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• A Conversation with Henryk Górecki
Exactly one year ago I flew to Poland for what turned out to be my last meetings with Henryk Mikołaj Górecki. When I had learned a few days earlier that he had been awarded Poland’s highest honour,...
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• Polish Orchestra Named After Górecki
The city of Katowice in southern Poland today honoured its most famous and distinguished musical son. The Silesian PO (Filharmonia Śląska) has been named in memory of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, who died...
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• A Last Amen for Górecki
I had not intended to post so much on Górecki over the past few days, but events and memories have rather taken over. Not least of these are my recollections of the funeral, which took place in...
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• On What Would Have Been His 78th Birthday
On what would have been Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s 78th birthday, his daughter Anna has sent me a photograph of his newly installed gravestone (nagrobek). One of the words which I have long used to...
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• 5th Festival of Premieres, Katowice
Festiwal Prawykonań (Festival of Premieres) is a biennial celebration of new pieces by Polish composers of all generations. This year’s event runs over the last weekend of next month, 26-28 April 2013...
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• New Górecki sculpture in Katowice
A ceremony took place today in Górecki’s home city to unveil a new memorial to the Polish composer, who died just under three years ago. In the presence of his widow Jadwiga, his daughter Anna and her...
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• Panufnik’s ‘Silesian Hammers’
Leafing through Trybuna Robotnicza (Workers’ Tribune) – as one does – I came across an entry yesterday that brought me up sharp. Trybuna Robotnicza was the daily newspaper in Silesia of Poland’s...
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• Nugs and Bling: Three Silesian Graves
For the first time since Górecki’s funeral four years ago, last week I paid a visit to the cemetery near Katowice’s Cathedral of Christ the King. I had seen (and posted) a photo of the grave, but its...
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• 6th Festival of Premieres, Katowice
Last November, the 21st to be exact, I visited the new and magnificent home in Katowice of NOSPR, the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra. The occasion was a performance of Shostakovich’s Fifth...
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• Górecki in wooden covers
I find it hard to believe that it is five years to the day that my irreplaceable friend, composer and life-force, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, died in Katowice. But rather than dwell on this loss, I have...
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• Lutosławski’s ‘didlumdi, didlumdaj’
On my visit to the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice last week – and what a terrific institution it is, both in terms of staff and students and of its buildings, old and new – I took...
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• Katowice: New-Old Academy of Music
Earlier this month I paid a visit to the Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, at the invitation of Marcin Trzęsiok and Eugeniusz Knapik, to give a lecture during their annual open days. There was...
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• Katowice: Museum of History
A couple of hundred yards from the Szymanowski Academy of Music is the Museum of Katowice History, housed in an upmarket block of flats built in 1908, just a few years after the inauguration of the...
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• Katowice: Artists’ Memorial Walkway
One of the oddest developments in Katowice in recent years has been the erection of a series of sculptural memorials to the city’s creative past. Since 2005, fifteen figures have been so honoured,...
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• Katowice: Skrowaczewski takes a bow
The highpoint of my trip to Katowice last month was my second visit to the new (2014) home of the Polish Radio National SO (NOSPR). In November that year, I heard the 91-year-old Stanisław...
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