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

Nicolas Angelich (14 December 1970 - 18 April 2022 )  (Photo: Jean-Baptiste Millot) Such a pitch black third week of April 2022 as the grim reaper gathered on the dark banks of the Styx the great musical artists  Radu Lupu, Nicolas Angelich and Harrison Birtwistle. I can only offer my review of Angelich playing Brahms as part of the Chopin i jego Europa F estival (Chopin and his Europe) 2012. Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) 25 August 2012 - Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall - 19.00 Brahms Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor Op. 15 Nicholas Angelich (piano)  Sinfonia Varsovia - Jacek Kaspszyk What an embarrassment of Brahmsian riches - two of the greatest piano concertos ever written on the same evening performed by exceptional pianists. The Brahms House in Baden Baden visited on my recent research trip for a book I am engaged upon. It is the only original dwelling that survives associated with the composer. During her concert tours Clara Schumann discovered this beautiful reso...

Ruins of the Mariupol Theatre, Ukraine after the deadly strike. Associated Press (AP) now estimate some 600 people died there when it was bombed (Reuters) Ruins of the 'House of Culture', Izyum, Donbas Region, Ukraine after missile strikes Inside the Mariupol Theatre, Ukraine after the deadly strike (Reuters) Depression with the human suffering and cultural losses in Ukraine continue unabated. Unfortunately I have also had Covid-19 for a couple of weeks (remember the pandemic?) and have not been able to attend concerts and write reviews since the extraordinary Actus Humanus Festival in Gdańsk this April. Inside the extraordinary (restored after WW II destruction)  Dwór Artusa,   Gdańsk where many of the  Actus Humanus Festival concerts take place. Let us hope the Italian offer to restore the Mariupol Theatre is taken up after this senseless Ukrainian conflagration ceases - but they cannot restore tragically and senselessly murdered lives * * * * * * * * ...

  Edward Cahill (1885-1975) 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 1934  The Pocket Paderewski The Beguiling life of the Australian Concert Pianist Edward Cahil l Michael Moran [Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, November 2016 ] You might like to begin reading this already published biography of my great-uncle, the glamorous Australian concert pianist Edward Cahill (1885-1975), issued some time ago (Melbourne, 2016). It took me six years to write. I feel it is an important biographical contribution to Australian cultural history of an outstanding but now forgotten musical figure who performed internationally at a time when Australian concert artists were relatively unknown in Europe. I was prompted to this serialization by my detailed coverage of the magnificent, inspired yet in some ways controversial 2020 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. C...

No further comment is possible for me on the situation in Ukraine ….. appalled yet again at human irrationality and the limitless capacity for murderous cruelty ... However the generosity of Poland just now is another story altogether 'For your freedom and ours' The great Polish rallying battle cry through the ages The music of Chopin, as always, expresses the full range of my fraught emotions at this terrible time. To understand Poland a little better, only if you have time, dip into  http://www.michael-moran.net/poland.htm and http://www.michael-moran.com/2022/03/ukraine-town-of-berdichev-and-fryderyk.html My immediate response to Biden’s resonant and historic speech at the Royal Castle, Warsaw, March 26th 2022: 'Almost a debilitating sadness that this is happening all over again.' '...the darkness that drives autocracy is ultimately no match for the flame of liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere. Time and again history shows that it's from t...

An oasis of peace in 2022 Kania Lodge on the White Lake, Sitna Gora, Kaszuby, Poland Perhaps it appears odd I include this on a predominantly music review site, but it was so intensely appropriate at present and indicates the unique perspective of an informed 'foreigner' dedicated to Poland. I was kindly sent this account of a recent trip made by the writer and former war correspondent John Borrell to the Polish-Ukrainian border town of  Kroscienko . He is from New Zealand and runs Kania Lodge,  a superb country house hotel and wine business in the Kaszuby region of Poland. This oasis of peace is situated on the White Lake between the town of Kartuzy and the city of  Gdańsk. His  excellent restaurant explains the warm references to food in the article.  https://wine-express.pl/en/ John Borrell is also the author of two fine autobiographical books detailed below the article. Chicken Kyiv   The smell of wood smoke was drifting about...