Symphonic Concert Filharmonia Narodowa

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Symphonic Concert
Judith van Wanroij, photo: archiwum artystki

Karol Kurpiński, a composer, conductor and impresario active during the early decades of the nineteenth century, left us piano music and orchestra works, a Clarinet Concerto that still holds its place in the repertoire, and a ‘military’ symphony devoted to the Battle of Borodino. Yet he saw his main calling to be the composing of (now forgotten) operas. The overture to one of them, the particularly popular The Charlatan, will remind us of this important strand to the work of the conductor and director of opera at the National Theatre.

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The titular ‘eroe’ of Beethoven’s Third Symphony is not a specific figure, but an idea, while the music symbolises the universal message of good and beauty, love and self-sacrifice, that recurs in the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus (a motif from which is quoted in the Symphony’s finale), the opera Fidelio and the Ninth Symphony. This work adheres to a Classical design, but it also abounds in formal innovations; for listeners at the time, most controversial of all were the monumental scale of the Symphony and the power of its musical expression: pathos, passion, mighty sounds and dramatic contrasts.


Piotr Maculewicz

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Michał Klauza

Artistic director of the Polish Radio Orchestra in Warsaw. From 2013 to 2015, he was music director of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic in Białystok, from 2009 to 2015, second conductor of the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (NOSPR), and conductor and deputy music director of the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff (2004–2008).

At the National Opera of Ukraine in Kiev, he conducted Karol Szymanowski’s opera King Roger in concert version, closing the 2011 Foreign Cultural Program of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. He has prepared and conducted many opera premieres, such as Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa’s Wanda (Krakow Opera, 2021), Billy Budd (Polish premiere, 2019) and Peter Grimes (2023) by Benjamin Britten (Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw). He has conducted numerous orchestras in France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Brazil, Armenia, South Korea and the Persian Gulf countries. He has worked with the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk, Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz, the Grand Theatre in Poznań, and the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw (1998–2003).

His artistic output includes numerous radio and television recordings, including the first studio recording of Szymanowski’s operetta Loteria na mężów (Lottery for Husbands) with NOSPR, nominated for the 2019 Fryderyk Award, and with Polish Radio Orchestra in Warsaw (released by Polish Radio) Szymanowski’s opera Hagith which received the 2020 Fryderyk Award. Among his numerous film music recordings, he has recorded the soundtrack of Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO. From 2016 to 2022, he was a guest conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti, The Idiot by Mieczysław Weinberg, Eugene Onegin by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Catherine Izmaylova by Dmitri Shostakovich). Since 2020, he has been working in the Department of Symphonic and Opera Conducting at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.

He is a graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw in the symphonic and opera conducting class of Ryszard Dudek and of the postgraduate studies at the N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory in the class of Ilya Musin.

 

[2023]