Set your preferred locations for a better search. You can sign up here.

NOSPR / Runtz / In the Mediterranean sun

It is not often that we can encounter Balkan folklore in such a spectacular form. Jakov Gotovac’s style is that of late romanticism, but he approaches folk tradition with love. This is why the Serbian kolo can be heard as early as in the first, truculent, chord of the 1927 Symphonic Dance poem. A similar flame is what characterizes the extreme movements of the Concierto andaluz for four guitars and orchestra by Joaquin Rodrigo, although the heart of this piece... Read full text

Keywords: Subscription Concert, Symphony Concert

Artistic depiction of the event

Musicians

Dawid RuntzConductor
NOSPR
Ewa JabłczyńskaGuitar
Dariusz KupińskiGuitar
Marcin DyllaGuitar
Justyna Sobczak-DyllaGuitar

Program

Concierto andaluz for four guitars and orchestraJoaquín Rodrigo
Sinfonischer Kolo, Op.12Jakov Gotovac
Ballet suite from the opera Le CidJules Massenet
Give feedback
Last update: Fri, Nov 22, 2024, 12:16

Similar events

These events are similar in terms of concept, place, musicians or the program.

Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Berglund / In the Hall of the Mountain King

Sun, Jun 15, 2025, 12:00
Tabita Berglund (Conductor), NOSPR
With song, he delved into the abyss, To the bottom of the world’s beginning– Kalevala, ed. Elias Lönnrot Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius are not only prominent representatives of late Romanticism, but also captivating storytellers and guides among the myths and tales of the Northern nations. In their works, legends emerging from the darkness of the past are painted with vivid colours and become filled with a modern emotionality. Slightly older of the two, Edvard Grieg, born to a family of Scottish descent in the Norwegian town of Bergen, studied in Germany and maintained contacts with numerous Danish artists. His Suite in Olden Style “From Holberg’s Time” is also one of Danish origin – the piece was commissioned to celebrate Ludvig Holberg’s, a writer dubbed “Molier of the North”, birth anniversary. The work balances between free stylistic inspiration and a tribute to Baroque forms. Nevertheless, in music written to scenes from Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, the wigged key yields to distinct emotions enchanted in the music.The first of two suites contains some of the most suggestive themes in Romanticism, with which Grieg awakens mountain monsters, trolls and kobolds within the orchestra (In the Hall of the Mountain King) and evokes Arabic and African motives, very popular at the time. (Anitra’s Dance, Morning). The Lemminkäinen Suite is a piece inspired by the Kalevala, a Finnish epic built from a compilation of folk songs of the North. Thanks to Sibelius’ imagination, the fantastical, dense and gripping poetic narrative is transformed into a nearly impressionist fresco, the death of a mythical trifler becoming just as moving as the dramatic fates of characters in Thomas Mann’s novels.Krzysztof SiwońConcert duration: approximately 70 minutes
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Alsop / Lewis / Lovers’ adventures in antiquity

Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 19:30
Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, Paul Lewis (Piano)
From the precision of classical drawing to a blaze of orchestral colours. The concert begins with the Introduction and Capriccio by Grażyna Bacewicz, a post-war neoclassical diptych awarded an honourable mention at the Karol Szymanowski Competition. Later, there comes Beethoven from his Promethean period – that of searching for new routes of formal development and means of musical expression. His Piano Concerto No. 4 is already astonishing at the very beginning, with the lonely meditative piano. It is in the intimate dialogues of the middle Andante, however,that some seek the metaphysical. Romanticists found it in the character of Orpheo, begging the Furies to give his lover back to him. It is worth finding out where today’s interpretations lead us.We are bound not to be disappointed by Richard Strauss in his quasi-slapstick tale of a picaresque folk hero. After a series of bravado-filled adventures, his Till Eulenspiegel will try to dupe death once again. Will his trick work this time as well? The final feast for the senses will be served by Maurice Ravel, illustrating Longus’ idyll with the colours of pastoral love in the second one of the orchestral suites from his Daphnis and Chloé. This will be framed with what is probably the most famous picture of dawn known in the history of music and the final bacchanalia crowning the lovers’ adventures in antiquity.Róża ŚwiatczyńskaConcert duration: approximately 100 minutes
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Klauza / Nizioł / The American Dream

Fri, Apr 4, 2025, 19:30
Michał Klauza (Conductor), NOSPR, Bartłomiej Nizioł (Violin)
The (co)creators of the works to be presented in this concert share an American connection. Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, written for the organ, was arranged for an orchestra by the exquisite conductor Leopold Stokowski, who spent most of his life in the United States, leading such ensembles as the famous Philadelphia Orchestra. In 1940, it was with them that he recorded the soundtrack for Walt Disney’s Fantasia, which has since become a legend, having prepared the symphonic version of the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor for this purpose in particular (he was awarded an honorary Oscar for his achievements). Allegedly – due to the similarity of their surnames – he was often mistaken with Zygmunt Stojowski, who left Europe for the States at the beginning of the 20th century and remained there until his death in 1946. On the other side of the pond, the latter was chair of the piano department at the New York Institute of Musical Art, also teaching at the Von Ende School of Music. The Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 22, is an early composition of his, created at the end of the 19th century. Unusually expressive, it is imbued with the Romantic spirit, its violin part glimmering with brilliant virtuosity. Henryk Wars – known in the States as Henry Vars – is predominantly recognised in his homeland as a pioneer of Polish jazz, composer of film music, and author of such smash hits as Miłość ci wszystko wybaczy, Umówiłem się z nią na dziewiątą and Zimny drań. His outstanding symphonic pieces were only discovered in the late 1990s. Among those, there was the exquisite Symphony No. 1 (1949), which blends the late-Romantic sense of drama, flawless instrumentation and a cinematic scope.Agnieszka Nowok-ZychConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 90 minutes
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Webster / The Fun-Fair and the Moonrise Kingdom

Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 12:00
Angus Webster (Conductor), NOSPR
If Dvořák, Kisielewski and Britten could meet – would they find a common language? Certainly so, only that would be neither Czech, nor Polish, nor English, but the language of humour and classical proportions.The Carnival Overture is its composer’s declaration of faith in the vital power of ethnic music. Remarkably, it is the central part of the “Nature – Life – Love” trilogy. Dvořák did not approach folk themes with a scholarly studiosity. Instead, seeking inspiration in their rhythms and melodies, he created an exuberant vision of his homeland’s folklore. The Slavic pulse in Dvořák’s work was so strong that it forced its way into scores, even when, having crossed the Atlantic, the composer decided to write national music for the Americans – this might be the reason why the Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” seems to resonate with Prague nostalgia more than with echoes of the prairies. Humour is probably the most important aesthetic value in music composed by the erudite, author and politician, Stefan Kisielewski. Similarly to Dvořák, while drawing from ethnic traditions, the Polish composer also carefully listened to town life: both the sounds of its fairs and its everyday rhythm. The Fun-Fair, self-identifying in its subtitle as a single-act ballet with prologue, paints a sonic cityscape within a neoclassical framework.Benjamin Britten’s works also show an unshakable faith in the power of musical tradition. There is no dearth of tributes to the Englishman’s excellent predecessors in his oeuvre, one of the most beautiful testimonies to his faith in the heritage of British culture being The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The piece is a cycle of variations on a very short theme from Abdelazer by the Baroque master Henry Purcell. The promise made in the title of the work is fulfilled in a pedantic presentation of each section of the orchestra and every family of instruments. The whole is intricate enough to have proven worthy of a prologue to one of Wes Anderson’s films (Moonrise Kingdom, 2012).Krzysztof SiwońConcert duration: approximately 60 minutes
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Borowicz / Le Sage / The French musical legend

Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 19:30
Łukasz Borowicz (Conductor), NOSPR, Éric Le Sage (Piano)
French music has prided itself on its separateness for ages. In the 1st half of the 19th century, it became widely associated with neoclassicism - a current that valued balance, clarity of form, emotional frugality and a sense of humour modelled on the 18th-century Viennese classicism, over the excessive exuberance and overexpression of the late romantic period. An advocate of neoclassicism and a legendary teacher of younger generations of composers, many of whom followed this path, was Nadia Boulanger. Her Paris classroom was a shrine nearly all young Polish composers of the interwar generation considered worthy of a pilgrimage. The most prominent one of those was Grażyna Bacewicz, whose own student, Piotr Moss, followed into her footsteps, also honing his skill in Paris. Those were already the final years of Boulanger’s activity, but meeting her left such a strong mark on the Polish composer’s creative imagination that he has now dedicated his latest piece, Mademoiselle – hommage à Nadia Boulanger, to his professor. This year, the composer, who continuously maintains close ties to the city of Paris, celebrates his 75th birthday and 55 years of artistic activity. His work will be performed alongside one by Boulanger herself.Albert Roussel – the greatest French composer of symphonic works in the first half of the 20th century – did not submit to the influence of neoclassicism entirely, yet he certainly shared the current’s enthusiasts’ passion for clear form, regular themes and prominent rhythms. The ballet Bachus and Ariadne is one of his most magnificent scores. The greatest hit of the concert, however, is going to be Claude Debussy’s 1894 Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun – an earnest of the French separateness of the century to come.Adam SuprynowiczConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 100 minutes
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Alsop / Sumino / Inauguration of the season 2024/2025

Fri, Oct 4, 2024, 19:30
Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, Hayato Sumino (Piano)
We invite you to a live broadcast of the concert on Polish Radio 2.Samuel Barber began composing the Symphony No. 1 in1935, at the age of twenty-five. At the end of 1942 and at the beginning of 1943, he made significant amendments to the score, eventually to dedicate it to Gian Carlo Menotti – his university friend and later life partner. Commenting on this symphonic debut, he admitted that the intention behind it was a polemical dialogue with the classical tradition: „The form of my Symphony in One Movement is a synthetic treatment of the four-movement classical symphony. It is based on three themes of the initial Allegro non troppo, which retain throughout the work their fundamental character.”The concept of the Concertino by the twenty-nine-year-old Władysław Szpilman– that of a single-movement “small concerto” – is similarly untypical. His first and only composition for piano with orchestra was created in the Warsaw ghetto in 1940. Hence the “compactness” of the form. The graceful character, references to jazz and subtle allusions to Chopin permeate the melodies and harmonic language of the Concertino, showing Szpilman as akin to Prometheus, one who brings light into the darkest places of human despair and sorrow.In the case of the forty-year-old Johannes Brahms, one could call his Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a, a “protodebut”. The story of how long Brahms, filled with doubt, was preparing for his Symphony No. 1 (1876), is one of the most frequently discussed aspects of his biography. The 1873 Variations are a significant step in this process. They constitute a prototype of the symphonic idea and texture, and simultaneously a tribute and a token of admiration for the author of TheCreation of the World. „He was quite someone!” was how Brahms wrote about Haydn a year before his own death. “Oh, how pitiful are we against someone like him!”With his Rhapsody in Blue (1924), today, Gershwin is an iconic figure, standing like the Colossus of Rhodes, towering over the borderline between two orders – those of classical music and jazz. However, when the twenty-six-year-old was entering the conservative realm of American concert halls with his slightly nonchalant Broadway gait, he was crossing a line no one had ignored in such an ostentatious manner before. Paul Whiteman organised the Experiment in Modern Music concert in order to prove that the relatively new form of music called jazz deserved being recognised as a serious and sophisticated form of art. The Rhapsody proved that being first and brave is worth the risk!Andrzej SułekConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 90 minutes
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Dybał / Dervaux / The fate motif and cinematic suspense

Sun, Dec 15, 2024, 12:00
Jurek Dybał (Conductor), NOSPR, Sophie Dervaux (Bassoon)
„Thus, fate is knocking on the door” – as anecdote has it, that was how Beethoven described the famous, dramatically forceful motif opening his Symphony No. 5. The initial sounds of the overture to Giuseppe Verdi’s The Force of Destiny opera have a similar effect of activating one’s imagination. They serve as a lavish introduction to a story of melodramatic love, which maestro Verdi generously decorated with the intense colours of the monumental wind section. The Italian style and a captivating narrative are also the elements that fuel Nino Rota’s Concerto for bassoon and orchestra. Born in Milan, the composer became famous thanks to the scores he wrote for giants of cinema, the likes of Fellini, Visconti and Coppola. Can we hear that the concert pieces come from the same composer whose sounds told the story of the Corleone family? Obviously! The Concerto for bassoon and orchestra is a gripping narrative led by the noble sound of the solo instrument, filled with plot twists, tightly-packed dramatic events, and even with humour.Film music has borrowed from the works of late Romanticism with abandon. After all, Nino Rota himself is also deeply indebted to Wagner or Verdi, the latter’s work also constituting the finale of this concert. Just like film music, which began to build its own prominence and storm concert halls in Nino Rota’s time, the ballet music from Verdi’s opera Don Carlos gained independence from theatre stages and, over time, found a life of its own as a concert piece. To this day, the instrumental parts inspire awe with their epic orchestration and enthralling dramatic sequences, held together by suspense of a nearly cinematic scale. Krzysztof SiwońConcert duration: approximately 70 minutes
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Schumann / Zehetmair / A concert the netherworld called for

Thu, Feb 27, 2025, 19:30
Christian Schumann (Conductor), NOSPR, Thomas Zehetmair (Violin)
Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto was created in the ailing composer’s final years and was later considered lost for a long time. Written for the famous violinist Joseph Joachim, it seems permeated with inner struggle and a sense of resignation. The violinist never performed the piece publicly. After Schumann’s suicidal attempt and his confinement to an asylum, where he died after a short time, Joachim deemed the form of the piece to be an expression of its creator’s madness and put it in his drawer forever to remain there. Legend has it, but witnesses also confirm, that eighty years later Robert Schumann appeared to the participants of a seance held in London by Erik Kule Palmstierna, the Envoy of Sweden to the United Kingdom. The spirit ordered Joachim’s great-nieces, the violinists Jelly d’Arányi and Adila Fachiri, who were present at the table, to find and perform the lost piece. Although it was indeed recovered, the concerto was seized by the Nazis, who entrusted Georg Kulenkampff and the Berliner Philharmoniker with premiering it. The concert in Berlin took place in 1937, when Arnold Schönberg had already been forced to emigrate to the United States. His innovative creativity was not understood there, but the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra led by another emigrant, Otton Klemperer, gladly accepted his orchestral arrangement of an early piece by Johannes Brahms – the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor,Op. 25. Schönberg justified his orchestration of the chamber piece as follows: „1. I like this piece, 2. It is rarely played, 3. It is always played really badly, because the better the pianist, the louder he plays, as a result of which the strings cannot be heard. I wanted to hear everything and I have achieved this.” Do we need a better recommendation?Adam SuprynowiczConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 110 minutes
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Hermus / Great symphonists and The Master-Singers of Nuremberg

Fri, Dec 6, 2024, 19:30
Antony Hermus (Conductor), NOSPR
If The Master-Singers of Nuremberg were stripped of their stage design and historical setting, they could constitute a metaphor of perfect order in the musical (though not only) world: the winner of the competition for the most beautiful song and its best performance would be the best and the most talented participant and the ambitious mediocre one would suffer a well-deserved defeat. In such a world, the following question would become an abstract and groundless one: why have Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s Three Dances, Op. 34, not found their rightful place in the concert repertoire? Why is this work – chronologically placed halfway between Symphony No. 2 and No. 3, surprising, brilliant, written with a particular flair for timbre and expression – performed so rarely? Nonetheless, in real life, Walter’s love song does not shine in a blaze of glory at first, while the talentless Beckmesser will still trumpet his clerkish shallowness before he finally loses.Usually, however, it is the greatness of vision that wins. Such was the Wagnerian vision, which changed the course of history. Without his orchestral language, Bruckner’s, Mahler’s and Richard Strauss’ oeuvres would certainly be different from those we know today.In his Gesamtkunstwerk, Wagner lent an increasingly greater weight to the orchestra. The instrumental layer ceases to be merely a helpful scaffolding for the vocal show, beginning to explain and add to the drama happening onstage. The furthest he ever ventured away from the academic thinking about form was in the prelude to the Lohengrin (1848). In the prelude to the 1862 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Wagner decided to build a classically structured score. In a sophisticated manner, he brings together motifs taken from the operatic plot, referencing its heroes and crucial moments, simultaneously creating a score of unusual brilliance and elan, a concert masterpiece.Even though Bruckner admired Wagner, the path his symphonies open up for us is one leading to a radically different sphere of artistic expression – a sphere marked by patience and humility, but also by self-destructive uncertainty. In this Brucknerian world, The Sixth is truly exceptional. The least frequently performed, it does not belong to any period – while being the only one never amended by the composer, it also separates the “early” part of his symphonic universe from the “late” works. Amidst contrasting moods and motifs, the meandering harmonies, complicated rhythms and an orchestration fueled by an unrestrained imagination lead from darkness to light.Andrzej SułekConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 100 minutes
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Alsop / Yang / Polish sonorism and music of the north

Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 19:30
Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, Inmo Yang (Violin)
Although Sibelius’ Violin Concerto is not programmatic music, it is permeated by the same Northern colour and breadth of breath that can be found in nearly all works by the creator of Finlandia. This is because landscape is not present there merely as a decoration – as it was in 18th-century music – but to reflect the scenery of the soul. Part of the core violinistic repertoire, enclosed within the framework of classical form, for over a hundred years, the piece has not ceased to inspire a sense of wonder, not only with its mysterious atmosphere and richness of sound, but also with its symphonic elan and originality of themes. While the British musicologist Donald Tovey called the final movement of the Concerto a “polonaise for polar bears”, he granted it – and rightly so! – an honourable place among the greatest violin concertos of Romanticism. Another great classic of 20th-century music is Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, in which – as Alex Ross put it – the Hungarian composer and folklore researcher “decided to throw away his notebook and began dancing with them [peasants]. From the strings, there rise clouds of dust, setting on the feet of the frenzied dancers.”. While the musical language of this late work of Bartok’s is a softened one, its form is classicising, and the sounds are nearly euphonic, still what is the most important for his style was retained – distinct rhythms, colourful instrumentation, and subtle inspiration drawn from folklore. Piotr MatwiejczukConcert duration: approximately 110 minutes