11 Wielkich Historii Miłosnych W międzynarodowej Literaturze!

The text is panoply of excerpts selected by Ptaszyńska from poets as different as Samuel Coleridge, Henri Auguste Barbier, Jan Nepomucen Kamiński, Rajnold Suchodolski, József Bajza, Ferenc Kerenyi, Jan Kasprowicz, Count Carl Snoilsky, Artur Oppman, Juliusz Ptaszyński (the composer’s father), Stanisław Wyspiański, and Maria Konopnicka. The Polish composer’s public, monumental works include a series of compositions on Polish themes: a didactic and inspired Conductus - A Ceremonial for Winds (1982); the multi-movement cantata Polish Letters (1988); the orchestral Fanfare for Peace, commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1993); Distant Voices for soprano and string quartet, commissioned by The Kosciuszko Foundation for its 70th anniversary; the Fanfare in Memoriam Frederic Chopin (1999) composed for the 150th anniversary of Chopin’s death; Of Time and Space (2009-10), a concerto for percussion, electronic tape and orchestra, commissioned by the F. Chopin National Institute in Warsaw for the Chopin Bicentennial Year in 2010; and The Lovers of the Valldemosa Cloister (2008-2009), a recent 90-min. opera, critically acclaimed and officially recognized as the most important creative contribution to the Chopin Year. Ptaszyńska’s compositions have been featured at many international festivals around the world and at special monographic concerts where her works were either the sole focus of attention or presented with „timeless classics” such as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

She received commissions from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Wrocław Philharmonic, Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, the National Fryderyk Chopin Institute, the National Opera of Warsaw, the Grand Opera Theater in Łódź, and a number of festivals. In 1980s she taught composition and percussion performance simultaneously at the Northwestern University at Evanston and at the University of Chicago.  sprawdzian  in 1943 during World War II in the beleaguered Warsaw, Poland, Ptaszyńska studied at the State Highest School of Music in Warsaw (now Fryderyk Chopin University of Music) and, in 1962-68 earned three degrees: in composition (with Tadeusz Paciorkiewicz), percussion (with Jan Zgodziński), and music theory (with Stefan Śledziński and Andrzej Dobrowolski). In  tutaj -70, she studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris on a scholarship from the French government, and between 1970 and 1972 Ptaszyńska taught music theory and percussion in Warsaw. Ptaszyńska feels that the best poetry for musical settings is that which is not too structured in its own right, leaving room for the composer to transform the words into music; for this reason, perhaps, she often cuts and pastes textual fragments to fit her musical imagination. I think that it is very important for composers to express their own ideas and their own personality.

Ptaszyńska’s own relationship to percussion instruments is as personal and idiosyncratic as Glennie’s, but before exploring her unique world, let me review some basic facts of her career. The sonorities of flute and harp, two instruments immortalized by Debussy, are a recurring element of Ptaszyńska’s oeuvre, appearing together in the scintillating Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra (2008) and individually in Variations for flute (1967), Arabesque for harp (1972), Bagatelles for harp (1979), Jeu-Parti for harp and vibraphone (1970), Cadenza for flute and percussion (1971-2), Ajikan for flute and percussion (1989), and Sogno d’Euridice for two harps (2001). The latter work belongs to another extended thematic thread, that of Orpheus, a musician who entered Hades to save his beloved Euridice and failed. The cantata Polish Letters, with a full title of Polish Letters to Poles Dispersed Throughout the Whole World, is set for soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone, mixed choir and nine instruments (flute, clarinet, French horn, percussion, piano, and string quartet). The same poem was earlier set to music by some of the greatest composers of the 20th century, including Maurice Ravel (1895), Igor Stravinsky (1910), Edgard Varèse (1906) and Arthur Honegger (1944). The majority of them used low voices accompanied by the piano (Varèse and Stravinsky also set the work for voice and orchestra), emphasizing the dark, somber themes of the poem: A long, black sleep / Descends on my life / Sleep, all hope / Sleep, all desire! In contrast, taking her cue from the last line (Silence, silence), Ptaszyńska’s version is ethereal, with sparse, carefully selected sonorities of flute and harp, using a range of special effects, methodically described in the introduction to the score.

The composer’s stellar academic credentials are coupled with an impressive track record of awards: prizes from the Percussive Arts Society (1974, 1976, 1987), medal from the Polish Composers’ Union (1988), prize at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers (Paris, 1986, for Winter’s Tale), Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jurzykowski Foundation (1996), ad an "Officer Cross of Merit" of the Republic of Poland (1995). A string of major awards in America includes those bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Benjamin H. Danks Award of 2006), the Fromm Music Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2010). Her music is published by PWM Edition in Poland and Theodore Presser in the U.S. This topic appears in the early Die Sonette an Orpheus, 1981, a setting of Rainer Maria Rilke’s sonnet cycle dedicated to the composer’s father. The dramatic text becomes even more expressive in Ptaszyńska’s rich musical setting which draws elements from her vocabulary of modernist and sonoristic gestures, connected with stylizations of cantorial chanting and expressions of suffering and grief.

Un grand sommeil noir (1977) presents a classic French poem by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) in i chamber setting for the soprano, flute and harp. Die Sonette sets the mezzo-soprano amidst delicate and expressive sonorities of a chamber orchestra treated like an ensemble of soloists. During recitals of her chamber music, she has continued to perform the percussion parts; she taught percussion before concentrating exclusively on composition and is an active member of the Percussive Arts Society. In 1972 she came to the United States on the invitation of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she received "Artist Diploma Degree" in percussion. The recurring theme of Orpheus makes a re-appearance in the Drum of Orpheo - Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (1999-2002), written for and dedicated to i Scottish virtuoso percussionist, Dame Evelyn Glennie, who has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12 and has performed barefoot, “hearing” music through vibrations around her.