The repertoire of the concert featuring the NFM Boys’ Choir and Girls’ Choir conducted by Małgorzata Podzielny accompanied by pianist Mikołaj Szczęsny will reference International Women’s Day. For this occasion, the young choristers have prepared musical surprises for the ladies, but not only for them. The girls will interpret pieces by Polish, contemporary women composers, thus drawing attention to the constantly growing role of women in the arts.
Gabriel Fauré has gone down in history as one of the greatest artists of the late Romantic period and the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was undoubtedly a special figure in French artistic life, active not only as a composer, but also as a conductor and teacher. In the 1870s, thanks to the support of Camille Saint-Saëns, he took up the position of choirmaster at the Church of St Magdalene in Paris, which had a significant influence on the structure of his vocal compositions. These include Maria, mater gratiae op. 47 no. 2 – a small, melodically inventive musical arrangement of a prayer praising Mary. However, the concert will not lack accents closer to the present: the NFM Boys Choir will perform the legendary single We Are the World, which, when released in March 1985, quickly topped the charts all over the world. Among the artists taking part in its recording were such vocalists as Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Tina Turner and Diana Ross. The song will be preceded by Victor C. Johnson’s energetic piece Kuimba! channelling African tunes, the sound of which is to be an invitation to open your heart to the power of music and to sing together.
During the concert, a fragment of the soundtrack of the famous French film drama Les choristes will also be heard. It tells the story of the teacher Clément Mathieu, a former conductor employed in a reformatory for boys, whom he tries to infect with a love of music and sensitise to the beauty of art, to which end he establishes a choir bringing together the pupils wronged by life. Cerf-volant is a piece sparkling with radiant sounds by Bruno Coulais about a kite floating in the wind, which in this story is a meaningful symbol of childhood dreams.