Catalogue

No composer other that Alek Nowak could possibly turn Marcin Wicha’s book into a vaudeville (Things). This time, it was the writer who came up with a subject – the dramatic fates of two polar explorers, Ejnar Mikkelsen and Iver Iversen, stranded for three years amid the ice of Greenland. Since a journey to Greenland had been the composer’s childhood dream (unfulfilled so far, despite an undertaken attempt), the two artists immediately found a common ground.

The score describes this composition as an audio-drama for soprano, two actors, chamber orchestra and electronics (2021), conceived, importantly, as a spectacle but also as a work for voices and instruments in ten sections making up a logical and dramaturgical sequence. Tadeusz Wielecki describes it as an ‘road audio-drama’ and a philosophical parable. For the script, the composer selected texts by Jan Potocki, William Butler Yeats, Fernando Pessoa, Miron Białoszewski, and Jarosław Klejnocki. He also added his own material. Since How Should One Say It…takes us for a journey by rail, train announcements become part of the narration, and the sound of the railway station gong.

Gdańsk, as we have testified for years, is renowned for its carillons, that is, sets of many bells played from a keyboard. The city’s largest carillon is mounted in the tower of St Catherine’s Church, a smaller one – at the Main City Hall. There is also a third mobile carillon that can be moved around, as the name suggests. For the last several years, the City of Gdańsk and Museum of Gdańsk have been commissioning new works for these instruments. Their premieres take place in September. Through the courtesy of PWM Edition, these compositions have also been recorded and released.

The album is an encounter with the history of NOSPR orchestra and the music of Tadeusz Baird (1928–1981), one of Poland’s key twentieth-century composers, co-founder of Group’49 and the Warsaw Autumn festival, as well as author of music for many films.

What should one start with when writing about Zygmunt Konieczny (b. 1937)? His outstanding achievements in the fields of songwriting and film music? His mastery of linking the music to the lyrics in his small-scale pieces? His timeless song standards that appeal to so many generations (which in popular music is a token of the utmost success)? His ‘Grande valse brillante’? ‘Sweet Peas and Roses’? ‘The Carousel with Madonnas’? Or ‘That Lass’s Eyes’? One could go on indefinitely with this list.

‘Legs are most precious thing. Those touched by the knife of war walk on the shoulders of those who have saved their legs. To go on – is the most important thing, not to stop, not to be locked up,’ runs the text recited by its author, poet and translator Tadeusz Sławek, while Oriental instruments (the oud, daf, and darbuka) are improvising in the background. The Near East’s musical traditions thus knock on the door of the West’s culture, in counterpoint with the soloists, choral parts, and the electronics. Krzysztof Knittel’s Canticum profugorum is an oratorio for soprano (Freszel), baritone (Godlewski), actor, children’s and mixed choirs, oud, percussion, orchestra, and electronic media.

What is that special world in which Adam Bałdych can meet Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett? He is a violin virtuoso navigating his way between jazz and contemporary music. She is a singer, harpist, pianist, and musicologist, founder of Ensemble Peregrina early music ensemble associated with the famous Schola Cantorum Basiliensis early music academy. The world in which they have met is called Kras52. Rather than being a planet in a faraway galaxy, it is a Krasiński Library manuscript and one of the main sources of Polish medieval polyphony.

What is that special world in which Adam Bałdych can meet Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett? He is a violin virtuoso navigating his way between jazz and contemporary music. She is a singer, harpist, pianist, and musicologist, founder of Ensemble Peregrina early music ensemble associated with the famous Schola Cantorum Basiliensis early music academy. The world in which they have met is called Kras52. Rather than being a planet in a faraway galaxy, it is a Krasiński Library manuscript and one of the main sources of Polish medieval polyphony.