© AI Training forbidden - Selected Reviews of Chopin performances and Other Matters in Poland

The birthday of Chopin is contested between February 22nd and March 1st. In a singularly pragmatic manner the Poles have been celebrating his birthday with an entire week of concerts for the pianists and the Third International Chopin Congress for the scholars. This climaxed with the opening of the new Italian-designed, state-of-the-art, interactive, multi-media Chopin Museum in Warsaw. Rafal Blechacz, winner of the 2005 Chopin Competition, began the performance series with a fine account of the F minor concerto. He has matured but the increased forcefulness and decrease in subtlety of his playing gave me pause for thought. I pass over in silence Antoni Wit's conducting of the patchy under-rehearsed Warsaw Filharmonia through this entire series. Ivor Pogorelic followed the next evening but gave a willfully perverse rendering of the same work. His sense of musical form and architecture has been shattered into meaningless unconnected fragments. His story is one of tragic ...

A recent ‘bee in my bonnet’ at present is the unremarked demise of the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for which I was short-listed in its final 25th year of 2004. This came about as a result of my literary travel book on the island provinces of Papua New Guinea, the first for over a hundred years. The only literary bastion defending the literary quality of the travel book has disappeared. This particular genre is experiencing a terribly difficult period just now. Unless there are large quantities of olives in the landscape or readers are easily able to travel and identify with the destination chosen by the author, publishers seem to show marginal interest. One used to read travel literature because one was not easily able to reach the author’s destination and to learn something significant of foreign cultures. My own area of exploration is the South Pacific. Little of any consequence outside the world of anthropology has been published on these fascinating Oceanic cultures for ye...

All photographs on this post are Copyright © Michael Moran Nikon F2 and Leica D-Lux 4 Click on to enlarge Pieniny National Park, Poland Niedzica Castle, Pieniny, Poland Mlociny Park near the author's home, Warsaw, Poland View from the author's study, Mlociny, Warsaw, Poland The High Tatras near Kezmaroc, Slovakia Spis Castle near Levoca, Slovakia 15th Century Thurzo House, Levoca, Slovakia Renaissance Strazky Manor, Kezmaroc, Slovakia I spent an excellent week in the Pieniny range of mountains and national park in the Tatras in the south of Poland before New Year. Niedzica Castle was as wonderful as ever with French champagne (chilled Laurent Perrier NV - my favourite NV) on the high tower at twelve with lots of fireworks. Demanding walks up and down the rutted tracks on the pine-forested slopes of the park. Poland has some of the best hiking in Europe with excellent maps and clearly marked routes. The ...

'The Ghosts of Warsaw' Isaac Bashevis Singer Jewish Festival, Próżna Street, Warsaw – 1 SEPTEMBER 2009 Click on photographs to enlarge A wonderful two weeks of concerts featuring the music of mainly of Chopin and Mendelssohn has just concluded in Warsaw. It was the 5th Chopin i jego Europa (Chopin and his Europe) Festival - an annual event and a sign of how the capital has at last begun to attract some of the finest musicians on the planet. Now all the city needs is a proper modern concert hall and a more productive attitude and responsible financial support for the many fine and neglected home-grown Polish rather than foreign musicians. In the festival I listened to the fine pianism of Martha Argerich, Garrick Ohlsson, Emanuel Ax, Alexander Melnikov, Nikolai Lugansky, Janusz Olejniczak, and the Japanese prodigy Aimi Kobayashi. The fortepiano virtuoso Andreas Staier and the tenor Christoph Pregardien gave a sublime and unforgettable performance of Schubert...

Click on photos to enlarge Nikon F2 35 mm f 1:1.4 'Bathed in Amber, the substance of the sun' Sunset at Palanga on the Baltic coast of Lithuania Rustic House in favourite Lithuanian yellow near the village of Marcinkonys Trakai Castle near Vilnius Country House of Uzutrakis built by the Polish Count Jozef Tyszkiewicz at Trakai Vilnius from Gemidinas Castle Millenium Celebrations in Vilnius Lithuania July 2009 I have always wanted to complete my picture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and recently spent two weeks touring Lithuania. The weather has been pretty frightful in Warsaw this summer - storms nearly every afternoon and evening. Lithuania was much better. As those who read this blog will know I have recently returned from two weeks touring Lithuania by car. It is a great shame that the tourist industry in this fascinating country is not sufficiently promoted to assist growth in the economy. The country beyond Vi...