The 14. edition of the 2024 Mad Days of Music festival, which has been taking place since 2010, features 55 concerts over three days! This year’s theme is Sources. Here, the organisers – the Sinfonia Varsovia orchestra and the festival’s artistic director René Martin – refer to the sound sources of nature: the murmur of flowing water, birdsong, but also to archaic ways of human communication: primitive rhythm or traditional calling and singing. Traditional instruments will be played, highlighting folk inspirations in classical music, but also in jazz. We will hear the great works of the classical music canon -Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Dvořák – ‘source’ works for the cultural formation of contemporary listeners, which provide inexhaustible inspiration for later artists drawing on these originals. Our Orchestra is once again among the guests of the festival, and the first of the two programmes with our participation will be filled with the music of the great Czech neo-Romantic.

Among the best-known items in the repertoire for cello and orchestra is the Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104 by Antonín Dvořák – but this will not be his only work. Less well known, but interesting is the piece Forest silence (Klid lesa), originally composed as part of a cycle for piano for four hands From Šumava z 1884. The fifth of its six links (originally entitled Klid – Silence) became particularly popular, prompting the Berlin publisher Fritz Simrock to commission a transcription for piano and cello, and later an orchestral version (this was published in 1894 as Waldesruhe – Forest Silence). Among the first performers of the work was Hanuš Wihan, for whom the author also composed the aforementioned concerto (although it was premiered by another musician). Forest Silence has the character of a concert adagio, emphasising the lyrical and singing face of the cello presenting these qualities in beautiful, subtle themes. The piece will be performed by Marcel Markowski, the leader of the cello group of the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra since 2012. He is also a lecturer at the Sinfonia Varsovia Academy, a project designed to improve the playing skills of the orchestral musician. He was educated at, among other places, the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music. A graduate of the Kiejstut and Grażyna Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łódź in the class of Professor Stanisław Firlej, he is a laureate of many competitions and a valued soloist, performing under the baton of such conductors as Krzysztof Penderecki, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Aleksander Sladkovsky, Benjamin Ellin and Adriy Yurkevych, among others.

Shortly after his fiftieth birthday, Dvořák accepted an invitation from the USA to teach at a conservatory in New York. Among his students was the African-American Harry Burleigh, a gifted baritone – he was one of the first to introduce gospel singing into concert halls. He also introduced Dvořák to this music, the reminiscences of which were soon to appear in the ‘New York’ compositions, which also include the Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, started in late 1892/1893. Dvořák recalled that another source of inspiration was to be Indian music, although his familiarity with this music was only superficial, perhaps coming from some popular shows about the ‘Wild West’. The native American culture also inspired him through Longfellow’s famous Indian epic The Song of Hiawatha. The premiere took place at Carnegie Hall on 16 December 1893 under the direction of Anton Seidel and was a dazzling success. In particular, the finale with its thrilling, pompous theme performed by brass instruments made an enormous impression. The author admitted that he avoided quotations and only tried to reflect the spirit of America and its ‘boundless landscapes’ with several references, including the characteristic rhythmic or melodic gestures and scales of African-American and Native American music. Even the title – “From the New World” – which was added at the last moment before the premier, indicates that the symphony was “written in America” rather than being intended as a “presentation of America”.

The conductor of the concert will be Alexander Humala, who began his artistic path by completing his studies in choral and symphonic conducting at the Belarusian Academy of Music and the Rotterdam Conservatory. He has honed his skills in masterclasses given by such authorities as Colin Metters, Yuri Simonov, Marin Alsop, Jorma Panula, Péter Eötvös, Neeme and Paavo Järvi, as well as in collaboration with orchestras such as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta and the Luzern Festival Academy Orchestra, the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice and the Russian National Philharmonic Orchestra. He was principal conductor of the Belarusian ensemble Capella Sonorus. He has won numerous awards, including first prizes in international competitions, and prestigious scholarships. He has served as assistant conductor with such eminent personalities as Lorin Maazel, Martin Brabbins, Christoph Eschenbach and Stanisław Skrowaczewski. In 2021, he was appointed artistic director of the Karol Szymanowski Philharmonic in Kraków.