During the concert on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the PWM Edition, Bomsori Kim will perform with the orchestra under the baton of the English conductor Duncan Ward. The Korean violinist is well known to the Wrocław audience. In 2016, she was the winner of the 15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition. She has recorded an album with the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic for the Deutsche Grammophon label.

The anniversary will open with Mieczysław Karłowicz’s Violin Concerto in A major. This is an early work by the composer, completely different from his later, melancholic, dark and pessimistic symphonic poems. The concerto is light and joyful in mood, arranged in a traditional three-movement formal scheme. The solo part contains many technical difficulties, but the composer was not interested in virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake. The most important thing for him was to highlight the expressive potential of the violin, and he subordinated the entire concerto to this aspect, creating a lyrical and surprisingly sunny composition. We will also hear the Concerto for Orchestra, a grand, virtuoso piece by Witold Lutosławski. It was commissioned by Witold Rowicki, director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, who led the premiere of the new composition in 1954. In this work, Lutosławski used the melodies of Masovian songs collected in the 19th century by Oskar Kolberg. The result was a three-movement, brilliant work, which is one of Lutosławski’s most frequently performed pieces. It also serves as a summary of his early period, in which the artist often relied on folk material.

Outside of Time is a work by Agata Zubel intended for a hologram soloist and orchestra, premiered in Donaueschingen in 2022. “A human imagines the future as a reflection of the present projected into empty space, whereas it is the result – often very approximate – of causes, usually elusive to us,” is how the composer summed up the message of her piece. It is divided into seven movements, each of which is preceded by a short commentary by the author on the issue of time and its importance for human existence. The programme will also feature the premiere of Grażyna Bacewicz’s new piece.