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

  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...

The word 'dynasty' is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as 'a series of rulers or leaders who are all from the same family'. The concert this evening, 'Lions of the Piano' , was absolutely unique in depicting a 'dynasty' of the Russian School of pianism. Perhaps this was not a family in any biological sense but certainly from the same 'family' of performers and interpreters. Lev Oborin (1907-1974) The pater familias was the great Russian pianist Lev Oborin (1907-1974) who won the First Prize in the 1st International Fryderyk Chopin Competition in January 1927 (and in addition a valuable and rare silk rug from the Galician town of Buczacz - Buchach - those were the days!).   My knowledge of this pianist comes mainly from the incomparable recordings of the Oistrakh Trio, a musical collaboration between Lev Oborin, David Oistrakh and Sviatoslav Knushevitzky that lasted from 1941 until 1963. Their recording of the Chopin Trio Op.8 is argu...