I was delighted to receive an invitation to the 7th edition of the Eufonia International Festival of Central and Eastern European Music, organised by the National Centre for Culture in Poland. This year, the event takes place between November 13th and December 7th. Initially held exclusively in Warsaw, the festival has expanded for the second consecutive year to include several major cities across Poland. Thus, in this edition, concerts scheduled in the country's capital are also being presented in Katowice, Opole, Olsztyn, Kraków, Łódź, Gdańsk, Lusławice and Dębica (the hometown of Krzysztof Penderecki). A first for the festival is its expansion beyond Polands borders, with Eufonia reaching Bucharest as part of the 2024-2025 Romania-Poland Cultural Season. The season is organized on the Romanian side by the Ministry of Culture and the Romanian Cultural Institute, and on the Polish side by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, in collaboration with the Polish Institute in Bucharest. The November 28th concert, performed by the Bucharest Philharmonic under the baton of Gabriel Bebeșelea, was included in the festival programme before the orchestra presented an almost identical programme in Kraków and Warsaw.

Romanian musical works have been featured in the Eufonia Festival concerts since its very first edition. In 2022, the festival also welcomed its first Romanian performers, with the participation of the Transylvania State Philharmonic Orchestra of Cluj-Napoca, conducted by Gabriel Bebeșelea.

I was there on that occasion, and this time, at the invitation of the National Centre for Culture in Poland, headed by Robert Piaskowski, and through the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, I chose to attend the concert held on the 29th of November in Warsaw. This gave me the opportunity to observe just how much this ambitious festival, which brings together artists from Central and Eastern European countries while covering a much broader geographical area, has developed. For example, it also includes musicians from the Baltic states. The seventh edition carries the metaphorical title Poświaty i powidoki, which could be translated into Romanian as Străluciri și imagini remanente (Glimmers and Afterimages). In essence, the title refers to the echoes and sonic images that remain in our memory long after a concert has ended, but which also inspire new generations of artists. It is a historical imprint viewed through the lens of art.

Entitled Exuberance, Saturday evening concert was performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of conductor Gergely Madaras, with cellist Tomasz Daroch as soloist. The institutions male choir also took part, prepared by Bartosz Michałowski. The programme, performed in the Philharmonic Hall before a large audience, featured works by three cosmopolitan composers who are significant both to their respective national cultures and to the universal musical heritage: Enescu, Kodály and Weinberg. All three drew inspiration from their nations musical traditions while developing original and distinctive musical languages.

The concert opened with George Enescu Romanian Rhapsody, Op. 1. Evocative was my first thought as I listened to the opening notes, with the cellos taking center stage. It was a feeling that stayed with me throughout the evening. Performed brilliantly by the Polish orchestra under Madara, the score revealed all its splendor, featuring an emotional flute solo performed from the balcony of the concert hall, playful folk-inspired passages and the majestic sounds of the royal anthem. These highlighted both the richness of the orchestras tonal palette and its versatility, as it moved between sections of overwhelming lyricism, folk-inspired episodes and a solemn, imposing finale, alternating subdued chamber-like nuances with the fortissimo passages of the full orchestra. The Polish Philharmonic male choir impressed with its compact, homogeneous sound and precise attacks, responding impeccably to the conductors gestures. I particularly appreciated Gergely Madara's decision to schedule the interval after this work, allowing the audience to savor the echoes of this extraordinary score, which continued to resonate in our hearts long after the performance had ended.

In the second half of the evening, we first heard Mieczysław Weinberg Cello Concerto, Op. 43. Composed in 1948, one of the most difficult years in the composer's life, the work dates from a period when his father-in-law was assassinated on Stalin orders. The Soviet dictator would subsequently persecute the composer himself. The concerto was not premiered until 1957, when the Bolshevik regime became more permissive following Stalin's death. Structured in four movements, the concerto features a surprising cadenza at the end of the third movement. Its extraordinary length creates the impression of an independent work for cello, subtly accompanied by part of the orchestra. The concerto conveys a wide range of emotions and was performed with remarkable expressiveness by Polish cellist Tomasz Daroch. A principal player with the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra, Daroch is also active in various chamber ensembles and pursues a solo career. The chamber-like character that emerges from most of Weinberg concerto is accompanied by a sense of nostalgia. Although the work also includes expansive passages that evoke the atmosphere of old-fashioned fairgrounds, energetically and impeccably conveyed by the brass sections, the word I would use to sum up this listening experience is, once again, evocative. The ending of the concerto was equally moving. Through his gestures, cellist Tomasz Daroch managed to keep the audience in suspense, so much so that the applause came only after a long moment of silence, during which the echoes of the final chord gradually faded away completely.

The final work on the programme was a piece in which Gergely Madaras had the opportunity to display his exuberance: Zoltán Kodály Dances of Galánta. One of the Hungarian composer's most popular works, it dates from 1933. The suite is built around folk melodies that remained in Kodály memory from the time when, as a child, he had lived for a while in Galánta, a town in present-day Slovakia. The work fascinates through its wide range of expressive techniques, taking us on a colorful roller coaster of changing tempos and dynamics. The Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra delivered a brilliant performance, successfully alternating between evocative, picturesque moments featuring ethereal solos and passages overflowing with vitality, before bringing the work to a spectacular, triumphant conclusion and prompting an enthusiastic ovation from the audience.

Photo credit: NCK/Grzegorz Karkoszka, Rafa ł Kudyba