The concert will be held on December 13, 2024, 6:00 - 7:00 pm
at the S. Moniuszko Music School Complex, Room 201
Rojna 20 Street, Łódź
Polish piano music of the early 19th century.
The concert is devoted to Polish piano music of the early 19th century. Among the famous composers of this period, we will mention three: Karol Kurpiński, Maria Szymanowska and Fryderyk Chopin.
Karol Kurpiński (1785—1857) was an important personage in the Warsaw musical life in the first decades of the 19th century, who contributed significantly to the expansion of the music education system. In 1820, he started and funded the first Polish music periodical called “Musical Weekly”, which he edited and in which he published compositions both his own and by other composers. He wrote operas, orchestral, religious, vocal, chamber and choral music, as well as piano and organ works. Among his piano compositions worth mentioning are 33 polonaises. One of them, Polonaise in d minor will be presented at the beginning of the concert.
The next piano compositions are works by Maria Szymanowska (1789–1831): dances, characteristic for that era: Quadrille, Contradance, Anglaise, Valse, then Polonaise and Nocturne. Szymanowska, was one of the first women in European culture who was a professional composer and a famous virtuoso pianist. She concertized in the entire Europe, was a friend of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, performed together with the violin virtuoso Karol Lipiński. John Field dedicated to her one of his nocturnes. She spent her last years in St Petersburg, where she was a court pianist at the tsar’s court and established a salon visited by the most outstanding personages of the epoch. Her output includes both piano works – études, dances, nocturnes, polonaises – – and vocal works – songs and romances.
Fryderyk Chopin (1810—1849) is regarded as one of the most outstanding composers in the history of music. His talent and his brilliant compositions, often performed by the best pianists, eclipsed with their splendour the achievements of his Polish contemporaries. He was often called a poet of the piano. A characteristic feature of Chopin’s music is drawing on Polish folk music. He composed mostly piano music. About the Mazurka op. 7 no. 1 it was written that it “circulated around the entire Poland from one end to another. Who does not know it nowadays?” It is perhaps the most typical of Chopin’s mazurkas. We will also listen to Waltz op. 69 no 2.
The music will be performed by prof. Tadeusz Trzaskalik. You probably know him as a scientists and university professor, anyway he is also a musician. In 2011 he obtained a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from the Academy of Music in Katowice where he studied the piano under Józef Stompel’s supervision. He concertizes as solo and chamber music performer in Poland and abroad. His eight compact discs were recorded in the studio of the Polish Radio in Katowice and published jointly by the University of Economics in Katowice and the Association Pro Musica Organa.
The presented compositions have been recorded on the compact disc Classical Academy 7 entitled Poland Is Not Yet Lost.
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