9/11

(by Sztuczne Fiołki)

Hello! 

Today I'd like to share with you some of my reflections after my very first (sic!) visit in Spain. At the moment, when I start to write this post, I'm in Warsaw, waiting for a train to Poznań, already after spending more than 13 hours on journey…

                                                                                              

I was extremely nervous before I set out my trip, mostly because I'm afraid of flying. On one hand, I'm fascinated by planes and when I'm on board I feel some kind of a deep excitement caused by a huge amount of incredible impressions that I experiment while looking at the world from 11 km above the sea level. Every time the plane takes off it fascinates me just as it did the first time. On the other hand, I’m terrified of the inevitability of death which constantly reminds its presence by exit signs, life vests and oxygen masks. I know that it may sound ridiculous, but I can’t help it! I know that plane crashes are really rare; actually, planes are still incomparably safer than any other mean of transport. I’m also aware that emergency situations happen and usually they aren’t not dangerous. I know that my fear is absurd, but what do I do?

Well, I don’t actually know what scares me more – the fact that planes are just machines and they can always fail, or that I have to entrust my life to a stranger. Does it bother you too or is it just me being insane?

Actually, it doesn’t matter now, because I finally arrived, with no troubles and just a little bit of dizziness due to my low blood pressure.

There was also another reason for the anxiety I felt before the journey. I went to Valencia to participate in an international congress about madness in the work of Shakespeare, Cervantes and Llull, which was, actually, the first congress outside my University which I participated in. I was hoping that maybe this time being a musician would help me to deal with stress while reading in public – but, just as last year in Poznań – it didn’t help at all. Before I started, my hands were shaking, my legs were heavy and weak and I felt like I was going to faint. But finally I didn’t, so there’s at least one thing to be proud of.

And Valencia is such a beautiful city! As I wanted to listen to the majority of lectures, I had no time to visit any monuments, but at least I took a few long walks through the centre and some nice districts. I post below a photo of one of my favourite places: Pont des les Flors (Bridge of the Flowers). I’ve never seen such a beautiful bridge!  

And some vegan advertising just to finish this long post – don’t hesitate to visit Nomït restaurant. They have really good food and a nice library in the neighbourhood.

'Competitions are for horses, not artists' - Béla Bartók. 

Today is the last day of the final stage auditions of the Wieniawski Competition. We've already heard 5 out of 7 finalists: Richard Lin, Ryosuke Suho, Veriko Tchumburidze, Luke Hsu and Bomsori Kim. They had to perform two violin concertos during one evening with Poznan Philharmonic. All of them decided to play Wieniawski Violin Concerto no. 2 op. 22 and besides, they performed Brahms, Beethoven and Shostakovich concertos. 

I would like to comment on two great, but extremely different performances of the Shostkovich concerto. This piece had been finished by the composer in 1948, after the Second World War, but it had to wait 7 years so that the censors allow it to be published. David Oistrakh, for whom it had been dedicated, called this concerto a 'shakespearian masterpiece'. It's an unbelivebly dark, even demonic, epic story with a famous composer's DSCH sign in the 2nd movement (Scherzo). It requires a 'complete', mature artist, without any technical barriers, capable of produce dozens of kinds and colours of the sound.  

Veriko Tchumburidze, who played Shostakovich on Thursday, aroused the first standing ovation during the 15th Wieniawski Competition. Her interpretation was very emotional, even aggressive. She played as she were haunted by Shostkovich's ghost. A mysterious beginning (actually, not perfectly in tune, but it doesn't matter), daring Scherzo, melancholic Passacaglia and wild Burlesque provoked a vivid discussion about the limits of the being non-academic. Her performance reminded me to a literary style in Spanish literature called esperpento - beyond the limits of grotesque and inclining into the direction of being absurd. 

Bomsori Kim is 7 years older than Veriko. She also aroused a standing ovation, though her performance of Shostakovich was totally different from the previous one. She proved that she's a complete artist, who understands each note (and each break!) of the music. Her Shostakovich didn't have to be out of the control to get wild and exuberant. She didn't change being grotesque into being absurd. The 1st movement - Nocturne - and the 3rd - Passacaglia - were even darker and dimmer than in the Veriko's interpretation, because she seemed so peaceful. So disturbingly peaceful. At the same time, scherzo was as vivid as it seemed to be like an image of carnival in a battlefield full of dead people. Her Shostakovich was like an epic story about the biggest atrocity of the 20th century. Or at least about how we imagine its cruelty.

I admire both of them because they fulfilled the most important aim of the art - they moved the audience and they didn't let it be indifferent. They've already won. 

http://wieniawski2016.tvp.pl/27415244/veriko-tchumburidze-gruzjaturcja-4-etap-wystep-2

http://wieniawski2016.tvp.pl/27427132/bomsori-kim-korea-poludniowa-4-etap-wystep-2

The 2nd stage of the Wieniawski competition has finished a few hours ago. 26 musicians from 11 countries have faced a very challenging repertoire - one composition for violin and piano by Fritz Kreisler, a romantic miniature and a huge 19th or 20th century Sonata. There has been no place for trivial virtuosity or playing the violin without playing music. The aim of this stage has been to choose the most sensitive, creative and unique musicians. 

The members of Jury, chaired by maestro Maxim Vengerov, have decided to invite half of the participants to the 3rd stage. Although my guess has been right in the great majority, I think that the verdict is, at least, controversial. And I'm sure that one person will be definitely missing in the next stage. 

I've known Ania Malesza for almost a decade. She's always been an extremely gifted and brilliant musician. And in the last couple of days she has proved that she's already become a mature Artist, capable of doing incredible things. I know lots of musicians, but very few of them make me feel their music so deeply and intensively. 

Everybody knows that competitions are all about politics. It's just such a shame that some other people's interest can shut door to someone who deserve them to be widely open and inviting. 

Well, I truly believe that there's nothing that will stop Ania from achieving her goals. Eventually, somebody else will get to the final. But she's the one whose music has got to our hearts. And will stay there forever.

I'm very proud that I can be, study and make music around such an incredible Artist like her. And I'm happy that my math coaching helped her to go through the high school  - look where she's got! ;) 

Don't hesitate and listen to the most sensitive, creative and unique violinist of the 15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition. And enjoy. 

Hello after the holiday break!

I'm glad to be back and to continue on sharing my thoughts and reflections with you.

I would like to dedicate the entire upcoming week to one of the most important cultural events in Poznań - the 15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition, which is celebrated in our city since October 8th.

First of all, it's essential to point out that it's the oldest violin competition in the world. It was organized for the first time in 1935 by a nephew of the famous composer, Adam Wieniawski. The first winner was Ginette Neveu, an amazing (only) 15-years old French violinist, who beat a legendary Soviet artist, David Oistrakh. Unfortunately, she couldn't take advantage of her extreme success for a long time - she died in a plane crash in 1949, when she before her 31st birthday.

The competition was planned to be held every five years, but it was interrupted by the Second World War. It came back after a gap of 17 years, in 1952, and from that time it took place 12 times. Every edition gives us another reason to be proud of our Polish violinists - there are visible and important amongst the participants and they continue on proving that the so called 'Polish school of the violin' is one of the greatest in the world.

There's a lot to tell about, but let's get to the point. Today was the 2nd day of the 2nd stage auditions and I had a huge pleasure to listen to Celina Kotz's performance. She's 1 of 6 Polish violinists who had qualified to the 2nd stage of the competition, just like 5 years ago, when she was an impressing 17-years-old violinist, promising to be a great artist one day. And today she's proved that this day had already come - she's an extremely mature, conscious and developed Artist, who is capable of telling wonderful stories through her beautiful music.

She started her performance with 'Little Viennese March' by Fritz Kreisler. It was a nice, well-played miniature, which reawoke my appetite for more. Then she played Wieniawski 'Legende' op. 17, which turned out to be a nostalgic, even melancholic story of something left or lost. She finished with Ravel Sonata in G Major 'Blues', which I find very hard to describe with words. The first movement, very impressionistic, full of pastel colors and long brush strokes, took me to the 19th-century France. And then, when I was thinking that it couldn't be better, there it was. The second movement. 'All that jazz'. It was so vivid and real that I was feeling like I were sitting in Blue Note drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and listening to a great, Friday night jam session...

Wanna go there? Just listen:

Hi! 

Today I'd like to recommend you a book I've recently got. It's The War is Dead, Long Live the War: Bosnia: the Reckoning by Ed Vulliamy, a British journalist and writer, who was New York correspondent for The Observer for six years and Rome correspondent from The Guardian. It's a reportage which tells about many aspects of today's situation in Bosnia: about its political condition, about how is the life of the survivors 20 years after the outbreak of the Bosnian War (the book was published in 2012), about the needness of justice and punishment for the war criminals who are, partially, still free, and about a problem which is nowadays omnipresent in any kind of historical debate: the collective memory.

The famous slogan: 'Remembering Srebrenica' has a particular meaning and importance for the author. Although he didn't take part in the Srebrenica investigation, he was one of the journalist who discovered the concentration camps in Omarska and Trnpolje and informed the world about them, which was one of the most important and, at the same time, shocking news after the Second World War. 

But does anybody of you know anything about Omarska? About the details of the Srebrenica massacre, which was actually the biggest genocide in Europe after the Holocaust? About the trial of Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić? If yes, you are in the tiny minority of the Europeans. This is also one of the aspects which Ed Vulliamy comments widely. It's unbelievable that Europe decided to leave unsaid the fact that in the very last years of the 20th century the areas of the Former Yugoslavia experienced such a huge cruelty, despite of the declarations of the leaders of the majority of the European countries who promised that the atrocities of the Second World War would never be back. 

Few days ago I wanted to recommend to one of my friends a documentary about the Srebrenica massacre which I'd watched a day before. He interrupted me after I'd told him what the film was about and asked me: 'Why are you watching this kind of films? What for? Come on, I don't want to know anything about it. How can you sleep calmly after watching it?'. OK, maybe I wouldn't recommend watching 'Shoah' by Claude Lanzmann to everybody (although I think it's the greatest film of our times). But I would rather ask how do you sleep calmly pretending that the Bosnian War never happened? 'Remembering Srebrenica' doesn't refer to the past. Neither to the present. It refers to the future - we have to remember that only two decades, only two-hours flight from Paris separate us from the biggest drama of the second half of the 20th century, which is still going on. We have to remember it so we won't let it happen again.

And one more thing. In the Polish preface to The War is Dead, Long Live the War: Bosnia: the Reckoning Ed Vulliamy wonders why the Polish translation of the book is the first one in Europe, even though Polish people don't seem to be very interested in this part of history. 

Think about it. And then - read it. 

Hello from Italy!

Yesterday I finally arrived in a small town near to Bari, after spending two days in a (surprisingly economic!) car. If you've already started to hate me because of my geographic location, I can tell you that there's nothing to be jealous of - it's cold, it's raining and I have no time to do anything else apart from playing violin and studying. But during this 2000-km journey I had enough time to reflect about things that I'd like to share with you.

First of all, if you've ever had an opportunity to see a sunset in the Alps from a plane, you might think that there's nothing more beautiful in the world. That's what I thought when I saw it last year for the first time. But this year I decided to change perspective and see the Austrian and Italian part of this incredible mountain chain from below. And I'm not able to decide whether it's better or worse because it's totally different, but still, definitely breathtaking. It's impossible to catch it if you only have a poor LG smartphone camera, but still, isn't it just amazing?

Secondly, I had a great opportunity to actually experience some observations from one of  Marc Augé's texts, which some of you and I were lucky to comment with our professor on the master's degree seminary classes. Here's a fragment from his famous book 'Non-places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity':

'France's well-designed autoroutes reveal landscapes of somewhat reminiscent of aerial views, different the ones seen by travelers on the old national and departmental main roads. They represent, as it were, a change from intimist cinema to the big sky of Westerns. But it is the texts planted along the wayside that tell us about the landscape and make its secret beauties explicit. Main roads no longer pass through towns, but lists of their notable features - and, indeed, a whole commentary - appear on big signboards nearby. In a sense the traveler is absolved of the need to stop or even look. Thus, drivers batting down the autorout du sud are urged to pay attention to a thirteenth-century fortified village, a renowned vine-yard, the 'eternal hill' of Vézelay, the landscapes of the Avallonnais and even those of Cézanne [...]. The landscape keeps its distance, but its natural or architectural details give rise to a text, sometimes supplemented by a schematic plan when it appears that the passing traveler is not really in a position to see the remarkable features drawn to his attention, and thus has to derive what pleasure he can form the mere knowledge of its proximity.

Motorway travel is thus doubly remarkable: it avoids, for functional reasons, all the principal places to which it takes us; and it makes comments on them'. 

It's a great observation, valid for the French, German, Austrian and Italian autoroutes. If you think about it this way, a 2000-km journey becomes a long and incredibly dynamic narration. 

That's all by now because the 'siesta' is already over and I have to dress up as an artist and try to win a violin competition. 

Have a nice afternoon!