© Protected - Selected Classical Music in Poland and the Europe of Chopin - Reviewer's Notebook

Just a small sample text from the Edward Cahill biography I am writing  and preoccupied with to the detriment of the rest of my life!  The brilliant, rather dashing, but now forgotten Australian pianist (my great-uncle) was on familiar terms with many of the leading literary, musical and political lights of the day. He performed often for royalty and the aristocracy of the time. There are many postings on this blog concerning him. The whole enterprise is being generously funded in part by a literary grant from the Australia Council, the cultural wing of the Australian Government. His story will be a fine addition to Australian National Biographies. Anthony Andrews as Sir Peter Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel, in the 1982 movie ‘All done in the tying of a cravat’ Sir Percy had declared to his clique of admirers. We seek him here, we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everyw...

The noble and fastidious face of  the Polish composer Witold  Lutosławski  25 January 1913 -  7 February 1994  It was during my earliest remarkable encounters with Poland and working 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.  During this concert I was accelerated back to my rather unusual reverse exposure to classical music. In the 1960s, long before I was at all familiar with the conventional classical repertoire, I had attended concerts, listened to recordings and studied the fascinating 'avant-garde' (so-called at that time) scores of only  living composers such as Pierre Boulez, Henri Pousseur, Iannis Xenakis, Mauricio Kagel, Cornelius Cardew, Krzysztof Penderecki, Luciano B...

In Napoleonic mode at the Castle at Liw, Poland, on the former Lithuanian frontier 1993       1975 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow This great and underestimated touring car was featured in the adventurous cultural and motoring rally around Poland I participated in the summer of 1993. I recounted the saga in one chapter of my book: A Country in the Moon: Travels in Search of the Heart of Poland (Granta, London 2009) The castle of the Dukes of Mazovia dates from 1420 and on the right the small baroque country house (now a museum) was added in 1780. The adjacent water meadows are delightfully picturesque. I have now owned this car for 36 years I n Palmiry Forest near Warsaw, summer pic-nic  2012   1949   MG TC I n more tragic times this forest was the Polish and Jewish killing field for the Nazis just outside Warsaw . Many brilliant Polish and Jewish middle-class professionals, sportsmen, engineers and priests ...

Grigory Sokolov This afternoon I was busy writing as usual researching the life of my  great-uncle the brilliant pianist Edward Cahill. I was exploring his friendship in Switzerland after WWII with the great German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. They met whilst having cell regeneration therapy in October 1945 at Dr. Niehans'  Clinque La Prairie at Clarens on the shores of Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). I was reading a written apologia given personally to Cahill wherein Furtwängler justifies and explains his notorious decision to remain in Germany conducting concerts under the Nazis. I was listening to his  April 1953 Berlin recording of Beethoven's Symphony No.7 in A major with the Vienna Philharmonic. A green glow and I noticed the radio tuner was on as I had been listening to the wonderful Radio Dwojka  earlier in the morning. I decided to switch it off by remote control   and pushed the 'Tuner' button which unexpectedly switched off the...