Piotr Moss’ 75th Birthday
 

In 2024 Piotr Moss, a Polish composer who settled in Paris a few decades ago, will be celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday. Born in Bydgoszcz, he studied composition in Warsaw, before honing his skills with the famous Nadia Boulanger. Moss’s output – diverse in terms of both genre and style – eludes facile pigeon-holing. During this jubilee concert, in a work commissioned by the Warsaw Philharmonic, the composer will pay homage to his French mentor. Boulanger’s remarkable talent and erudition attracted legions of young artists from all over the world. As a conductor, she led the first performances of many twentieth-century works, including by the famous French ‘neoclassic’ Francis Poulenc. It was after hearing Poulenc’s Piano Concerto in C sharp minor, given its first performance by the composer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Charles Munch, that one influential critic uttered a famous comment about its composer supposedly combining the nature of a ‘monk’ and a ‘guttersnipe’.

This evening’s programme will close with one of the most cheerful works by Antonín Dvořák – his Eighth Symphony in G major, dedicated to the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts, on the occasion of his election to that institution.

Bartłomiej Gembicki