© AI Training forbidden - Selected Classical Music in the Poland of Chopin - Reviewer's Notebook

The Palace Gardens at fabulous Lancut in high summer My good friend Simon Target, the brilliant English film maker who lives in Australia, recently sent me a really uplifting and joyful short film (5 minutes) he made in a highly picturesque town on the Vistula River called Kazimierz Dolny, about  150 kms from Warsaw. Do have a look as it quickly overturns the ridiculous received idea of Poland only being dull, grey and depressing. https://vimeo.com/101515664   He and his wife, a Polish medical doctor Beata Zatorska, have also  produced  two (from a projected four) prize-winning superb cook books set around the seasons in Poland. There are recipes and moving personal reminiscences illustrated with some of the most artistic and finest photographs of the country I have yet seen. Rose Petal Jam: Recipes and Stories from Summer in Poland: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rose-Petal-...

Click on photographs to enlarge - far superior rendition The spectre of Fyrderyk Chopin always haunts the feast of music and pianism on offer at Duszniki Zdroj                                                                    *  *  *  *  *  * I shall be covering this year's festival in my customary fashion.  The Artistic Director Piotr Paleczny has assembled an  outstanding group of pianists   for our refined pleasure and spiritual enhancement in this increasingly heartless  world where children are murdered wholesale in various pits and slaughterhouses in wars beyond my understanding. The veneer of our achieved  'civilization' is wafer thin. A platitude perhaps but true nevertheless... This was written before the horrors...