It will be a special concert. The Lutosławski Quartet has prepared two premieres and both will be a real treat. The first of them, a world premiere, will be the presentation of the youthful String Quartet No. 1 “A song for String Quartet” by Hanna Kulenty, which this acclaimed composer decided to make available to performers forty years after it was written. The second one will be the String Quartet No. 3 “Screaming Into The Void”, composed specially for the Lutosławski Quartet, which will have its Polish premiere at the National Forum of Music after it was world premiered by the same quartet in New York during the American iteration of Jazztopad Festival.

Davis’s String Quartet, who has written music for the film trilogy The Matrix, references the virtuosity of the works by Krzysztof Penderecki, to whose memory it was dedicated, and Witold Lutosławski. We can also look for an interpretative key to the reading of the work in the tragic war in Ukraine, as Davies also commemorates its victims in his work.

The six string quartets written by Hanna Kulenty, created from 1983–2014, reflect the evolution of the musical language of one of the most celebrated Polish composers of our time, her view on the issues of form, time, space and sound. By premiering her first string quartet, the Lutosławski Quartet will join the ranks of such chamber musicians as the Kronos Quartet, Arditti Quartet, Quattuor Bozzini, Alexander Balanecsu String Quartet or the Silesian Quartet, which premiered the composer’s later works belonging to this genre.

The remaining part of the Lutosławski Quartet concert programme is no less fascinating. It consists of the String Quartet No. 6 by Marcin Markowicz, and Variations on the Theme From the West by the famous French jazz cellist Vincent Courtois.