“This suite is a plaything for me, and I would be very happy if you both played with it,” Michał Spisak wrote in 1957 to the famous violinists Irena Dubiska and Eugenia Umińska, for whom he wrote the Suite for two violins. The Polish Violin Duo of Marta Gidaszewska and Robert Łaguniak is an ensemble with skills that allow the musicians to have a truly playful approach to the performed repertoire, in which, apart from the Spisak Suite, there will be works by Grażyna Bacewicz, Mieczysław Wajnberg, as well as some Hungarian composers.

The duo was founded in 2014 at the Poznań Secondary School of Music. Karina Gidaszewska was its supervisor at that time. The duo have won a dizzying number of almost two hundred awards at competitions held in every part of the world, including Japan and the United States, as well as at the International Stanisław Moniuszko Competition o Polish Music, where in 2019 they won the first prize and six special prizes in the “chamber ensembles” category. In 2020, the duo were nominated for the Corypheus of Polish Music award in the “Discovery of the Year” category. In 2021, they received the Music Eagles award for their achievements. They have recorded two albums released by the DUX label.

Recordings of Polish songs, which will be heard during the duo’s performance in Wrocław, are included on their second album. It was released at the turn of 2022 and 2023. In addition to Spisak’s Suite, the Polish Violin Duo will also perform another piece of this genre – the five-movement Neo-baroque Suite for two violins by Grażyna Bacewicz. Another piece in the programme is the excellent Sonata for two violins by Mieczysław Weinberg, whose work does not lose popularity after his 100th birth anniversary, celebrated in 2019. The oldest of the three Hungarian works presented this evening will be the Sonata op. 15 by the Hollywood composer Miklós Rózsa, author of the Oscar-winning music for Ben Hur. The other two are works by contemporary artists: the Lied ohne Worte by Gabor Barta and sounding like an express train from Belgrade to Podgorica, with clear influences of American minimalism though, the Balkanoid by András Derecskei.