After a two-year pandemic pause, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw is hosting the POLIN Music Festival on February 24-26, 2023.
The event will consist of five concerts, Polish premieres of works and album premieres. Performers on the festival stage will include David Krakauer, Michael Guttman, Jing Zhao, Alexey Botvinov, the Silesian Quartet, the Bastard Trio and the Sinfonia Varsovia and the Polish Radio Orchestra in Warsaw.
The POLIN Music Festival will traditionally open with the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, with Crimea-born and, until the outbreak of war, artistically associated with Odessa, Margaryta Grynyvetska behind the conductor’s desk.
The concert will include three Polish premieres: “The Fretless Clarinet,” an autobiographical clarinet concerto by one of the most outstanding clarinetists in the history of klezmer music, David Krakauer; Philip Glass’ “Double Concerto,” performed by a pair of soloists, Jing Zhao (cello) and Michael Guttman (violin); and “City of Maria,” a composition by Zoltan Almashi, dedicated to the city of Mariupol.
The second day of the POLIN Music Festival will be an evening of album premieres. The Silesian Quartet, which has nearly 150 premieres of quartets by Polish and foreign composers, will perform on stage. The ensemble is the second in the history of phonography to record all 17 string quartets by Mieczyslaw Wajnberg. This seven-disc box, released by CD Accord, will have its concert premiere at the POLIN Music Festival.
The second premiere box this evening will be the three-disc release “Nizozot” by the Bastard trio (published by Audiocave). These are musical tales of joy and sorrow, of violent struggle and pure spirituality, of life in the full spectrum of sensations and emotions. Stories that are, as it were, the essence of Hasidism – always oscillating between the anticipation of the end of the world and the joyful, ecstatic affirmation of life.
On the last day, Odessa Classics will perform on stage. Alexey Botvinov will perform, for the first time in Poland, Piano Concerto No. 3 “Ave Maria” by Alemdar Karamanov.
Adrian Andrzejewski