Founded in 1996, the Wratislavia Chamber Orchestra is an ensemble that engages in a free dialogue with diverse musical eras, forms, and styles. The fulfilment of this ambitious vision, formulated by Jan Stanienda, will be confirmed by the concert programme celebrating the orchestra’s 30th anniversary. They will perform under the direction of Roksana Kwaśnikowska – their current artistic director – and will be joined by pianist Krzysztof Stanienda.
The evening will feature compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, Edvard Grieg, and the 20th-century Hungarian composer Sándor Veress. We will also hear Dariusz Przybylski’s Vertigo – a work premiered by Wratislavia in 2025 during the Evenings at the Arsenal Chamber Music Festival, hosted by the orchestra. The concert will open with a youthful work by the Salzburg genius. It is hard to believe, but the joyful and graceful Divertimento in F major is the work of a sixteen-year-old. Mendelssohn was even younger when he composed the brilliant Double Concerto in D minor for violin, piano, and string orchestra, which heralded the beginning of the Romantic era – he was only fourteen then.
The second part of the evening will start with a 19th-century composition harking back to the Baroque, the Suite in Old Style op. 40 ‘Aus Holberg Zeit’. Its title references an 18th-century Danish playwright. In composing it to celebrate the bicentennial of Holberg’s birth, Edvard Grieg drew from the dance suites of bygone centuries. Sándor Veress’s ethnomusicological research has led him to use the energy of patterns rooted in tradition – imitating Béla Bartók, the author of Four Transylvanian Dances presents them in modern soundscapes.