The main theme of the 53rd "Warsaw Autumn" festival is contemporary music, with a particular focus on the keyboard in its broadest sense
The international contemporary music festival features a wide range of innovative works for various keyboard instruments, including percussion and computer keyboards, as well as installations and compositions for non-traditional keyboards, with cross-tuned or prepared sounds, and electronic sounds.
On September 21, the Sinfonia Juventus Orchestra performs as part of the Polish Radio Concert Studio series, conducted by René Gulikers, with Marco Blaauw on the double bell trumpet, Anna Kwiatkowska on violin, Małgorzata Walenynowicz and Piotr Banasik on piano, and Elwira Ślązak on marimba. The concert begins at 19:30 at the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Stage. From 10:00-19:00, the Tęcza Studio in Żoliborz hosts audiovisual installations inspired by the works of Chopin. The projects are part of the commemorative celebration of the 200th birthday of
Fryderyk Chopin and the ongoing Chopin Year, including Where is Chopin? by **os:JarosławKapuściński*os_kapuscinski_jaroslaw**, Mapping Chopin by Paweł Janicki and Attention: Light! 2.0 by
Józef Robakowski These landmark installations present completely new interpretations of Chopin's music, integrating some of his most popular piano works with high technology to create powerful visual accompaniments to reveal the timeless power and appeal of Chopin's music beyond the conventional concert hall. These interdisciplinary interactive projects bring Chopin into the 21st Century with dynamic sound, visuals and other effects inspired by the composer and combined with other facets of culture through film, poetry, art, light, colour, sound and audience participation. The entire show then travels to London's Dilston Grove Gallery for the "Where's Chopin?" project between September 25 - October 10, 2010.
Throughout the day, A Piano Listening to Itself - Chopin Chord, an installation prepared by Gordon Monahan, fills the Old Town's Castle Square as an open-air exhibition. At 17:00, the Austrian Cultural Forum hosts a "Meet the Composers" event with Misato Mochizuki and Zygmunt Krauze.
The festival opened with a much-applauded performance of
Paweł Szymański's a piú corde, dedicated to the Adam Mickiewicz Institute's Tenth Anniversary and its director Paweł Potoroczyn. The much-anticipated work is an innovative piece scored for the piano and 8 harps. The Warsaw Autumn Festival featured the first performance of during the Institute's gala concert at the National Philharmonic on the eve of the festival's opening.
In the Warsaw Autumn programme, Paweł Szymański described his work as follows:
"The piece was commissioned by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute on its 10th anniversary. The inspiration for composing a piece for piano and harp came, already many years ago, from Paweł Potoroczyn, to whom the piece is also dedicated".
The performance features Maciej Grzybowski on the piano, and Agnieszka Bemowska, Agata Fandri, Magdalena Miłaszewska-Delimat, Urszula Nowakowska, Natalia Ostrowska, Anna Sikorzak-Olek, Grażyna Strzeszewska-Lis and Barbara Witkowska on the harp.
The festival's inaugural concert features the first performance of a new work for four pianos and orchestra by
Zygmunt Krauze. The same score is incorporated by Tomasz Sikorski in his Omaggio (in memoriam Jorge Louis Borges))", performed before Krauze's work and serving as a point of reference for the concert. The same evening also brings Louis Andriessen's "Haags Hakkûh" for two pianos and orchestra..
Within the festival program, a novel approach to the keyboard is represented by the compositions of Johannes Maria Staud's One Movement and Five Miniatures for electronicallyprocessed harpsichord and ensemble, Sam Hayden's Emergence for soloaccordion, ensemble and live electronics, Beat Furrer's Concerto for piano andensemble and Martijn Padding's First Harmonium Concerto.
The spacious hall of the Koneser factory hosts Rytis Mažulis' Monad and **dz:Clavier ofPure Reason**. These compositions for multiple pianos and harpsichords are soutopian in their premises that they can practically be performed only on electronic instruments. The new work commissioned for this occasion from Mažulis enjoys its debut performance at this venue.
Percussion 'keyboards' are also incorporated into a concert by Les Percussions deStrasbourg, which features a new composition by
Włodzimierz Kotoński, as well as works by Philippe Manoury and Francoise B. Mâche. Piano and percussion keyboards ofpianos and percussions make an appearance in **os:Wojciech ZiemowitZych*os_zych_wojciec_ziemowit**'s monumental cycle Difference and Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez's …ex Machina for piano and marimba with orchestral accompaniment. This concert features the Sinfonia Iuventus ensemble; another work to be performed that evening is Misato Mochizuki's Homeobox, another duet for violin and piano with orchestral accompaniment.
In cooperation with the NOTAM centre in Oslo, the event also hosts a concert of electronic works mainly for computer keyboards and disklavier type pianos composed by Krzysztofa Czaja, Natasha Barret, Clarence Barlow, Lidia Zielińska and Rolf Wallin. On the occasion of NOTAM's visit to Warsaw, Hammond Pops, a Norwegian project of "noisy" electronic music, will be performed by Golden Serenades.
The finale concert features the spectacular hour-long composition Karkas by Cornelis de Bondt. This work is scored for a large and unusual orchestra that includes 6 trumpets, 6 trombones, 6percussions, 8 electric guitars, two Hammond organs and 4 pianos. According tomusic critic Andrzej Chłopecki, Karkas is "a trance-like, hypnotic work in anaggressively repetitive style, a kind of modern Ravel 'Bolero', but different…".
As a counterpoint to the event's main theme, the festival also stages works forvocals (i.e., the most non-instrumental medium in which sounds are generatedand shaped directly), accompanied by an ensemble orchestra. The repertoire includes Maurizio Kagel's last work, completed just before his death - In der Matratzengruft - aswell as Claude Vivier's Hiérophanie, written in 1972, but first performed inApril 2010 (compositions performed by musikFabrik). The first Polish performance of Le Livre de Vie: Préface is undoubtedly among the major points of the festival. The main vocal part in this ecstatic work for orchestra written in the early 1920s by a modernist composer, Nikolai Obukhov, performed at the festival by countertenor André Watts.
The 53rd Warsaw Autumn Festival hosts the first international performances ofcompositions by Gordon Monahan, Zygmunt Krauze, Paweł Szymański, MajaRatkje, Orjan Matre, Eivind Buene, Christian Eggen, Włodzimierz Kotoński,Rytis Mažulis, Marcin Bortnowski, Doina Rotaru, Marcin Stańczyk, JarosławKapuściński,
Agata Zubel,
Hanna Kulenty, Lidia Zielińska, WojciechZiemowit Zych, Jerzy Kornowicz, Cristian Lolea.
Performing orchestras: the National Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Iuventus, Sinfonia Varsovia, Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, Oslo Sinfonietta, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Chamber Orchestra of Tychy City, Ensemble Nikel, European Workshop for Contemporary Music, Kwadrofonik, De Ereprijs, musikFabrik.
Featured conductors: Reinbert de Leeuw, Christian Eggen, Marek Moś, Rüdiger Bohn, René Gulikers, Emilio Pomarico, Etienne Siebens.
Accompanying events – such as meetings with composers, sound installations, discussions – will be hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum, Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Library of the University of Warsaw, Mazovian Centre of Culture and Arts, Saint Benon Church, Institute of Musicology of the University of Warsaw and Lokal Użytkowy.
Festival venues: National Philharmonic, Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio, Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, "Koneser" Culture Centre and the Fabryka Trzciny Arts Centre.
For a detailed programme of the Festival, see the official site of the
Warsaw Autumn FestivalSource:
www.warszawska-jesien.art.pl