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

The grave of Johann Sebastian Bach in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig,  at the time of the Kantaten-Ring June 2018 Although not strictly about Chopin, you may like to read in depth about the extraordinary cycle of Bach Cantatas I attended last summer. Johann Sebastian Bach was the composer above all others, except Mozart, whom Chopin adored and who influenced the polyphony and structure of many of his compositions https://michael-moran.org/2019/01/23/divine-intervention/

Ryszard Peryt  (1947-2019) The Director of the Polish Royal Opera, Ryszard Peryt  (1985 - 2005) , has died. For twenty years  he was the Director of the Warsaw Chamber Opera.  His magnum opus was the production of all the stage works of Mozart. In 1991 t wenty-five of these works were created to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the composer's death, at the time a unique European project. Annual Mozart festivals and cycles followed. Not only operas by Mozart but also   Baroque operas by Peri, Caccini and Landi through an unforgettable Monteverdi cycle, a Handel festival and rarely performed work by John Blow, Henry Purcell and numerous others. His international  directorial reputation was outstanding. Here was a truly Renaissance man in many outstanding disciplines - director, actor, doctor and professor of theatre arts, lecturer at the Theatre Academy of Warsaw. He had been presented with many prestigious Polish cultural awards in...

Narodowe Forum Muzyki (NFM)   Wrocław, Poland Not surprisingly, Polish concert audiences after years of musical drought continue to yearn for and hugely anticipate performances by great international orchestras and conductors. Such visits to the country are still not common although increasing as time passes and Poland slowly takes its place once more in the European musical firmament.   Understandably then, the acoustically magnificent and architecturally striking NFM ( Narodowy Forum Muzyki ) in Wrocław was sold out for the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by their new musical director Sir Simon Rattle. The programme was an imaginative pairing of works by Béla Bartók and Anton Bruckner. The commissioning of the   Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta by Bartók reflects a change in   society. No longer the nobility and aristocracy enabling the composition of a great musical work. On this occasion corporate wealth was the facilitator. In 1934, the Sw...

'Of Angels and Madmen' Today was a day of terrible tragedy in Poland - a land of valiant resistance to oppression, a country still haltingly embracing democratic freedoms. 'For your freedom and ours' was once the guiding ideology, now fading under fierce lights. A brutal shattering of illusions has taken hold of this country as I write in Warsaw, a city that itself exists today only by some sort of miracle. For a man who wrote a literary travel and residence book on the country some 10 years ago in a gesture of love, deep respect and affection for the valiant past, this event was as shocking as an exploding bomb. The powerful liberal voice of the much loved Mayor of  Gdańsk ,  Paweł   Adamowicz (20 years in office) was silenced by his barbaric assassination, stabbed by a 'madman' at an annual charity event.  His personal support of the rights of refugees was encapsulated in this all-embracing remark:  'I am a European, so my nature is to be...

Attending a concert in the famed relatively new NOSPR concert hall in Katowice (one of the finest in Europe) is always something exceptional to anticipate. The acoustic is perfectly tuned and sonically impressive. This evening was unique also in another way in containing compositions from Sweden and Latvia as well as Germany, the NOSPR directed by the Swedish conductor Ola Rudnor. Much of his career has been spent conducting in Australia  which was of personal interest to ma as an Australian. The most exciting aspect of the evening was that I was about to hear the brilliant Bulgarian pianist Evgeni Bozhanov once again as the soloist in the Concerto No 3 in C minor by Beethoven. The first item was the Overture to the opera  Estrella de Soria by a Swedish composer rather unfamiliar to me except by name, Franz Berwald (1796-1868). He composed this tragic opera (one of four in his oeuvre) in 1838. There was a private performance of it after ...