In his early childhood Kazimierz Serocki made his mark as an extremely talented pianist. Since his youngest performing years, he was drawn to modern music. He eventually explored this more during his time studying in Paris from 1947-1948. This release features Serocki’s piano work. Serocki, throughout his career, favored the piano above all other instruments, and saw it as the best way for him to express his personal, modern style. A graduate of the Manhatten School of Music, Adam Kosmieja has a repertoire extendeding from the Baroque period up to and including contemporary music and experimental music. Since 2014 he has been active on a project with Stefan Weglowski which focuses on minimalist music with electronics.

The album, that is here being entrusted into the hands of listeners, is the result of the artistic and research work of well-known Polish singer Izabela Kopeć . With a magnificent mezzo-soprano, the artist spent several years exploring the repertoire of Ludomir Michał Rogowski . This is a forgotten composer from the first half of the twentieth century, who can boast of great musical achievements and a unique biography. Rogowski spent most of his creative career in emigration. For many years he was in Paris, at the center of his cultural life, and at the end of his life settled in Dubrovnik in almost monastic retreat. The other songs on the album reflect the fate of the composer's fate and point to the extraordinary richness of his musical and literary inspirations.

Szymon Laks - the number 49543 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, was an outstanding composer, violinist, writer, a passionate linguist and translator, admitted that it was music that saved his life: in the extermination camp where he was from 1942 to 1944, he was a kapellmeister, musician, and copyist of the male orchestra. It was also there that he arranged and performed together with instrumentalists-prisoners Three Warsaw Polonaises by an unknown author from the 18th century for a chamber orchestra. They were found by accident and published by the Polish Music Publishing House already in 1950 and became the first published camp music literature. The Messages Quartet, established in 2014, focuses on 20th and 21st century Polish music, particularly promoting the works that are still being discovered and are rarely performed. The name of the ensemble refers to the famous String Quartet No. 2 "Messages" by Andrzej Panufnik. The Messages Quartet was created in the year of the 100th anniversary of Panufnik's birthday- 2014. The musicians of the Quartet are graduates of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and the Academy of Music in Krakow. They also graduated from the solo studies and from masterclasses at European universities. Apart from the concert activity, they also dedicate themselves to teaching at the Academy of Music in Katowice and Krakow.

A piano duo, a meeting of two strong and different personalities. Their performance is a creative quarrel, a spontaneous dialogue. Dorota's volatility and vision, supported by Pawel's spontaneity, create interpretations that are full of fire and temperament. The subtle sensitivity, iron will and courage of both pianists are manifested in a noble, revealing and profound understanding of the approach to music. They perform extensively in Europe, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, where they have already performed in several dozen cities as part of concerts, recitals and festivals. In Poland, they gave concerts, among others in such places as the Krakow Philharmonic, the "Atma" villa in Zakopane or the F. Chopin Birthplace in Zelazowa Wola. Both of them are virtuosos who have completed their solo studies with the highest scores. Dorota is a graduate of the Katowice Academy of Music, rich in tradition and success, he received his education in Krakow, and his musical family tree dates back to the famous Russian piano school. They met as finalists of the National Piano Competition F. Chopin in Warsaw.

Piotr Slopecki - one of the most interesting Polish pianists, accustomed us to his outstanding interpretations of Bach's music (The Goldberg Variations or the cycle Die Kunst der Fuge). The present album is a kind of phonographic opening of this versatile artist - pianist, organist, composer and arranger, who is familiar with jazz - to other worlds of the music he practices. This is a very discrete opening, as the album dedicated to three outstanding composers who seem to only slightly differ from the atmosphere of Bach's works. The amazing Partita in E minor BWV 830 - the first Bach composition published during the composer's lifetime - is accompanied by the Fantasia No. 3 by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, whose compositional technique was one of the inspirations for the works of the Master of the Fugue. Ludwig van Beethoven returns to the counterpoint technique in the Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106, which allows for discovery of this absolutely innovative work in the mainstream of music directly referring to the output of the Cantor of Leipzig.

Karolina Piatkowska-Nowicka and Bogna Czerwinska-Szymula, highly valued instrumentalists and chamber musicians, present three pieces sharing not only the instruments (violin and piano) for which they are written. The pieces presented on the release grow from a common root: their authors - Grazyna Bacewicz, Aleksander Tansman and Krzysztof Penderecki - belong to the most outstanding Polish composers of the 20th century. They also share the cyclical manner of shaping the piece, yet the approach towards this issue differs among the composers. The extremely varied in terms of emotion Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano by Bacewicz reveals neo-romantic features; neoclassical Faintaisie for Violin and Piano by Tansman astonishes with its care for sound colour, whereas monumental Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano by Penderecki intrigues with the musical language which, based on the twelve-note scale, treats it in a melodic and harmonic manner.

Maria In�s Guimar�es, a Brazilian pianist who has lived in France for 30 years, has decided to present a kind of musical counterpoint built around the work of two classic composers of the 20th-century- Heitor Villa-Lobos and Gy�rgy Kurt�g. Both composers share a strong admiration for Bach's music. Both of them transcribed some of the works of the Leipzig cantor. In his own work, Kurt�g is inspired by declamative style (without any restrictions) often without division into bars, even when referring to ethnic sources, which remains in strong opposition to the "Amazonian" poetics of Villa-Lobos, whose music is based on rhythms which are openly inspired by folk music. From a well-thought out combination of musical contrasts, an exceptional album was created, full of it's own color and surprising references.

CHOPIN - OPERA IN 4 ACTS

Fryderyk Chopin, a pendant in preparing his compositions to print, stubborn in negotiations with copyists and publishers, did not approve the songs to be published. Juliusz Fontana, the composer’s friend and later the publisher of the songs, mentioned that in Paris, at emigrant evenings, Chopin “in the moments of hearty frankness would recite them with intonation and accompaniment of the piano, with a book of poetry in front of him, postponing the moment of writing them down.” Such a moment never arrived, and Chopin never wrote down the songs. The songs were composed spontaneously, mostly during his youth in Warsaw. These songs are presented here, imagined and realized by the young pianist Blazej Kwiatkowski. He performs on a historical Broadwood piano from 1847, one that was played in Chopin’s times. The Broadwood’s sound is sorrowful, especially in minor keys which are often found in these songs. In the staccato sections the sound becomes jingling, which adds expression to battle rhythms of Before the Battle and Song from the Grave. The Broadwood’s sound has relatively short reverberation, which places the songs in an empty space, as the past in which they were created seems to us.

STRING QUARTETS, STRING TRIO,

Over the years, Krzysztof Baculewski, born on 26 December 1950, has become known not only as a great composer, but also as a publicist and teacher. Until 1974, he studied at the then Higher State School of Music in Warsaw under the supervision of Witold Rudzinski and from 1975 he continued his education in the composition class of Olivier Messiaen in Paris. For over 30 years, Baculewski has been a member of the repertoire committee of the Warsaw Autumn Festival. It is worth pointing out that the composer reconstructed the increasingly popular Piano Concerto in A flat major, Op. 2 by Ignacy Feliks Dobrzynski, as well as Beata by Stanislaw Moniszuko, also recently released by DUX. The present album includes a number of representative chamber works by Krzysztof Baculewski and selected pieces composed for flute solo.

Popper - Prokofiev - Liszt - Chopin

Martinu: Chamber Music

PIANO SONATAS

Marian Borkowski is a composer, musicologist, pianist, pedagogue, and organizer of musical life. Born in August 1934 in Pabianice, he studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski and piano with Jan Ekier and Natalia Hornowska at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw. He went on to further his studies with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory. He has been on the faculty of the Academy of Music in Warsaw since 1968, and has held many different roles. His work as a composer represents a wide spectrum of styles and genres. The present release represents his solo oeuvre. Several works for solo piano are included, as well as solo compositions for organ, cello, and even solo percussion.