Joanna Wicherek invites South African listeners on a journey through Polish piano. Alongside pieces by Paweł Mykietyn and Paweł Szymanowski (played for the first time in South Africa), audiences will also hear certain mazurkas by Karol Szymanowski and Frederyk Chopin.
Epiphora for piano and tape, composed in 1996, won the UNESCO International Electronic Music Tribune in Amsterdam. Moreover, Epiphora has gone down in the history of Polish theatre - it opens Bachantki by Krzysztof Warlikowski, who works together with Mykietyn.
“I like the whole of Epiphora – and I feel responsible for every millisecond of it. There is a certain layer of non-musical feeling to it, expressing something momentous. And contrary to what others think, I believe that this piece builds on itself” – says the composer about his piece.
Apart from this, audiences will hear the youthful Four Preludes by Mykietyn (1992) written for Maciej Grzybowski, who often links his music with Paweł Szymański in concerts. In the same way, the public will hear Trop by Szymański (1986) during Joanna Wicherek’s performance.
“Coming across Szymański’s music was the most important moment for me – says Mykietyn – Of course other music, such as Lutosławski’s, is magnificent but no one influenced me as much as Szymański. My personal relationship with him was also important. He was my teacher.”
Paweł Szymański is one of the most important living Polish composers. His finished material has roots in the past (often Baroque), but it is always well-composed. The composer calls this surconventionalism – where the starting material is given a new structure. It sounds complicated but a new listener (for example, one in South Africa) has nothing to worry about. Szymański says:
”To any future listeners of my music, I have nothing else to express apart from the music itself. I don’t demand that a listener find in my music something that I want to be there, perhaps something I didn’t manage to fit in.”
During Joanna Wicherek’s concert, audiences will also hear music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Chopin’s and Szymanowski’s mazurkas. Between 1825 and 1849, Chopin composed 57 mazurkas using elements from three different traditional dances - the mazura, the dance and the oberek.
Szymanowski composed his mazurkas in the 1920s and 30s,. consciously relating them to Chopin and enriching them with traditional Podhale folklore. Szymanowski’s mazurkas are more violent and syncopated - one can hear sharper consonance in them.
The pieces will be played five times during the National Arts festival in Grahamstown in the south-east of the country. It’s the biggest festival in South Africa, where music meets cinema, theatre (including student and street), dance and other arts. During Apartheid, the festival was an important place for people to protest against the government as the festival wasn’t censored.
Joanna Wicherek was born in Sieradz, where she learnt to play the piano. Between 2007-2012, she studied at Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw alongside Jerzy Romaniuk, Ramir Sanjines and Katarzyna Jankowska-Borzykowska. She has won many prizes for her compositions, including the grand prize in the 20th and 21st Warsaw music competitions for young composers and a distinction at the X International Modern Chamber Music Competition in Krakow (2006). She has played in Poland (Filharmonics: National, Łódż, Wrocław, Podlasie, Swietokrzyska, W.Lutosławskiego in Warsaw) and abroad (Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, Malta) performing both solo and chamber music. She organizes many musical events such as the 40th Jubilee of Pawel Mykietyn concert in March 2011. She has worked with many other artists such as Andrzej Bauer, Mariusz Pędziałrk, Tomasz Światczyński, Mark Dumicz, Maciej Grzybowsk, and also composers Paweł Mykietyn and Paweł Szymański (recording music for Maciej Drygas’s film Cudze Listy.)
Sources: Own materials, polmic.pl, https://www.nationalartsfestival.co.za/ , edited by fl 18.6.2014
Translated by Alexander Sikorski 23.6.2014