Catalogue

To say about Krzysztof Herdzin that he is a versatile musician and a titan of work is to say nothing. This pianist, composer, arranger, conductor and music producer also feels at home in jazz (he played in the bands of Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski and Zbigniew Namysłowski, he is a band leader himself), pop music (he collaborated with, among others, Anna Maria Jopek, Maryla Rodowicz and Edyta Geppert), contemporary music (for which he was nominated to Fryderyk award many times), film and theatre.

Composed and performed by Agata Zubel, the opera Bildbeschreibung (Description of a Picture) for two voices, instrumental ensemble and electronics was written to the text of an experimental drama by Heiner Müller.

"Singing and vocal music have accompanied me since my early childhood" – says Romuald Twardowski, born in 1930 in Vilnius. – "Popular tunes, songs hummed by my mother, the sounds of church choirs – all those things were invigorating my imagination."

Andrzej Krzanowski, a Silesian accordionist and composer, pupil of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, died prematurely aged less than forty. He left behind many symphonic, chamber and vocal-instrumental music works. One of those latter is the meta-opera Programme V, whose world premiere only took place in September 2018 at the ‘Warsaw Autumn’.

The opera ahat-ilī – Sister of Gods was a commission of Krakow’s Sacrum Profanum festival, where it was premiered and recorded. The music was written by Aleksander Nowak, the libretto – by the Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk (based on her own novel).

“The Best of…” compilations are a product of long-established music markets. They caught on when the catalogues of popular composers’ and performers’ albums became too large to follow even for the most fervent fans looking for their favourite numbers.

Franek the raftsman and Jakub the hairdresser vie for the hand of beautiful Zosia. Though this one-act opera by Stanisław Moniuszko, composed in Paris to a libretto by Stanisław Bogusławski, is often viewed as a hasty attempt to repeat the success of Halka, unlike that latter work The Raftsman ends happily.

Born in 1907 in Podolia (now Ukraine), educated in Lviv and Warsaw, Roman Palester emigrated from Poland soon after WWII. He died in Paris in 1989. For many years he headed the cultural department of Radio Free Europe’s Polish section.