Six composers – seven quintets – four pianists – one quartet. The latest double album by the Kwartet Śląski features compositions by Aleksander Lasoń, Krzysztof Meyer, Zbigniew Bargielski, Bettina Skrzypczak and Bartosz Witkowski. The quartet is joined by pianists Eugeniusz Knapik, Piotr Sałajczyk, Zygmunt Krauze and Tymoteusz Bies.

French flute music occupies a unique place in the flautist’s repertoire, having had a significant influence on the modern art of flute playing. This was shaped by the complex phenomenon of the French flute school, which flourished at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the areas of its influence was the emergence of a rich repertoire reflecting a new style of performance. For his solo phonographic debut, Jan Krzeszowiec selected works by Gabriel Fauré, Philippe Gaubert, Darius Milhaud and Pierre Sancan in order to confront the classics of the flute repertoire and present his own interpretation of them. The flautist is accompanied on the piano by Tymoteusz Bies.

Against the Current and Upward:

“If we give precedence to sight, we may immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of ambiguous photographic frames captured through the eye of Wojciech Grzędziński. (…) Grzędziński’s images, complementing the concept of the album, reminded me that we are a species in free fall. Emil Cioran spoke of it, and so did Tadeusz Różewicz — this endless falling of ours. We fall while trying to learn how to fly.” — Marta Grzywacz

The debut album of the Ciepliński / Bies duo features chamber works by Krzysztof Penderecki, Claude Debussy, Mieczysław Wajnberg and Francis Poulenc.

A recording of just a single work — the famous Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. Originally written for harpsichord, the work is performed just as frequently on the piano. The composition consists of the opening and closing Aria and thirty variations based on its harmonic structure — including dance movements as well as intricate polyphonic forms such as fughettas and canons spanning various intervals. The work stands as an outstanding example of the variation form thanks to its richness of compositional and performance techniques, continuing to inspire generations of composers and performers up to the present day.

For Tymoteusz Bies, one of the most distinctive Polish pianists of his generation, many months of work on Bach’s masterpiece became an impulse that unlocked his artistic potential. The work has become for him an object of creative meditation, to which he returns again and again.