The National Opera in Warsaw was the venue of a gala concert to mark the 69th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two. It was a very special occasion bringing together musicians from several countries.
Michał Kubicki reports
It was indeed a special event, for several reasons. Poland’s leading symphony orchestra Sinfonia Varsovia, which was founded by and worked for many years with Yehudi Mehuhin, appeared under its newly-nominated Music Director, the famous French conductor Marc Minkowski, whose ancestors were born in Warsaw. He thought the programme of the war anniversary concert should include music by Polish and German composers. He chose Anton Bruckner’s Symphony in D minor and Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki’s Third Symphony, subtitled the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.
The soprano part in the work, which skyrocketed Gorecki to international stardom, was sung by Marita Solberg of Norway: ‘I’m very honoured to come here to Poland and sing the Gorecki work. It’s a big challenge to sing in Poland. I really love these songs which are folk in character and the texts are very old, still they are timeless and this feeling of timelessness is what I like about this music.’
The programme of the concert also included the Hebraic Symphony ‘Schelomo’ by the Swiss-born American composer Ernest Bloch. The solo cello was performed by Sonia Wieder-Atherton.
For Marc Minkowski, Gorecki’s Third Symphony was not the first venture into the Polish repertoire: ‘I like many Polish composers and am now discovering the whole world of Polish music, Moniuszko, Chopin of course, Penderecki, Szymanowski, Karłowicz, as well as Aleksander Tansman. Górecki’s Third Symphony which we perform in Warsaw now is for me a religious meditation, very Polish in its spirit.’
The programme of Marc Minkowski’s next concert with Sinfonia Varsovia, in December, includes pieces by Moniuszko and Tansman.
The war anniversary concert in Warsaw inaugurated the annual ‘Sinfonia Varsovia for its City’ Festival, a series of six concerts featuring staple works of the symphonic repertoire under such prominent conductors as Krzysztof Penderecki, Jerzy Maksymiuk and Jacek Kaspszyk.
All the concerts are free of charge and as Janusz Marynowski, the orchestra’s Managing Director told me, they are extremely popular with the Warsaw public: ‘We have absolutely no problem with the public, in the churches, in the Academy of Music, the National Philharmonic Hall. Last year there was a big fight to get into the Music Academy, there were so many people. We are very happy because we can see that the people want to listen to music.’