WANDERING WORLDS

Three composers and three biographies, in which the meanders of history have firmly left their mark. The first is Filip (or Philipp) Scharwenka, born in Szamotuly in 1847, who spent most of his life in Berlin. The other two were composers born in Warsaw at the beginning of the 20th century — Szymon Laks (1901—1983) and Henryk Wars (1903—1977). The concert, which will be performed by excellent Polish instrumentalists, will be opened by Philipp Scharwenka's Piano Quintet in B minor, preserved in the late Romantic style and composed at the end of the composer's life, already in the 20th century in Berlin. The piano quintet of Szymon Laks was created after the Second World War, in the 1960s and is based on the musical material of the III String Quartet. However, his moving wartime fate is hard to miss. In 1941 he was arrested and in 1942 he was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where he was chaplain master of the camp orchestra for two years. In October 1944 he was sent to the Dachau camp and was happily liberated there. He returned to Paris, where he had been active before the war, in May 1945. Not so dramatic, but also turbulent, was the fate of Henryk Wars (or actually Henryk Warszawski), who went from being a star of Polish entertainment and film music and a pioneer of Polish jazz to an emigrant building a new life in the United States. He took part in the September campaign, ended up in German captivity, from which he managed to escape, and then joined the II Polish Corps, that is, the Army of General Anders and crossed the entire battle route with it. After demobilization, he settled in Los Angeles and returned to composing, also for Hollywood. His songs were sung by celebrities, including Bing Crosby and Doris Day

Concert co-organized by the National Institute of Music and Dance as part of the program “Stage of Polish Music”, financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage