ANAKLASIS / katalog / Revisions / ANA 009

Stanisław Moniuszko’s songs collected in his Songbooks for Home Use were the Romantic, 19th-century counterparts of present-day pop music hits. Written to be sung at private homes and to live their own independent lives, many of them actually did fulfil this role. At least one of them, The Distaff (naturally!), is still performed, but inexorable time has eventually covered the Songbooks with a thick layer of dust. This dust is now blown away by phenomenal singer-composer Agata Zubel, cello virtuoso and excellent improviser Andrzej Bauer, as well as outstanding computer, algorithmic and improvised music composer and performer Cezary Duchnowski. This is not their first collaboration. Several years ago on the CD El Derwid. Blots on the Sun they interpreted together the songs of Witold Lutosławski. The present e-Songbook is a display of technical mastery, sensitivity, and imagination, all employed with due respect for the original. These 12 songs have not so much been adapted for modern use by Zubel, Bauer and Duchnowski, as launched into the space of the future. The Moniuszko Year will soon be over, but this album will be listened to for long years to come.