Catalogue

GREAT ENCOUNTERS are excellent performances of outstanding works, but also meeting points between great composers and performers. Music by Fryderyk Chopin, Henryk Wieniawski, Stanisław Moniuszko, Karol Szymanowski, and Ignacy Jan Paderewski represents the musical idiom of Polishness to which successive generations of artists and music-lovers have always referred.

GREAT ENCOUNTERS are excellent performances of outstanding works, but also meeting points between great composers and performers. Music by Fryderyk Chopin, Henryk Wieniawski, Stanisław Moniuszko, Karol Szymanowski, and Ignacy Jan Paderewski represents the musical idiom of Polishness to which successive generations of artists and music-lovers have always referred.

“I’ve focused on chamber music in order to bring out as much colour in the violin itself and its changing sound as possible,” says virtuoso Adam Bałdych about his vision of Wieniawski’s music. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called Bałdych “technically the most accomplished violinist of our time”. Technical proficiency and thorough education (which includes an honours degree from Katowice’s Academy of Music and a scholarship to Berklee College of Music) do not stop Bałdych from taking an unorthodox approach to the time-honoured music of old masters.

When cinema’s great visionary Francis Ford Coppola is calling – the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now – who would hang up on him? Wojciech Kilar took up the offer of cooperation, which resulted in his soundtrack (now of cult status) for the tale of the Transylvanian monster whose love was a bit too strong. Years later, this pathetic-lyrical cantata for mixed choir and symphony orchestra has been turned inside out by pianist Piotr Orzechowski and saxophonist Kuba Więcek.

The workings of inspiration are truly inscrutable. Karol Szymanowski sought it in the Antiquity, the Orient, and in Polish folklore. The artists of to-day, though cast from a different mould, are in turn inspired by the oeuvre of Szymanowski.

From his debut album Outside Sources (2004), Canadian bassist-composer Michael Bates felt that even contemporary open jazz constrains him. Michael Bates’ arrangements OF Lutosławski’s works were premiered in a dazzling manner by the joint forces of Acrobat and Lutosławski Quartet during the New York edition of Jazztopad festival in June 2022. Several months later in Wrocław, the musicians met up again in order to record the music and thus preserve their fantastic adventure for the future generations.

“I’ve focused on chamber music in order to bring out as much colour in the violin itself and its changing sound as possible,” says virtuoso Adam Bałdych about his vision of Wieniawski’s music. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called Bałdych “technically the most accomplished violinist of our time”. Technical proficiency and thorough education (which includes an honours degree from Katowice’s Academy of Music and a scholarship to Berklee College of Music) do not stop Bałdych from taking an unorthodox approach to the time-honoured music of old masters.

The workings of inspiration are truly inscrutable. Karol Szymanowski sought it in the Antiquity, the Orient, and in Polish folklore. The artists of to-day, though cast from a different mould, are in turn inspired by the oeuvre of Szymanowski. They take up anew what the giant of Polish music left off nearly a hundred years ago and use his works as a point of departure for more explorations, a journey into the unknown. This is certainly true of sax player, composer and producer Adam Pierończyk – a restless soul, an artist who has collaborated with, among others, Sam Rivers, Archie Shepp, Bobby McFerrin, Tomasz Stańko, and Avishai Cohen. The US website ‘All About Jazz’ hailed his virtuoso playi