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

Click on photographs to enlarge Dust Jacket Design Amelia Walker : www.ameliadesign.net This post is for those of you who may have been reading my blog over the last six years. In many posts I described my travails in writing this latest book, a biography of Edward Cahill, the glamorous but now forgotten Australian concert pianist. A long journey but a rewarding one. The book will be published by  Australian Scholarly Publishing in November this year. I managed to obtain three excellent reviews  by eminent musicians  of the rare private recordings of Liszt and Chopin that survived his peripatetic lifestyle. They generously made time from busy international schedules to listen via the internet to his recordings. This link will be printed in the book for readers to access. It will add a remarkable extra dimension and element of discovery to the biography of a now forgotten musician. His life was one that young pianists of today could onl...

Click on photographs to enlarge NIEDENTHAL CHOPIN - From Martial Law to Fryderyk Chopin  Book Launch at the 101 Project Gallery of Modern Art Warsaw Poland On the closing evening of the Chopin i Jego Europa Festival   I noticed a melee in the foyer of the Filharmonia. Who did I see but the famous Polish photographer Chris Niedenthal signing copies of his 'fresh off the press' book NIEDENTHAL CHOPIN - The 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition. He had been contracted by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute to cover the 2015 competition in photographs.  This exciting moment was followed a couple of weeks later (September 8th) by the official book launch (cocktails, vodka, snacks) at the strikingly attractive, industrially deconstructed 101 Project Gallery of Modern Art in Central Warsaw - at 4 Nowogrodzka Street. There was also a recital of Chopin by the talented young pianists Krzysztof Markiewicz and Katarzyna Mróz. ...

                                            From Mozart to Bellini And so it is straight into this excellent festival after Duszniki Zdroj!  August in Poland is always dominated by outstanding performances of music in Warsaw with the additional time stress in writing an internet journal of my personal impressions. It is a great pity that you as a reader (if there are any out there) cannot refer to the substantial book that accompanies this festival which is one of the finest examples of serious programme notes and musicological introductions to both festival, concerts artists and music I have seen.  The Artistic Director of the Festival Mr. Stanislaw Leszczynski is to be heartily congratulated as ever for putting together such a fine collection of ...