Amber Trail

As early as the 1st century CE, Roman envoys reaching the Baltic Sea in search of amber proved that the borders of the Empire were not impenetrable and that Central Europe was not an area isolated from the influence of this state. Over time, the former ancient trade routes became routes of profound cultural exchange, the fruits of which can be seen especially in music in the Baroque era. Under the direction of maestro Andrzej Kosendiak, the Wrocław Baroque Ensemble will once again follow the Amber Route, showing the common heritage linking the cities of the Apennine Peninsula with the centres along the former merchant route leading to the mouth of the Vistula.

The musical journey will begin in Naples with Francesco Provenzal's polychoral Pange lingua. The figure symbolizing the second end of the tour will be Kaspar Förster junior — a composer born in Gdańsk and educated in Rome, who was responsible for transmitting the Italian style to countries north of the Alps, including Poland, but also the Kingdom of Denmark. The Polish-Italian exchange will also be the works of Tarquinio Meruli — an organist from Lombardy working in Warsaw — and the outstanding communions of Mikołaj Zielenski, who was associated with the Primate's Court in Łowicz, published in Venice.

An important land on the former trade route was the Danube basin. The concert program will feature works by Hungarian aristocrat Pál Esterházy and a composition by the outstanding innovator of violin technique, Heinrich Ignaz von Biber. The repertoire of this evening will also include the Magnificat of Samuel Capricornus and the sonata of trumpeter Pavel Josef Vejvanovsky. The journey will culminate the work of Józef Zeidler from Wielkopolska. His mass, combining the Baroque with the new style of Haydn and Mozart, is proof that Viennese stylistic innovations reached the Warta along the paths laid down centuries earlier by the Roman gold traders of the Baltic.