelssohn c. 49, fol. 97).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

String Quartet in C major (K. 465)

Hans Keller (1919–1985) was an Austrian-born British musician and writer. He made significant contributions to musicology and music criticism, as well commentating on many unrelated fields of intellectual endeavor. He was well known on the BBC for his waspish wit. I shall never forget hearing him analyzing this quartet with another musicologist on BBC Radio 3. After a hesitation on the part of the other concerning a point of history, Keller crushingly commented in his inimitable mitteleuropäisch accent 'I see you do not know your Haydn quartets.' Silence followed.

Josephium, exterior view, engraving, ca 1785
(Josephinum, Medical University of Vienna)

This renowned quartet known as the 'Dissonance', is the last in a set of six known as the 'Haydn' quartets (1782-1785). They caused him some anguish and great labour and were never intended to be performed as a group. Mozart adored Haydn (known in history as 'the father of the string quartet') in a climate of mutual reverence. Unlike Mozart, Haydn flourished in the courtly milieu more as a Kapelle-servant than a Kapelle-master, rather a 'sad slave' to composition. This quartet of 1785, dedicated to Haydn, 'distinguished Man and dearest Friend', is 'one of the sui generis moments of his creative life' (Jan Swafford). 

It opens darkly on the pulsing cello, even in normally sunny C major, which is joined to create a marked dissonant mysterious atmospheric effect with an A-flat on the viola, E-flat on the second violin and finally an A natural on the first violin. The A natural is intentionally wrong. One explanation of Mozart's harmonic adventure that I read in Swafford, which I found most interesting, is that Mozart had joined the Masons a short time before this composition. The philosophy of uncertain darkness giving way to the certainty of illuminating light lies at the very core of Masonic belief. In the quartet we never return to that darkness.

As the great Vietnamese pianist Đặng Thái Sơn remarked at a masterclass I once attended 'When in the presence of a great performance, there is nothing left to be said.' This was exactly how I felt at the conclusion of this stellar interpretation. The cohesion of the ensemble and dialogue between instruments was quite extraordinary. This was a performance that achieved the highest elegance, grace and refinement. The long second movement Adagio cantabile, the heart of the piece, was deeply affecting. The final movement Allegro molto, a contredance, was bursting with life, joy and wit. Such a musical experience !

Antonín Dvořák

Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 81

Actually the piano quintet is not such a popular genre as one might think - there are not that many. Those that have been written express the very essence of the composer and with the Dvorak Quintet in A major op. 81 we have his personal lyricism and love of the Czech folk idiom beautifully allied. It is also a masterpiece of the form. The composer wrote it in 1887 utilizing original melodies he composed in the folk style. the Allegro ma non tanto was spirited in performance and Melnikov with his supreme musicality and keyboard virtuosity dovetailed into this excellent Belcea ensemble.

He is highly musical and was careful to subordinate the piano when necessary, listening closely to the what the string players are expressing. The Dumka: Andante con moto had a central European feel to it from this quartet who expressed a fine flowing cantabile. The Dumka is a ballad form that alternates slow-fast-slow tempi. It originated on the steppes of Ukraine but is well known in the Czech lands. 

The 'Furiant'

The Scherzo (Furiant): molto vivace I felt was at a tempo possessing great energy for this physical Czech dance known as the furiant. The Finale was a lively and highly joyful polka (so needed today with this cloud of despond hovering over the planet) with an exuberant tempo for this dance. Melnikov was in full seamless ensemble here. Of course, it gave him ample opportunity with this magnificent quartet to display his solo pianistic and musical skills with excellent touch, tone and palette of colour.  His emotional range in this tightly constructed, much admired and loved work was exemplary.

An enthusiastic standing ovation !

As an encore they most affectingly and musically performed the moving Andante from the Brahms Quintet in F minor Op. 34

I spoke to them all later backstage and found them all in possession of  immense musical integrity and friendliness, incredibly warm artists with no personal vanity in evidence whatsoever, considering their immense musical talents.