Marcin Zdunik, a winner of the Witold Lutosławski International Cello Competition, will perform at the Warsaw Philharmonic in a dual role – as a performer and composer. His Piano Trio is a fanciful piece that will appeal to lovers of chamber music by Béla Bartók and Leoš Janáček. It uses a wide range of sounds and murmurs, requiring the pianist to use techniques inspired by playing on the classical and glass harp. This work was first performed in November 2024 at the Rzeszów Music Autumn.
In the mid-nineteenth century, on the other side of what is now Poland – in Gdańsk – Johannes Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 1 was performed for the first time. Until a few decades ago, it was believed that the premiere of the work took place in the United States, not in Germany, which would seem more obvious in the case of a German composer. The work was written when Brahms was 20 years old and had just been anointed by Robert Schumann as a musical messiah. After several decades, Brahms revised the work, resulting – as was jokingly pointed out during his lifetime – in an almost completely new composition.
The archduke mentioned in the title of Beethoven’s opus 97 was Rudolf, son of Leopold II and Empress Sisi, who was more interested in piano playing, which he perfected under the tutelage of Ludwig van Beethoven himself, than in a military career. The composer dedicated numerous works to him, making the imperial descendant one of the most famous dukes in the history of music.
Bartłomiej Gembicki