The programme comprises Krzysztof Penderecki’s Polish Requiem, performed by the Orchestra of the Kraków-based Beethoven Academy, the Internationale Chorakademie Lübeck and Polish soloists Iwona Hossa (soprano), Anna Lubańska (mezzo-soprano), Rafał Bartmiński (tenor), and Tomasz Konieczny (bass).
The Polish Requiem is among the most important works in Penderecki’s long career. Deeply rooted in national tradition, it consists of several parts which are dedicated to key events and figures in Polish history.
The first part of the composition, the Lacrimosa, was written in 1980 for the unveiling of a monument in Gdańsk, northern Poland, in honour of victims of the fatal 1970 riots on the Baltic coast.
In later years, Penderecki expanded the Requiem with parts dedicated to Polish Catholic Church leader Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Father Maksymilian Kolbe, the Franciscan monk who volunteered to die in place of another inmate at the Auschwitz death camp, to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and to Poles murdered by the Soviet NKVD secret police at Katyń in 1940.
In 2005, after the death of Pope John Paul II, Penderecki added another movement to the work in memory of the Polish-born pontiff.
The concert starts at 8pm and will be broadcast live on Polish Radio 2 and TVP Kultura, the arts-and-culture channels of Polish public radio and television.
(mk/pk)