19.10.2024, 19:00
Aleksander Dębicz | piano Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus named after Jerzy Semkow Przemysław Neumann | conductor Witold Lutosławski – Little Suite for symphony orchestra Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Piano Concerto in A major KV 488 intermission Witold Maliszewski – Symphony No. 1 in G minor op. 8 Our Orchestra collaborates continuously with the most distinguished conductors and soloists who appreciate the professionalism, talents, and commitment of the young musicians who make it up. During the October concert, we will also be joined by the young and highly regarded Aleksander Dębicz. He is one of the most versatile Polish pianists, also a composer, originator, and implementer of many creative concert and recording projects that always evoke a lively response. This time he will present a classical repertoire position – the Piano Concerto in A major KV 488 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This piece is one of the most beautiful works of its kind in the entire history of music. Like most of his counterparts, Mozart most likely composed this with himself in mind as the performer. The work was created in March 1786, concurrently with the opera The Marriage of Figaro and along with two other piano concertos (C minor and E-flat major), in which Mozart for the first time added a pair of clarinets to the orchestral ensemble. After a cheerful first movement, there follows a minor, nostalgic slow movement in the style of a siciliana, a reminiscence of baroque notions of 'Sicilian' song, popularized mainly in Venetian opera. Following this, in accordance with the tradition of the genre, the third and final movement resounds in the form of a brilliant, contrasting, sparkling virtuoso rondo. The starting point for the artistic and creative stance of the performer of this masterpiece, Aleksander Dębicz, is improvisation and original music, which he often combines with the repertoire of classical masters. For years, he has shown a passion for film art in his work. A graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw in the piano class of Elżbieta Tarnawska. He performs in Poland and abroad (including Germany, France, the United States, Romania, Italy, Austria, Turkey), presenting to the audience both his own music, improvisations, and interpretations of classical and contemporary music. He has also recorded his achievements on a number of well-received and always very original conceptually albums, among which were Cinematic Piano, Invention (nominated for a Fryderyk), Adela. The largest authorial project of the artist so far is the album Sideways (2022), for which Dębicz composed works with a wind quintet and string orchestra; it also includes original interpretations of two classical works by Bach and Gershwin. In 2022, together with the Polish Radio Orchestra under the direction of Michał Klauza, he premiered the Concerto Symphony dedicated to him by Maciej Małecki. In the same year, the artist debuted at prestigious music festivals – the International Chopin Festival in Duszniki Zdrój (in a duo with Marcin Zdunik) and at the Męskie Granie festival (in a duo with Jakub Józef Orliński). Dębicz co-creates duets with outstanding musicians, with whom he has developed a number of original programs based on classical music and improvisation. With cellist Marcin Zdunik, he recorded, among others, the highly acclaimed two-disc album Bach Stories (Warner Classics), nominated for a Fryderyk in 2018. With saxophonist Szymon Nidzworski, he composed and recorded music for the film Touch directed by Katarzyna Michałkiewicz. The accessible, tonal Little Suite by Witold Lutosławski, consisting of four concise, contrasting movements, was created in the early 1950s, when the composer successfully sought to maintain creative autonomy in the face of the expectations of the communist authorities, creating music often 'based on folk motifs,' but with the highest artistic level. In this case, he drew on the folklore of the Rzeszów and Łasów regions, creating a chamber work that delighted the great conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg. At his request, the author also composed a version for orchestra, successfully presented during the Polish Music Festival in 1951 under Fitelberg's baton. Witold Maliszewski was born in Mohylów on the Podolia, educated in St. Petersburg, initially studying mathematics and medicine, before later taking up rather late music studies (including with Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov). In 1908, he founded a respected conservatory in Odessa and directed it. The Bolshevik Revolution interrupted this 'eastern' stage of the career of the recognized composer and pedagogue, who quickly found a prominent place in independent Poland, among others as the director of the State Music Conservatory (later the Academy of Music) in Warsaw. He educated many outstanding musicians and composers, including Feliks Łabuński, Bolesław Woytowicz, Feliks Rybicki, and the most famous among them – Witold Lutosławski. His own compositional style remained insensitive to the many modernist trends of the interwar period – he remained faithful to expressive neoromanticism and influences, especially of Russian music. In the excellently orchestrated scores of Maliszewski, we find clear influences of his masters, particularly evident in the early Symphony No. 1 in G minor op. 8. It was premiered in 1902 during a series of concerts at the imperial residence in Pavlovsk, shortly thereafter at the newly established Warsaw Philharmonic, meeting with great acclaim. The classically structured four-movement cycle is saturated with late romantic expression and delights with the richness of melodic invention. Among the contemporary discoverers of the somewhat forgotten Polish composer is the evening's conductor, Przemysław Neumann, director of the Opole Philharmonic from 2015 to 2024 (he recorded with it three nominated Fryderyk award CDs of Maliszewski's symphonic works), since 2022 the musical director of the Silesian Opera in Bytom, and from September 2024 – the director of the Szczecin Philharmonic. He is a conductor particularly dedicated to the mission of discovering forgotten pages of Polish music. He is a graduate of the Poznań Academy of Music, where he completed his studies in symphonic-operatic conducting in the class of Jerzy Salwarowski and Antoni Gref. Even during his studies, he began collaborating with the Poznań Musical Theatre, serving as its conductor and orchestra manager until 2013. Over nine artistic seasons, he prepared several premieres and conducted hundreds of performances and concerts. He has also collaborated with the Grand Theatre in Poznań and the Gliwice Musical Theatre. He is a lecturer at, among others, his alma mater, and in 2017 he obtained the title of habilitated doctor. Media patronage: TVP Kultura, Radio dla Ciebie, Polish Press Agency, polmic.pl Tickets available online: bilety24 👉 tiny.pl/r-m8my7c ebilety 👉 https://tiny.pl/t6rn655h Organizer: Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus named after Jerzy Semkow The organizer reserves the right to change the concert program or its performers.