The event offers eight concerts focusing on Paderewski’s compositional output but also including music by a wide range of other Polish composers, among them Chopin, Mieczysław Karłowicz, Witold Lutosławski and Henryk Mikołaj Górecki.
One of the concerts features four semifinalists in the recent International Chopin Piano Competition: Poland’s Andrzej Wierciński and Adam Kałduński, Hyo Lee from South Korea and Japan’s Tomoharu Ushida.
In another event, Paderewski’s Tatra Album Op.12 will be performed by the Kharkiv Piano Duo of Ihor Sediuk and Oleh Kopeliuk from Ukraine.
The programme also includes an open-air exhibition documenting Paderewski’s political activities.
The Paderewski Festival, now in its 12th year, runs until November 10.
Hailed by his contemporaries as the greatest pianist since Franz Liszt, Paderewski achieved the peak of his triumphant career in the early 20th century. In addition to works for piano, his oeuvre includes the opera Manru, which remains, to this day, the only Polish opera produced at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Born 165 years ago this month, Paderewski was one of the architects of Poland’s independence, which it regained in 1918 after more than 120 years of foreign rule.
In 1919, in his role as prime minister and foreign affairs minister, he co-chaired (with politician Roman Dmowski) the Polish delegation to the Peace Conference in Paris and signed the Treaty of Versailles.
Paderewski died in the United States in 1941 and was buried at Arlington Military Cemetery in Washington following a decision by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1992, his remains were brought to Poland and buried at St John’s Cathedral in Warsaw.
(mk/gs)