Chopin and the Rest of the World
Stanisław LESZCZYŃSKI
In August and September 2024, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute invites audiences to the jubilee twentieth edition of the International Music Festival ‘Chopin and His Europe’.
.The 20th International Festival ‘Chopin and His Europe’ will open on 17 August and will continue until 8 September. Concerts are planned for various locations, including the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera and the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio of Polish Radio. As with all previous editions, this year’s festival is identified by a subtitle that captures its spirit in a phrase that is simultaneously succinct and subtly provocative. The guiding motto for 2024 is ‘Chopin and the Rest of the World.’ It refers both to the programme, which is built upon a dialogue between Chopin’s oeuvre and the music of his European peers from all directions, and to a striking mosaic of musical performance crafted in accordance with an uncompromising artistic criterion.
Warsaw will host musicians who have a long-standing connection to the festival and have contributed to its esteemed reputation, in addition to soloists and ensembles making their debut this summer, all at the invitation of the festival’s organiser, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. The lineup of performers features virtuoso pianists whose gifts first came to the world’s attention at the Chopin Competitions, including those devoted to period instruments. Appearing this year are Kate Liu, Eric Lu, Bruce Liu, Garrick Ohlsson, Yulianna Avdeeva, Kevin Kenner, Alberto Nosè, Ingrid Fliter, Nelson Goerner, Angela Hewitt, Lukas Geniušas and Dimitry Ablogin. Poland will be represented by Ewa Pobłocka, Piotr Paleczny, Szymon Nehring, Janusz Olejniczak, Tomasz Ritter, Bartosz Skłodowski and Piotr Sałajczyk. We hope that Martha Argerich will return to the festival as a distinguished guest during this anniversary year. We shall also hear artists who did not take part in the Chopin Competitions but belong to the world’s performing elite: Louis Lortie, Hélène Grimaud, Marc-André Hamelin, Cyprien Katsaris, Francesco Piemontesi, Makoto Ozone, Kevin Chen, Paolo Giacometti and Andreas Staie.
Among the renowned soloists invited to the festival, pianists naturally form the largest group. Yet, like every year, virtuosi of other instruments will also be present, including the outstanding violinists Fabio Biondi, Vilde Frang and Bomsori Kim, the cellists Jean-Guihen Queyras and Pieter Wispelwey, and a superb cast of singers, prominently Artur Ruciński, Christoph Prégardien and Julian Prégardien.
The festival regularly hosts internationally acclaimed ensembles – chamber groups, vocal formations and symphony orchestras – which, in accordance with one the event’s defining programme principles, are required to include Polish music in their repertoire, from Chopin to Malawski to Szymanowski to Weinberg and to Lutosławski (and do so unfailingly with commitment, curiosity and often genuine admiration). This year’s edition will feature the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Antonio Pappano, the leading Korean KBS Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen, the Kammerorchester Basel, the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées of Philippe Herreweghe, Collegium 1704 directed by Václav Luks, Europa Galante of Fabio Biondi, Quatuor Mosaïques, Belcea Quartet, Apollon Musagète Quartet and Ensemble Dialoghi, alongside Polish orchestras: the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, the AUKSO – Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy and the {oh!} Orkiestra of Martyna Pastuszka, performing under the direction of, among others, Jacek Kaspszyk and Marek Moś.
The festival programme encompasses firmly established works alongside pieces absent from contemporary musical life. Chopin will thus be heard in dialogue with music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Hensel, Meyer, Osborne, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Gomółka, Zarębski, Brahms, Dvořák, Sibelius, Strauss, Elgar, Młynarski, Dukas, Holst, Ravel, Paderewski, Magin, Szymanowski, Bacewicz, Lutosławski and others.
Of particular importance for understanding Chopin’s musical nature, its style, texture, discipline and melodic architecture – its distinctive genotype, one might say – is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This explains the marked prominence in this year’s programme of a twofold performance of Das wohltemperierte Klavier. The first will be given on harpsichord, in an interpretation by the historical-keyboard virtuoso Andreas Staier. The second will bring the work to the modern piano, in interpretation by the eminent Polish pianist Ewa Pobłocka, whose recordings of both books of Bach’s masterpiece, issued by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, are widely regarded among the finest accounts of the work in the international catalogue. The latter interpretation will take into account the numerous performance annotations entered by Chopin in the copies of the score he assigned to his pupils.
Traditionally, the festival will also turn back the clock to the early Baroque and the Renaissance, continuing, under the guidance of Collegium Vocale Gent, its journey through the landscapes of European polyphony. The programme’s temporal arc will extend almost – quite literally – to the present day, for among the most compelling events of this year’s edition will be the world premiere of a Piano Concerto by Jerzy Maksymiuk, commissioned by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. The composer himself will take the podium to conduct his new work, with Janusz Olejniczak as soloist. Two further special accents from the realm of grand symphonic repertoire will also have a premiere character, being performed on period instruments. The Orchestre des Champs-Élysées under Philippe Herreweghe will mark the bicentenary of Anton Bruckner with a historically informed performance of his monumental Symphony No. 8. Meanwhile, for the first time in Poland, Bedřich Smetana’s Má vlast (‘My Homeland’) will be heard on period instruments – that magnificent cycle of symphonic poems will be brought to life at this year’s festival, as one might expect, by Collegium 1704 under Václav Luks.
From the outset, the festival has been organically intertwined with the recording activity of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, which draws on live recordings from festival concerts while also being enriched by studio sessions. The programmes of these two strands are fully aligned and interwoven within each successive edition of the ‘Chopin and His Europe’ Festival. The first of these projects – exceptional on a global scale – is the completion, due this year, of a comprehensive recording of all the operas and oratorio-cantata works of Stanisław Moniuszko, the composer who, alongside Fryderyk Chopin, stands as a foundational figure in nineteenth-century Polish musical culture. The recordings are being made by the period-instrument ensemble Europa Galante under the direction of Fabio Biondi, with the participation of the Choir of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic and great soloists from around the world. This long-term concert and recording project, encompassing festival performances of Moniuszko’s works alongside their documentation, was inaugurated in 2018 with a performance and recording of Halka. It was followed by Flis, Hrabina, Verbum nobile, Widma and Paria (all, except for Paria, have already entered the Institute’s catalogue; the release of Paria is planned for August). In Biondi and his musicians, Moniuszko has found ardent champions and devoted advocates. The jubilee festival programme features the crowning title of the Moniuszko legacy and an icon of Polish national opera: Straszny dwór (The Haunted Manor), with soloists of the calibre of Agnieszka Rehlis, Artur Ruciński and Mariusz Godlewski, alongside the outstanding Mexican soprano Karen Gardeazabal, who has already shone as a phenomenal Countess in Hrabina.
Another undertaking that recurs within the festival programme is the performance and recording of the complete violin concertos of Feliks Janiewicz, a virtuoso celebrated in his day, compared with the greatest violinists in Europe, and at the same time a composer of distinction, today perhaps more readily recognised in Edinburgh than in Warsaw. These concerts and recordings – featuring the outstanding soloist Chouchane Siranossian and a Polish ensemble counted among the finest in the field of period performance, the {oh!} Orkiestra of Martyna Pastuszka – have, since last year, been firmly embedded in both of the Institute’s artistic strands. The first album, received with considerable acclaim, has already been released, and a further instalment is planned for this year.
A distinctive virtue of the ‘Chopin and His Europe’ Festival, present since its first edition, has been the evocation of the works’ original sound world. Performed on period instruments or their faithful copies, these interpretations bring us closer to the sonic aura of Chopin’s own time. Legendary ensembles and soloists specialising in historically informed performance are regular guests at the festival, opening the enchanted realm of past epochs before the audiences. Pianists perform on instruments from the collection of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, which holds an extensive array of instruments dating from the composer’s era: celebrated Pleyels, Érards and a Broadwood, as well as a copy of the Buchholtz piano (Chopin’s instrument in Warsaw) and a Viennese Graf. More than once, artists who had previously shown little interest in historical keyboards have found themselves captivated by their sonority and have chosen to present their festival programmes on these instruments. Among performances that have passed into the festival’s history is the 2012 appearance of Martha Argerich and Maria João Pires, preserved on DVD, and, at the most recent edition, that of Bruce Liu, laureate of the latest Chopin Competition.
For twenty years now, the festival has drawn many thousands of listeners to Warsaw, including devoted music lovers from Poland and abroad who travel to the capital expressly for this event. It has listeners across the globe as well, including many who cannot be in Poland in August. Thanks to the Institute’s long-standing collaboration with Program 2 of the Polish Radio, the festival concerts reach an audience of many millions in dozens of countries. Festival events are broadcast repeatedly on the station’s airwaves and form a consistently sought-after and highly regarded offering for members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Selected concerts are also available online, streamed live and offered on demand via the Institute’s YouTube channel.
.As we prepare the twentieth edition of the festival, it is tempting to look back, to indulge in summaries, analyses and statistics. Yet I confess that my gaze is directed primarily toward the future. The artistic friendships and collaborations that have taken root within the festival’s orbit, the long-term projects whose results both delight and whet the appetite for what lies ahead, the ideas awaiting realisation, and the audience whose joy in successive musical encounters is so palpable – these, to me, are the truest and most inspiring signposts. I retain an especially vivid memory of the ‘pandemic’ festival of 2020, when, by what still feels like an almost incomprehensible stroke of fortune, we succeeded in presenting twenty-seven concerts, including orchestral performances. The joy of musicians – who, at that time, had one of the very few opportunities available anywhere in the world to appear before a live audience – the enthusiasm of the said audience, who attended every event under strict sanitary regulations, and the extraordinary synergy generated on both sides of the stage distilled the very meaning of what we do. The meaning of creating and experiencing music. For that, ultimately, is the essence of our work.
