News

‘Easy as it is to appreciate contemporary works after they have become classics – why wait so long? The ANAKLASIS label has asked this question for two years now, encouraging audiences to explore Polish contemporary music of the highest calibre.

The tandem of opera authors, Aleksander Nowak and Szczepan Twardoch, have already won the audience’s hearts and received numerous accolades, as well as releases on CDs and LPs. Drach. Dramma per musica inaugurated the OPERA series from ANAKLASIS. In the same series, we now present their second joint project, Siren. Melodrama aeterna, on a compact disc. It will be premiered on 5th November during the AUKSODRONE festival in Tychy.

Forgotten forms of sound are more and more frequently rediscovered and restored to the music world in fresh, modernised ways. This is also the case with ANAKLASIS new CD in the SOUNDS series. CONTEMPORARY CARILLON is a unique attempt to demonstrate the contemporary sound of bells as envisaged by the most outstanding Polish composers. The album will go on sale as of 3rd September, and two of the works recorded on it will be premiered live just two days later.

Fryderyk Chopin, Henryk Wieniawski, Stanisław Moniuszko, Karol Szymanowski, and Ignacy Jan Paderewski did for Polish music what the three great Romantic bards and the giants of positivistic novel achieved in the field of literature. Their music not only impresses audiences with its beautiful form and emotional charge, but also provides modern-day artists with an source of inspiration. That music preserves for us the idiom of Polishness, to which, willy-nilly, by way of homage or rebellion, successful generations of artists and music lovers continue to return as to a point of reference. On GREAT ENCOUNTERS, this is done by the most outstanding representatives of Polish jazz and popular music.

Music is normally supposed to be listened to. Still, it also flows through our other senses. Is it, however, connected with them in a necessary and inseparable manner? After all, we can close our eyes, open up our imagination, and let unexpected experiences flow through our minds. On its brand-new 2CD release from the PORTRAITS series, the ANAKLASIS label invites you to play with your experiences and expectations. The album ACOUSMATIC MUSIC presents the philosophy of music as interpreted by one of the most intriguing contemporary composers – Marcin Stańczyk.

FOREFATHERS’ EVE by High Definition Quartet, a mesmerising fusion of jazz, ambient, and electronics, will also be available on a gramophone record as of 17th March. The album features a galaxy of experimental music stars and will be released in the REVISIONS series under the ANAKLASIS label, as the second vinyl in that label’s catalogue. Apart from the Quartet, this release brings together such world-famous giants of ambient as William Basinski, Krzysztof Knittel, Robert Rich, Christian Fennesz, and Igor Boxx of Skalpel Duo.

Does music call for gender equality? It can surely defend itself. Nonetheless, the artistic advantages of excellent present-day women-composers and their eminent predecessors are worthy of being noticed and highlighted. Women have their separate and distinctive voice in Polish music. In recognition of the need to acknowledge that voice, on 29th January ANAKLASIS will release the CD POLISH HEROINES OF MUSIC, comprising orchestral works by Elżbieta Sikora, Hanna Kulenty, Grażyna Bacewicz, and Agata Zubel.

A panorama of compositional output combining Polish and Yiddish inter-war hits with sorrowful, despairing tangos from the Ghetto. The disc Bajgelman. Get to Tango represents a twenty-first-century take on the output of the outstanding musician Dawid Bajgelman, from Łódź. These arrangements and reworkings of selected works by one of the greatest composers of Jewish theatre music were produced by the outstanding musician and composer Jarosław Bester. The album comes out on 11 December.