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.

High Definition Quartet has proved itself in cross-genre explorations. It is not without reason that its leader and pianist Piotr Orzechowski has been nicknamed Pianohooligan. With roguish impudence he jumps across genre boundaries. In FOREFATHERS’ EVE he explores the rarely visited borderland between jazz or broadly understood improvised music and electronics, which some still view as ambient, while others greet it as homemade contemporary classical music.

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.

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.