The Famd. Pl Orchestra The Orchestra was established in 2009 under the auspices of the Academy of Early Music Foundation from Szczecin. The main objective...

The Famd. Pl Orchestra The Orchestra was established in 2009 under the auspices of the Academy of Early Music Foundation from Szczecin. The main objective of the Foundation is to promote the trend of historically informed performance. The group is one of very few in Europe which uses period instruments from the turn of the 19th century, pitched in a - 430 Hz. The Orchestra is made up of outstanding instrumentalists who play period instruments and work full-time as soloists, chamber musicians and teachers at renowned national and foreign music institutions. The leader of the Orchestra is Grzegorz Lalek, a prominent violin virtuoso, whose music activity combines solo, chamber and orchestral performances. The founder and artistic director of the Orchestra is Pawel Osuchowski. The direction towards which the Orchestra is meant to be heading assumes cooperation with artists from the Baltic Sea region revolving around the concerts and festivals organized by the Foundation: On the Gothic Track - Music in the West Pomeranian monuments and the Szczecin Early Music Festival. The Orchestra plays regularly in the regions along the Polish-German border, where it gives numerous concerts and festivals, such as the Concerts of Nations, Kloster Sinna Sommermusiken, Kultursommer in Dominikanerklosert Prenzlau, Uckerm�rkische Musikwochen. In 2010 the Orchestra was the only Polish group, conducted by a Pole, to perform Fr�d�ric Chopin's music according to the historic scores of prof. Jan Ekier, with Kevin Kenner playing the piano built by Pleyel in 1847. Since 2010 the Orchestra has been running a concert project called Beethoven non plus ultra featuring the performance of all the works by the master from Bonn. In 2012-13 the group took part in the programme of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage - The Promotion of Polish Culture abroad and toured Ukraine with The Royal Concerts - the Music of the Old Republic of Poland and the Music Archives of Polish Monasteries. Pawel Osuchowski A graduate of the Academy of Music in Cracow, in the conducting class of prof. Jerzy Katlewicz. He improved his knowledge and skills under the supervision of Helmuth Rilling by taking part in concert projects and master courses as a scholarship holder of the International Bach Academy in Stuttgart. He conducted a number of symphonic concerts, including the Philharmonic Orchestras from such cities as Czestochowa, Jelenia G�ra, Cracow, Opole, Olsztyn, Rzesz�w, Szczecin, Katowice as well as the Sinfonia Baltica in Slupsk, Preu�isches Kammerorchestre Prenzlau (Germany) and the Leopolis Orchestra in Lviv. He also conducted performances at the Opera at the Castle in Szczecin and performed in front of international audiences at the concerts and festivals in the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Iceland, Germany, Ukraine and Italy. He established and ran Consortium Iagellonicum - the University Baroque Orchestra at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow - between 1993 and 2000. He is currently working as the artistic director of the Collegium Maiorum Choir of The West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin, which performs at a number of concerts in Poland and abroad. In 2007-2012 he hosted his own radio programme called The Music Dialogue on the Polish Radio Szczecin. Since 2008 he has been working as an artistic director of the Famd. Pl Orchestra. The artist is also involved in animation and organization of artistic events, concerts and festivals. He started the Bach Days in Cracow, Europe without Borders - Music without Borders Cracow 2000, the Szczecin Early Music Festival, On the Gothic Track - Music in the West Pomeranian monuments and other events. He is an artistic director of the Academy of Early Music Foundation where he is involved in artistic and educational activity. He was the author of the international scholarship programme for young people Reykjavik vs Szczecin - the meetings of young chamber music groups 2010. He recorded numerous records with Polish music and was nominated for the Fryderyk Award for the recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's works. Vitae Pomeranorum - The Lost World of Pomeranian Music Vitae Pomeranorum project was prepared by the Academy of Early Music Foundation and is aimed at promoting and popularizing the knowledge of music traditions of the old Pomerania, which spans the contemporary areas of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (German: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) in Germany and the West Pomeranian Region in Poland, for which Szczecin used to be an administrative, economic and cultural hub for ages. The project involves a series of workshops, lectures, conferences and concerts. The subject of the first edition which took place in Chojno and Szczecin in 2013 was Franz Anton R�sler, the 18th c. composer whose life and work were related to the history of music of what is known today as the Euroregion Pomerania. Anton R�sler vel Antonio Rosetti, the German composer and double bass player, was born in the period of the Bohemian Enlightenment. He is often mistaken for four other musicians of the time whose names had similar German and Italian spelling. He was born in 1750 in Leitmeritz (now Litomer�ce in the northern Czech Republic) and died on 30th June 1792 in Ludwigslust (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in Germany). He had the vocation for spiritual matters and studied in Jesuit colleges in Prague until the congregation was suppressed in 1773. He did not manage to take orders and began working as a musician under a changed Italian name - Rosetti. His first employer was Prince Ernsat von Oettingen-Wallerstein, who enabled him to develop his composing talent during a number of music journeys. In 1785 he was promoted from the position of double bass player to the function of bandmaster and court composer. He worked successively in Oettingen, Ansbach, Paris, Trier, Ludwigslust and Berlin. Following 16 years of hard and badly-paid service in Wallerstein, Rosetti took the position of bandmaster in the court orchestra of Friedrich Franza, I Prince of Mecklenburg and Schwerin, at the Ludwigslust Castle. He was finally an appreciated and well-paid musician who joined such renowned artists from Pomerania as Johannes Matthias Sperger or Franz Xavera Hammer. It was the final period in Rosetti's life. The orchestra and vocal group in Ludwigslust were an inspiration for his later orchestral and oratorical works. The extensive composing output of Rosetti includes over 400 works, mainly vocal, such as songs, hymns and anthems, as well as more complex pieces such as chorals, odes, cantatas, offertories, masses and oratories. The performance of Rosetti's Requiem in E-flat major during the special Holy Mass in memory of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on 14th December 1791 in the St. Nicholas Church in Prague was a truly memorable event. The final performance of Jesus in Gethsemane oratory at the court of the Prussian King Frederick William II in 1792, just three months before the composer's death, became equally famous. However, what brought Rosetti greatest fame were his instrumental compositions - solo, chamber and orchestral music. Concerts and symphonies were particularly popular and acclaimed in Europe. The first printed edition of Rosetti's symphonies was published in 1779 by Le Menu et Boyer in Paris. Since 1781 his works had been included in programmes of the Parisian Concert Spirituel. His symphonies were equally popular in London, where they were played during the famous Friday concerts of J. P. Salomon. The total of 51 symphonies composed over only 17 years testifies to the incredible talent and great ease with which he created his subsequent works. A number of manuscripts and first editions of Rosetti's symphonies survived to this day. They are stored in the archives of Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in Munich, �sterreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Vienna and in the Library of the Pauline Monastery at Jasna G�ra. The composers and critics contemporary to Rosetti expressed admiration for his art. Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, a German composer and writer of the Sturm und Drang period, included Rosetti among the most popular composers of his time in the treaty Ideen zu einer �sthetik der Tonkunst. He wrote that Rosetti's music was characterized by natural beauty and charm as well as unique melodic line. The most marked assessment came from composer Charles Burney, the then British music historian, who saw Rosetti along with Haydn and Mozart among the greatest music geniuses of 18th c. Today, after all the years, his music bears witness to the exceptional wealth of the culture of the epoch, which is echoed in his symphonies. The symphonies presented on the album Vitae Pomeranorum strive to answer the question which I was faced with while the Famd. Pl Orchestra worked on the interpretation of Rosetti's music. Why did history so mercilessly deprive the composer of a well-deserved place among the contemporary music artists of the period? When you listen today to the themes and phrases of the symphony in G minor, it is quite easy to imagine that Mozart or Haydn could have written it just as well. But it was Rosetti who opened the door and built bridges between Bach and his sons, the early works of Mozart and Haydn all the way right to Beethoven's symphonies. Never before had the counterpoint patterns of Baroque art and the classical symmetry of homophonic tutti been combined so daringly. The selected symphonies were created in 1780-87, the symphonies in D major and C major were included in the collection of six works released in Paris and signed by Rosetti. They consist of classical four parts and have a modest instrumental line-up. The narrative is given traditionally to string instruments, although Rosetti applied a division into two voices of viola and a single voice of cello emphasized by additional bass (called either basso or violone), which was not used by other composers. The polyphonic texture reaching up to six independent voices makes great use of that. Wind instruments - flute, oboes, bassoon and horns play a double part - on the one hand they support the main melodic line of violin and on the other they complement the colourful effects of dynamic contrasts of tutti. The symphony in G minor, written in March 1787 in Wallerstein, RWV A 42 (Rosetti Werke Verzeichnis - the composer's catalogue edited by Sterling E. Murray) has a similar construction. It has an unusual four-part structure with a minuet in part two. As the only symphony by Rosetti pitched in minor key it has a clearly distinguishable dramatic expression and foreshadows not only Mozart's work from the following year (KV 550), but also the thematic pattern of Beethoven's 3rd part of Concerto in C minor, Op. 37. Undoubtedly, musicologists have a long way to go before they will be able to assess the extent to which Rosetti's music inspired the greatest composers of the age. Listening to just one of his symphonies leads to a very simple conclusion that Rosetti should be placed among the greatest composers of 18th c. , which makes his music even more attractive today, when audiences are saturated with the popular music of the old masters. Pawel Osuchowski The material was recorded on 28th-30th August 2013 in the Holy Trinity Church in Chojna. The Famd. Pl Orchestra plays period instruments and their copies pitched in a - 430 Hz.