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

London 1934. Edward Cahill seated in the front row on the left of Princess Alice at a private Mayfair piano recital at the home of the Dowager Lady Swaythling To those of you interested in this story, the progress of which has been an ongoing saga in my internet journal over the last 6 years - I have just finished correcting the First Page Proofs of the biography of my great-uncle the glamorous concert pianist Edward Cahill. It will be published  in Melbourne   Australia by Australian Scholarly Publishing in their  Arcadia imprint,  I hope in September or October 2016. If you wish to hear the playing of Edward Cahill in Liszt and Chopin or the singing of his musical partner George Brooke (up to his tragic death in 1930) click on: www.michael-moran.net/paderewski

It is always a beautiful thing to watch and listen to a musical talent flowering into maturity. Such is the case with the extraordinarily gifted Ukrainian/Russian pianist Dinara Klinton. She was born in Karchiv close to the Ukrainian/Russian frontier not far from a region of murderous war and cruel ideological conflict. Her mother was forced to flee. The enigmatic nature of her nationality (a child of the borderlands) and her name (so redolent of a powerful democracy) hints at a passionate existential intensity, a romantic quest for certainty and stability that powerfully expresses itself in her playing and her searching interpretations of the Romantic piano literature. I first heard her command a remarkable range of piano music at the extraordinarily demanding but rather unknown IX International Paderewski Piano Competition held in the city of Bydgoszcz in Poland in November 2013 - Scarlatti, Liszt, Paderewski, Chopin, Brahms, Schumann, Prokofiev, Bach and Tchaiko...

At Christmas time the importance of the Polish family is ever-present - a force that binds this society together with affection and love. On Christmas Eve a blessed wafer is broken by each member of the family and best wishes are made for the future. The appalling history of loss in Poland meant the family and the Catholic church were often the sole refuge from oppression. Here in Poland the family at Christmas is to be warmly embraced not fled from in anguish. I quote from the unedited version of Chapter 27 of my book   A Country in the Moon  for a nostalgic account of Christmas and New Year in Poland at the turn of the millennium. There has never been a better one for me. The 'Writer's Cut' if you will. Some 30,000 words and many evocative scenes were cut from my original manuscript of this literary travel book before publication - all quite normal in publishing today but what treasures were lost!  How life...

With the tremendous advances in technology in the last five years and the sterling efforts of the National Fryderyk Chopin Institute in providing live streaming of the entire competition, I feel a detailed internet journal as I last presented it in 2010 is now redundant. Millions of voices are commenting on the competition in a veritable storm of brief assessments.  I will keep a type of occasional  personal  internet journal instead of writing it in longhand as I once did years ago.  For reflections on each stage of the competition see below... My general opinions expressed in the last competition in 2010 of Chopin, pianists, performing and competitions have scarcely changed. The link to my account of the XVI International Fryderyk Chopin Competition, Warsaw, 2010 http://www.michael-moran.com/2010/10/the-xvi-international-fryderyk-chopin.html and http://www.michael-moran.com/2010/10/back-to-research-and-writing-on-edward.html With...