One of the traits characterising the best musicians is the ability to hide the enormous effort required to play an instrument at master level. “In the case of the Japanese artist Hina Maeda”, wrote Ruch Muzyczny recently, “it is not only the effort that can’t be felt, but also the great joy coming from the performance”. This outstanding violinist – who triumphed in the most recent edition of the International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition, and won both first place and the audience prize in the Tokyo Music Competition in 2020 – will present a Polish repertoire: a composition by the patron of the competition that brought her greatest fame, as well as sonatas by Karol Szymanowski and Krzysztof Penderecki. At the piano she will be accompanied by Michał Francuz.
 
It is difficult to believe, but Polonaise de Concert in D major was already being drafted by Henryk Wieniawski in 1849, when he was just 14 years old. This short but effective piece was composed following inspiration from Karol Lipiński, whom the young composer had met a year before. It seems likely that the work took its final shape in 1850. As Irena Poniatowska wrote: “Wieniawski demonstrated creative independence and maturity, and at the same time he captured some sort of a national nature of the polonaise – a piece infused with the spirit of a hero and with a lot of panache, full of virtuosity, brimming with contrasts and dramatic moments.” His chamber work Romance et rondo was composed only a little bit later – in 1852, while he was touring Russia together with his brother Józef.
 
Two Polish composers of the 20th century created their violin and piano sonatas as if marking the beginning and end of the century. Karol Szymanowski composed his Sonata in 1903. It’s a work full of the youthful energy of the then 21-year-old composer. At the same time it is rather timid in the means applied, which is why it appealed to the conservative critics in Poland and was later held up as a comparison to his more innovative works, which irritated the composer himself. Krzysztof Penderecki wrote his Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano in 1999 on the commission of Anne-Sophie Mutter. For people who know only the composer’s most popular pieces – that is, those from the 1950s and 1960s – this is one of the works where the style may seem unfamiliar. The sound world of this five-movement composition, with the romantic Nocturne in the middle, is sometimes compared with that of Dmitri Shostakovich.