This special evening will surely be particularly romantic, thanks to the farewell concert programme. The NFM Choir, well known to Wrocław audiences, led for the last time by Agnieszka Franków-Żelazny, will perform at the National Forum of Music.

The concert features works very close to Agnieszka Franków-Żelazny and performed many times by the NFM Choir during fifteen years of work under her direction. Some of them – such as Ubi Caritas by Paweł Łukaszewski, Chwali, dusze moja, Gospoda by Romuald Twardowski, Beatus vir by Miłosz Bembinow or De profundis by Marcin Łukaszewski, which are contemporary Polish choral works to biblical psalms – were recorded on the albums of the NFM Choir De Profundis (2016) and Ubi Caritas (2018).

The opening piece, O magnum mysterium by a Spanish physician and composer of choral music, draws attention with a combination of a meditative character with a truly Spanish, sun-drenched joy. It is a responsory belonging to the earliest canonical hours (matutinum). The text refers to Christmas. Javier Busto begins his composition with a humble meditation, contemplation of the Mystery, and ends with a joyful, mystical Alleluia. The main points of the programme are three a cappella choral motets: O magnum mysterium by Francis Poulenc – a piece in the eclectic style so characteristic of this French composer and a responsory written for the Christmas liturgy, composed for the Evangelical cathedral in Berlin Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen for eight-part choir by Feliks Mendelssohn and the gradual Os justi meditabitur sapientiam, composed by Anton Bruckner.

The evening will end with a song by Jan Krutul to the text from the Song of Songs, specially commissioned by the National Forum of Music. The author in his setting of the words ‘You charmed my heart, my sister, my bride’ uses lively, bouncing rhythms in the outer parts of the piece, thanks to which the feeling expressed in this lively song takes on a different colour than in the lyrical original.