Polish Pianist Research Articles

PIANO ART OF THE TERNOPIL REGION OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: HISTORICAL AND MUSICOLOGICAL ASPECT

Piano art of Ternopil region and one of the main forms of its realization – performance, started, according to scientific sources, in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was the time when in Galicia abolished serfdom in 1848 and began the period of formation of educational and cultural organizations “Native School”, “Prosvita”,“Literary Society” and others. They became the main factors in shaping the national consciousness and culture of the local people.The most important role in these processes in the Ternopil region was played by the “Native School” society, in which groups of choral and vocal singing, artistic recitation, and playing musical instruments were organized. Actually, these circles formed a love of art in different directions, including piano music.The founder of piano art in the Ternopil region is the Polish pianist, teacher and cultural and public figure Vladyslav Vshelyachynskyi, a native of the town of Kopychyntsi, in Ternopil region. It was he who became the brightest representative of the piano movement in our study area initially.In 1876, after completing his studies at the Conservatory, Vladyslav Vshelyachinskyi moved to Ternopil to continue and improve his practical activity. He organized the “Friends of Music” Society and a school for piano lessons with him. He was the music director of these two institutions for twelve years.One of the founders of the creation of piano art in Ternopil region was also Denys Leontovych, born in Lviv in 1868. Denis’s father, Theodore Leontovych, whose family started in the village Novosilka Buchach county (now Buchach district of Ternopil region), was at one time a wellknown Lviv cultural and public figure, pianist, music critic, owner of the newspaper “Osnova”), author of popular songs at that time. He became the first piano teacher for his son.Unfortunately, Denys Leontovych’s short life did not allow him to develop his musical talent to the full, but those few years of concert activity of the drunkard deserve attention from musicologists and point to his invaluable contribution to the formation and development of the piano art of the Ternopil region, he had a special love.An important contribution to the formation and development of the piano art of Ternopil region was made by Denys Sichynskyi as a composer, pianist and accompanist. His creative activity was, first of all, connected with Ternopil region. In the initial stages of being in the land, besides creating musical compositions and managing the countryside and small-town choirs, he was involved in the promotion of piano art through his direct creation and representation as an accompanist.Denys Sichinskyi, as a creator of piano art, has realized himself in three spheres – in writing works for piano, in preparing piano accompaniment for choral and vocal works and in accompaniment for famous singers – Solomiia Krushelnytska, Evgen Gushalevych, Oleksandr Myshuga and others. It was these aspects of his creative activity that determined the formation of piano art in Ternopil region in the first half of the nineteenth century.Thus, the piano art of the Ternopil region of the second half of the nineteenth century represents a stage connected with the birth of its main forms of realization – pedagogical, concertperforming, composer-reproductive. All these forms are clearly traced in the activities of such representatives as Vladyslav Vshelyachinskyi, Denys Leontovych and Denys Sichynskyi. Each of them laid the foundations of piano art for its further development and development to the best of its creative potential. This was, first and foremost, designed to ensure that their successors made a more representative contribution to its transfer. And the piano works of Denys Sichynskyi formed a repertoire performed by the Galician pianists of that time, marked by lyricism, genre linearity and typical harmonious turns derived from traditional folk music. Overall, this stage provided the basis for the subsequent professionalization of piano art in the twentieth century.

Colette Gaveau-Małcużyńska – portret pianistki

The article is an attempt to sketch a portrait of the talented French pianist Colette Gaveau (1913–1987), winner of the first prize of the Paris Conservatory in 1932, participant in several international music competitions, including the 3rd Piano Competition Frederic Chopin in Warsaw in 1937 and the Eugène Ysaÿe, which took place in Brussels in 1938. A breakthrough event in the life of young Colette Gaveau was the marriage with the Polish pianist Witold Małcużyński (1914–1977) in October 1939. Due to the warfare of World War II, Gaveau-Małcużyńska left France with her husband, first to Portugal and then to Argentina. The Małcużyński family did not return to Europe until 1945. Colette Gaveau-Małcużyńska was a faithful and patient companion in the life and successes of one of the most outstanding Polish pianists of the second half of the 20th century.

Maria Szymanowska and Shor: Genealogical Characteristics as a Source of Holistic Reconstruction of the Artist’s Creative Biography

The paper considers the genealogical aspect of the creative biography of the Polish pianist and composer Maria Szymanowska. Through the reference to the history of the Shore’sfamily, the preconditions for the formation of the artist’s worldview, the degree of heredity of her worldview and identity dimensions of the artist were analyzed. The study and comparison of Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish sources (P. Macheyko, I. Yezerska, A. Vernitska, and others) allowed to separate the line of family history of the Shores from the history of the Frankism movement and combine it with the creative biography of the artist. The important role of the Shores in the formation and spread of Frankism and family authority among the members of the sect provided responsibility for maintaining, adhering to, and following the instructions of Frankism that had a direct impact on the life and career decisions of Maria Szymanowska.

“‘For Your Freedom and Ours’: Polonia and the Struggle for Polish Independence,” special issue, Rocznik Przemyski 55, no. 3 (23)

“‘For Your Freedom and Ours’: Polonia and the Struggle for Polish Independence,” special issue, <i>Rocznik Przemyski</i> 55, no. 3 (23)

Laurence Alma-Tadema (1865–1940) jako popularyzatorka historii i kultury polskiej

The main goal of the article is to present the activities of the British poet and writer Laurence Alma-Tademy (1865–1940) to popularize Polish history and culture in Great Britain during World War I and in the preceding period. A biographical sketch of Alma-Tedema and the most important threads related to her pro-Polish activities are outlined. Various directions of her activity were presented, as well as her special relationship with the Polish pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Alma-Tademy’s relations with other Polish activists – Roman Dmowski and Henryk Sienkiewicz were also presented. Laurence Alma-Tadema, as she claimed, loved Poland and chose it as her homeland. She tried to familiarize the British with Polish culture and history. Moreover, her commitment to helping Polish victims of the war, now forgotten, is not without significance. The article discusses the most important aspects of Alma-Tademy’s work for the Polish cause.

How Women Must Write: Inventing the Russian Woman Poet by Olga Peters Hasty

Reviewed by: How Women Must Write: Inventing the Russian Woman Poet by Olga Peters Hasty Hilde Hoogenboom HOW WOMEN MUST WRITE: INVENTING THE RUSSIAN WOMAN POET, by Olga Peters Hasty. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019. 248 pp. $120.00 hardback; $39.95 paperback; $39.95 ebook. In her prize-winning book, How Women Must Write: Inventing the Russian Woman Poet, Olga Peters Hasty establishes new connections among four major women poets. She pairs Evdokiia Rostopchina (1811-1858) with Karolina Pavlova (1807-1893) in the nineteenth century and Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) with Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) in the twentieth century. The pairing of these poets is a cultural habit that Hasty finds useful if problematic because critics pushed women poets to compete with each other. In a major reconfiguration of this dynamic, Hasty shows that Tsvetaeva broke the competitive cycle, as she aligned herself with Pavlova's ideal of the poetic craft and wrote poems and letters to Akhmatova. Poets in Russia occupy a prestigious place in literature and among feminist scholars. In her groundbreaking study Terrible Perfection: Women and Russian Literature (1987), Barbara Heldt argued that Russian women writers found their voice most convincingly in poetry and autobiography rather than fiction. Heldt singled out Rostopchina, Pavlova, Tsvetaeva, and Akhmatova among her pantheon, as does Hasty. In her new work, Hasty applies the lens of gender to these well-known writers and their anthologized poems. For her opening chapters on Rostopchina and Pavlova, Hasty builds on Diana Greene's Reinventing Romantic Poetry: Russian Women Poets of the Mid-Nineteenth Century (2004), which asks how class and gender affected the education, publication, and reception of fourteen women poets, especially Rostopchina, Pavlova, and Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia. Hasty calls her critical method "deep reading"—a Russian twist on close reading (p. xi). In a culture used to reading between the lines for hidden political messages, readers have failed to imagine that women wrote [End Page 403] political poetry. They have also failed to detect women poets' subversive messages about gender. Hasty argues that readers at the time missed those messages because they imposed their own gendered censorship. They did not recognize how women poets subverted gender norms and engaged in "skillful negotiation" over the "multifaceted indeterminacy" of the term "woman" (p. 3). Women poets found their voice and agency through coded dialogue with each other. They protested against men's stereotypes of women's poetry, which "inhibited their unmediated self-realization" (p. 10). Hasty draws on an eclectic mixture of methodologies: the close reading of New Criticism; Wolfgang Iser's reader response theory from the 1970s; masquerade theories from the 1980s; and notions of women's agency that arose from feminist and Marxist rebuttals to structuralism. Rostopchina, like Akhmatova two generations later, embraced writing as a woman. It is Rostopchina's poem "How Should Women Write" (1841) that provides the book's title and its conundrum: women poets reveal "the feminine world" that must remain "modestly veil[ed]" (p. 62). Hasty deduces that in this poem, Rostopchina is asserting that men cannot decode women's poems because they have declared that women should only write about their hidden inner world. But the dictates of male culture did not always succeed in shaping how women wrote. Rostopchina's next poem eluded the censors, was soon confiscated, and cost her access to the royal courts of Nicholas I and Alexander II. She published her incendiary poem "A Forced Marriage" (1845), which alluded to Poland's political submission to Russia, in a conservative journal that likely had misunderstood the political subtext—not because she was a woman but because she chose to submit it to a conservative journal. Hasty shows that Pavlova and later Tsvetaeva presented themselves as poets first and women second. Pavlova famously dubbed Rostopchina an acolyte of George Sand in "We Are Contemporaries, Countess" (1847), after her political scandal. Hasty interprets this as an attack on Rostopchina as a feminist when it was most likely aimed at her liberal politics. Sand's politics and relationship with the Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin galvanized Russians. Presenting herself as a dutiful wife, Pavlova declared she was a purely intellectual poet in the...

Didactic qualities of piano pieces for children by Miłosz Magin (1929-1999)

Miłosz Magin was a renowned Polish pianist and composer. He was born in Łódź, studied in Warsaw, was a prizewinner of several international piano competitions, successfully concerted all over the world and in 1960 he finally settled down in Paris. His compositional output covers numerous piano pieces, orchestral, chamber and vocal works, as well as a ballet. Pieces for children constitute an important and relatively large part of his oeuvre. The article discusses five cycles of miniatures (38 pieces in total), dedicated to pupils at the elementary level of piano learning: Obrazki z Polski (1982), Miniatury polskie (1982), Kółko graniaste (1987), Karnawał lalek for four hands (1990) and Zaczarowane zabawki (1996). The pieces have didactic qualities and play the two roles: they gradually introduce a pupil into the world of music and they help to master the piano technique. They develop, in particular, fingers’ dexterity, chordal and arpeggio technique, precision while realization various rhythmic structures, mastery of large leaps on the keyboard. Performing Magin’s music sensitizes to the timbre of pitches in different registers, to changeable dynamics, original harmony, bitonality, phrasing, articulation, agogic and proper interpretation. His compositions develop children’s imagination and familiarize them with diverse timbres of the piano. They are little masterpieces, put into a terse form of a miniature.

The Stay and teaching activity of Władysław Kędra in Vienna (1957-1964) in the light of documents Kept at the academy of music and Performing arts, Vienna

The stay of Władysław Kędra, a charismatic virtuoso pianist representing the Columbus Gene- ration, in Vienna has so far seemed a very good and successful period in the life of this musician originating from Łódź. However, the studies conducted in the archives of the Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, cast a new light on these eight years. The information included in previous publications about the reasons why the Polish virtuoso left for Vienna and why he returned from the capital of Austria were not confirmed when confronted with the preserved documents. Thanks to a thorough analysis of source materials, the author of the article managed not only to recreate the course of events but also to uncover extremely important facts from the professor’s life, e.g. that he had Austrian citizenship. Now there is no doubt that Władysław Kędra intended to stay there and settle in Vienna for good. The analysis of the Viennese docu- ments allows for recreating to a significant extent the way how he fought for the life he had dreamt of during the occupation of the Stalin era. From the first preserved letter to Dr Hans Sittner, President of Vienna’s Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst, of 23 May 1957, we can follow the efforts of the Polish pianist to be given a contract, i.e., contract of employment for a fixed period, which was extended for him year by year, then to have an opportunity to see his family, have independent accommodation and bring his closest relatives to Vienna, and finally, find out how he applied for citizenship and was given a permanent contract of employment, which entailed awarding him with the lifelong title of Professor by Austrian authorities. Władysław Kędra achieved his goal – he became the citizen of his new home country, gained prestige and recognition, became music professor in the city of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert... And yet, at that very moment when he had everything and fulfilled his dreams, he suddenly left Austria in unclear circumstances. What dramatic events occurred on 2 June 1964 when Prof. Kędra suddenly wrote two applications for discharge from employment – in one of them he did not justify his decision, only referring very precisely to relevant regulations, which were undoubtedly dictated to him by some official, while in the second one he gave an untrue and completely unlikely in his situation reason for his quitting? There is no trace in the documents of the events which were the cause of that sudden decision. It needs to be stressed that the present article was written exclusively based on the docu- ments (including letters) kept at the Viennese Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Władysław Kędra’s personal file. The author did not refer to his family’s recollections or to texts published previously about the pianist so as to present facts in a reliable way, and not inter- pretations of these facts.

Maria Szymanowska as a recital pianist‑composer of the Romantic epoch

Maria Szymanowska as a recital pianist‑composer of the Romantic epoch

Julius Zarembsky: eight views on a creative person

The relevance . Juliusz Zarembsky (1854–1885) – a brilliant pianist, teacher and composer, favorite student of F. Liszt, who received European recognition. Many years the pianist spent in Ukraine and devoted himself to the development and promotion of its musical culture, adapting folk intonations in his compositions. The extraordinary talent of the polish pianist was highly appreciated by his contemporaries, he was foretold the glory of the «second Chopin», but his early death cut off many plans. Unfortunately, the name of J. Zarembsky after his death was under the cover of oblivion for a long time. Our knowledge of it suffers from a multitude of gaps and is insufficient, and the source study base requires addition and new reflection. Thus, it became necessary to introduce some new facts from the life and creative activity of J. Zarembsky on the basis of archival sources and Kyiv periodicals, which would significantly enrich our knowledge about the personality of this outstanding pianist. Main objectives of the article , based on the materials of the stock collection of the National Archive of Zhytomyr region, Zhytomyr Regional Museum and the National Library of Ukraine named after V. I. Vernadsky, and articles of a scientific, memoir and epistolary nature, are advocates clarifying the existing and providing new multi-vector information with an emphasis on the Kyiv speeches of J. Zarembsky. The methodology . The study involved the method of historical and cultural reconstruction (to recreate unknown facts that influenced both the creative development of J. Zarembsky and the concert life of Kyiv), as well as the system, source, biographical, axiological methods. The complex use of these methods allows one to supplement the existing knowledge about J. Zarembsky, to reveal the specifics of his Kyiv concerts in the context of the development of Ukrainian and world music culture. Results and conclusions . New biography details and facts of J. Zarembsky's concert activity are introduced into scientific use in Kyiv on the basis of a study of archival materials and periodicals in Kyiv. Known throughout Europe, the pianist, a favorite student of F. Liszt, was born and spent most of the years in Zhytomyr. The belonging of this bright, creative person to the formation of the Kyiv concert tradition serves as an additional stimulus to its subsequent, versatile study of the personalities of J. Zarembsky. The article allows us to re-evaluate the historical role, to revive public interest in the name of the outstanding polish pianist and composer J. Zarembsky, who lived for a long time in Zhytomyr.

Nomadic Teaching, Vagabond Dreaming: An Examination of the Spaces That Schools Might Become

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size NotesThere's something worth saying here about the power of naming in relation to the creation of reality. One need only look to the names of the fifty-three neighborhood schools closed in the city of Chicago in 2013 (to be replaced, one must recall, by charters later authorized by the Mayor and his board) to think about the power of history and narrative (indeed, place) that is being lost. Gone are Altgeld Elementary (named for John Altgeld, a progressive governor of the state of Illinois who pardoned the men convicted of the Haymarket bombing), Bethune Elementary (named for Dr. Mary Jane McLeod Bethune, among other things a member of the Black Cabinet of the FDR administration), Garvey Elementary (after, of course, the great Black Nationalist, Marcus Garvey) and Paderewski Elementary (named for the Polish pianist and composer, Ignacy Paderewski). All of these people, these historical figures who once meant something to the neighborhoods who named their schools after them, come to fade away as does the connection to place that used to exist through the monikers of other schools like Marconi, Goldblatt, and Fermi. They are quickly supplanted and replaced by franchises: Uno, Noble, and LEARN, which strive for a flat homogeneity. Their history matters little because there is no history; their names, like the names of their students, who become mere metrics on a page, mean nothing more than to signify expansion, replication, replacement.

Venerable Sonority in Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Kate Chopin's The Awakening is ostensibly a work of realism depicting the moral conflict that faces Edna Pontellier: selfhood in opposition to family. Edna's ultimate surrender to her emotional conviction signals more than the requisite ethical dilemma of a particular literary genre; it also contains strong elements of musical romanticism, which put a greater stress on human instincts and feelings than on intellect.1 The character piece for piano,2 a major contribution of this era, emphasizes spontaneous emotion, as do the Impromptus that Mile. Reisz plays for Edna. These compositions by Frederic Chopin underline the influence of the Polish pianist on the novel. Although allusions to operatic composers exist in the work, they are ancillary because on certain evenings during the week she [Edna] and her husband attended the opera.8 Essentially, this type of artistic expression is reserved for shared time with Mr. Pontellier whereas the intimate strains of

The remarkable story of Maria Hinckesman

Maria Hinckesman, who migrated from London to Sydney in 1842, was one of the first female composers whose music was printed in Australia. She studied in London with the Polish pianist Maria Szymanowska and the theorist Augustus F. C. Kollmann, whose method of thorough-bass instruction she endeavoured to introduce in Australia. She was a principal exponent of the sostenente piano patented by Isaac Henry Robert Mott in 1817 and appears to have performed on it before members of the royal family. She published her own music in England and organised concerts in association with leading musicians on two continents. Although biographical dictionaries have omitted her, sufficient documentation has survived to recount her achievements and to portray her travails. An annotated list of her compositions is appended to the article.

Contribution to the Dating of Some Bartok Folk-Song Arrangements

In 1942 the firm of Boosey and Hawkes published an album in memory of the Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski who had died in New York in the previous year. Bart6k contributed to the volume, compiled from the piano-pieces of contemporary composers and entitled Homage to Paderewski, with three Hungarian folk-song arragements. These pieces were published also in a separate booklet as Three Hungarian Folk-Tunes.' The year of composition of these works is unknown even today, that is, the supposed years are based on hypotheses and, in part, are erroneous. It is quite likely that these pieces were composed many years before their publication, although, this statement rests on the single fact that the first piece, Leszdllott a pdva. . . had already been published earlier: it appeared in the periodical Periszk6p in 1925 (1st year, 4th number) in Bart6k's holograph. But it seems certain that the two other pieces also were ready when Bart6k left for America: at least there is no sign in the records at our disposal that Bart6k had undertaken or felt a desire to compose even smaller folk-song arrangements in his first very hard years overseas. The catalogues of works compiled in Bart6k's lifetime2 and, supposedly, with his assistance and supervision do not provide an answer since they contain only the data of published compositions. Denijs Dille's catalogue of 19533 was the first to register the Paderewski-

Poljske ljudske pesmi v priredbi Ludwiga van Beethovna

Poljske ljudske pesmi v priredbi Ludwiga van Beethovna