Rafał Łuc and Maciej Frąckiewicz are two accordion masters fascinated by contemporary music and well-known to the audience of the National Forum of Music. During their concert, they will present works by Polish composers recorded for the first time on their joint album Dualabilis, released in 2020 by Opus Series. Their programme will be complemented by pieces by Bernhard Lang and Julius Eastman. The composer Marta Śniady, whose works were presented in Wrocław at the last Musica Electronica Nova festival, will help them create the electronic layer of the second piece, provocatively titled Evil Nigger.

The accordion has many faces today. The Polish champion of its versatile use is undoubtedly Andrzej Krzanowski, who died prematurely in 1990 and was considered a member of "The Stalowowolska Generation". Krzanowski, associated with Upper Silesia, played the accordion since childhood. In times when this instrument was still perceived as an element of folk culture, he became a pioneer of a broader use of its expressive possibilities, including by searching for new playing techniques. His Nocturne, which will be performed by Łuc and Frąckiewicz, is a work striking in its simplicity, even severity. It may bring to mind the landscape of Finland, where, interestingly, it was first performed in 1987. Like Krzanowski in the past, today Mikołaj Majkusiak combines his composing activities with playing the accordion. In 2018, he composed Chorale and Fantasia, blending a gloomy mood with an atmosphere of rhythmic insistence. The last of the pieces released on Dualabilis that the duo will present will be an accordion fresco with an almost symphonic texture by Tomasz Opałka entitled Crossroads.

The work of Paweł Szymański inspired Austria’s Bernhard Lang to compose one of the works from the Loops cycle. The creation of DW29 was influenced by Balkan folklore – a genre of music known as sevdalinka or sevdah. Julius Eastman, the author of the minimalist piece Evil Nigger, which will be played at the very end of the concert, was an important figure in the New York avant-garde of the 1970s and 1980s. He willingly used his work to manifest his uncompromising political beliefs, and his motto was “Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, and a homosexual to the fullest.”