For the first time, the International Classical Music Awards Gala will be held at the National Forum of Music. This year’s ICMA award winners will perform during the concert. The same evening, there will also be a ceremonial presentation of the ICMA Award for special achievements, which the jury awarded to the National Forum of Music. In the justification, it was emphasized that thanks to a modern facility that meets the highest world standards, as well as extensive artistic activity, the NFM is becoming a role model. The award will be given to the initiator of the establishment of the institution, Director Andrzej Kosendiak.

In the Main Hall, award-winning musicians from around the world will perform various works for various line-up. The concert will begin with the sounds of Fryderyk Chopin’s Andante spianato and Grand Polonaise in E flat major performed by Alessandro Marangoni. The third movement of the Concerto for violin, piano and string orchestra op. 105 by Nikolai Kapustin (Maxim Lando – piano, Tassilo Probst – violin) and the finale of the Romantic Cello Concerto in B minor op. 104 by Antonin Dvořák (Gabriel Schwabe / NAXOS – cello). Camille Saint-Saëns’s Havanaise op 83. is also a work of violin literature. It will be presented by Leonhard Baumgartner (Discovery Award).  Young Artist of the Year, violist Sào Soulez Larivière will perform the Romance op. 85 from the beginning of the 20th century by Max Bruch. We will hear David Geringas perform Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra op. 47, one of Bruch’s best-known works, based on traditional Hebrew themes. Soprano Ermonela Jaho will present the aria Io son l’umile ancella from Adriana Lecouvreur by the Italian composer Francesco Cilea and the famous Ombra di nube by Licinio Refice.

We will turn to early music with the performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo BWV 992 and the anonymous works Reproches y quejas, Sim muero de amor and Trátame como quieras. The repertoire will also include Rhapsodia sinfónica for piano and string orchestra, op. 66 by Joaquín Turina (Josu de Solaun – piano), Elégie for cello and orchestra op. 24 by Gabriel Fauré and con moto by the contemporary artist David Philip Hefti, who was awarded in the “Composer” category. The gala will end with the Symphonie concertante op. 81 by Joseph Jongen – a composition written in the 1920s for organ with orchestra. The symphony, consisting of four extended movements and crowned with an effective toccata, impresses with the fullness of the sound of both the organ and the symphony orchestra, which wonderfully complements the timbre of the solo instrument. The work will be performed by Karol Mossakowski with the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic. Karol Mossakowski was recognized in the “Orchestra Award” category, awarded to him on the recommendation of the National Forum of Music.