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

The fine copy of a Pleyel piano of 1831 by Paul McNulty in the Ballroom of the Royal Castle, Warsaw. The instrument was commissioned in 2009 by Stefan Sutkowski, artistic director of the Warsaw Chamber Opera  Detail of the nameboard  Ormolu decoration on the Pleyel  I had been looking forward to Warszawka Opera Kameralna's contribution to the Chopin Year but budget cuts in May 2010 caused much of the original programme to be cancelled. Most of these involved works with orchestra. These cuts have had a serious and entirely negative effect on all privately funded and sponsored music in the capital. I had very much been looking forward to Josef Elsner's Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Op. 65 (1838). This major work was only relatively recently discovered in a Berlin library. I had last heard it in the Augsburg Evangelical Church of the Holy Trinity (a superb centrally-planned Neoclassical structure in Plac Malachowskiego in Warsaw). Certainly it overturn...

Click on photographs to enlarge Debutant tableau vivant and performance by Przemyslaw Pankiewicz of the Chopin Polonaise Op. 40 No:1 ' The Military' that opened the Warszawski Bal Debiutantow The Debs dancing a splendid Mazur - one of a number of spirited Polish dances during the evening which included an oberek and a krakowiak as well as innumerable Viennese waltzes In recent years there has been an attempt to resuscitate some of the old aristocratic traditions of the great noble families in Poland. This charity ball known in Polish as the Warszawski Bal Debiutantow is under the patronage of the Polish Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and is in its sixth year. The beneficary will be the newly established Orthopaedic and Rehabilitation Equipment Rental Centre which is located in a finely restored Vodka Distillery known as   Koneser situated in the fascinating and developing bohemian artistic area of Warsaw known as Praga, an historic...

Click on to enlarge  The author busking at the Steinway with the great pianist Artur Rubinstein in the main street of Lodz, Poland  2010  I thought you might  like to read my personal view of Fryderyk Chopin, my feelings concerning the challenging interpretation of his music and an account of the period he spent in Warsaw as a young man before left Poland forever. In this chapter there is also just a hint of my burgeoning romance with a beautiful Polish lady that took a very serious turn one romantic spring evening at Zelazowa Wola, the birthplace of the composer not far from Warsaw. The chapter is offered in both the English and Polish versions. Chapter 12   Frycek and the Prism of Reminiscence  extracted from A Country in the Moon: Travels in Search of the Heart of Poland by Michael Moran (Granta, London 2009) Download the chapter free ...

I am attempting to read myself into understanding and getting a 'feel' for the period of my next book - what one might call a  'travel biography' of the glamorous but now forgotten Australian concert pianist Edward Cahill - quite a task but rewarding. Just sharing a few of my recent discoveries with you. I share my Uncle Eddie's love of Chopin and although I never did manage to become a concert pianist although I tried very hard. I vicariously live the life of one through this project at least through writing about the performance of this composer's music (there is a significant chapter on Chopin in my most recent book A Country in the Moon: Travels in Search of the Heart of Poland ). Again I live in Warsaw which is crammed to bursting with Chopiniana at present leading up to the International Piano Competition in October.   Radio 2 here (known as Dwojka ) unashamedly plays many obscure and well- known recordings of the composer with highbrow commentary ...

Am very pleased to hear that all my endless discussions concerning the importance of playing period pianos (at least as an educational experiment and not necessarily a career) was  justified in a live concert last night. Both Maria Joao Pires and Martha Argerich decided to do so and are such consummate musicians they adapted very quickly to the early piano unlike many others. I feared the worst – so happy that my expectations were not realised. If the publicity is to be believed this was the first time either pianist had played a period piano in a public concert. Amazing really. Nelson Goerner, the great Argentinian pianist and an Argerich protege, has made some superb recordings of Chopin on the Chopin Institute Pleyel ( The Real Chopin Series ) so Martha Argerich must have had some familiarity with older instruments I would imagine. I am sure that both pianists learned a great deal and had some fun too. Rather oddly (but very much in the sp...