Catalogue

Bells have for centuries remained an element of the Polish audiosphere. ‘For the Angelus bells are ringing…’ wrote Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer of these sounds which have been as natural to the landscape as thatched roofs, village graveyards, rivers and woods. Even so, the carillon (a set of at least 23 tower bells activated by means of a special keyboard) still appears to be an exotic instrument and its potential largely remains unrecognised.

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.

Marcin Stańczyk, pupil of, among others, Zygmunt Krauze and Ivan Fedele, is an artist who both seeks and finds solutions, asks questions and provides us with answers.

Does music need parity? Probably not, it defends itself. But it is worth noting and emphasising the artistic advantages of outstanding contemporary composers and their unforgettable predecessors - women in Polish music are a voice as separate as it is expressive. The album is the result of cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, and more specifically the Polskie Heroiny Dźwięku (Polish Heroines of Sound) program conducted by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the wider Polska Music campaign.

Dawid Bajgelman is a composer from Łódź, born in 1888, who used to specialise in adapting Jewish musical tradition to the needs of operettas and cabaret. He founded a symphony orchestra in the ghetto and continued composing. He did not survive the Holocaust; he died in a concentration camp. Fortunately, his music is alive again.

A musical drama written for voices, harpsichord, strings, looper and dragon. The piece is a fascinating collision of the sensitivity of one of the most outstanding Polish composers of contemporary music and an exceptional writer, awarded and, above all, read in Poland and around the world.

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.

"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."