Cellists István Várdai and Tomasz Daroch will present works by four composers, forming a narrative about a dialogue with the past. This is music in which tradition is not a dead legacy but a living source of inspiration, returning in new contexts and filtered through the sensibilities of successive generations. The common thread of the pieces is the tension between memory and the present, between what has passed and what still resonates in the composers’ imagination.

The evening will begin with Julius Klengel’s Suite in D minor op. 22. Its composer was also an outstanding cellist, serving as concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester for over four decades. Written in the late 1880s, his op. 22 consists of six movements and draws on Baroque stylistics – it features stylised dances such as the gavotte and sarabande, and the piece culminates in a fugue. “I don’t write new music. My music is a response and echo of what already exists,” is how Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, born in 1937, sums up his approach to his own work. In Abendserenade and Augenblicke einer Serenade, which will be performed during the concert, the artist draws on the tradition of light, atmospheric pieces played in the evening or at night, yet gives them a deeply reflective, almost meditative character. He describes his melancholy-saturated, quiet works as “metamusic” or “metaphorical music”.

Italian cellist Giovanni Sollima, born in Palermo in 1962, is a figure well-known to Wrocław audiences. He is also a prolific composer, and in his The Hunting Sonata, he draws on the idiom of Baroque music, transforming it with contemporary performance techniques. His artistic language is enriched by elaborate articulatory effects, including glissandi, which lend the narrative an expressive and lively character. The finale features the work of Niccolò Paganini – one of the greatest violin virtuosos of the 19th century. He captivated audiences not only with his phenomenal playing but also with his eccentric manner and demonic image. Rumours circulated that his abilities were the result of a pact with the devil – a notion the artist, endowed with a keen sense of humour, readily exploited as part of his own legend. Mosè-fantasia op. 24 MS 23 is a striking, virtuosic work based on the aria Dal tuo stellato soglio from Gioacchino Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto. In this brilliant paraphrase, operatic tradition meets instrumental mastery, and the resonant source is an even earlier legacy – an Old Testament story. Thanks to Paganini’s imagination, this motif returned in a completely new form. During the festival, you will listen to it in an arrangement for two cellos, prepared by Werner Thomas-Mifuny.