PERSPECTIVE — For exciting, show-stopping symphonic works, visit Poland in June. Most of the country’s cities have at least one orchestra, with Warsaw, Katowice, and Krakow home to three of the best. And like the country itself, they rose from the ashes of World War II and the dark days of Soviet control to become some of the finest in Europe. For their season finales, big and bold reign.
In the nation’s capital, Krzysztof Urbański led the Warsaw Philharmonic in the first of two performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on June 13. Founded in 1901, the orchestra performs in Philharmonic Hall, which was damaged during the Siege of Warsaw in September 1939 and bombed during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The concert hall reopened in 1955 with the Fifth International Chopin Piano Competition. Its original interiors, an eclectic mix of Neo-Romanticism and Baroque Revival, were replaced by the cool, grand aesthetics of Socialist Realism.
The concert marked the end of the 42-year-old Polish conductor’s first season as the orchestra’s music and artistic director. For 10 years, Urbański led the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, which performed at the 2018 SHIFT, a festival co-presented by Washington Performing Arts and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Since the festival coincided with the Music Critics Association of North America’s 2018 annual meeting, it was the first chance for many North American critics, including this one, to experience the exciting young conductor.
Urbański is a dynamic presence on the podium, with a conducting style that blends the grace of a ballet dancer and the passion of a romantic poet. Conducting from memory, he was free to use his body to communicate with the orchestra, soloists, chorus, and audience alike. In the first movement of the Ninth, this created bursts of sound contrasting with soft, clear passages that simmered with tension. The Molto vivace was characterized by the rhythmic vitality of the woodwinds and the dynamic extremes Urbański coaxed from the entire orchestra. Refined, graceful playing from the strings flowed through the slow movement, which rippled with a subtle sense of anticipation.
The Finale was more problematic, beginning with the entrance of bass-baritone Andrew Moore singing “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!” Urbański’s brisk, sharply articulated approach cut against the grain of Beethoven’s vocal line, robbing Moore’s delivery of cohesion and drama. Even less convincing was the entry of the full quartet, although soprano Sophia Brommer and mezzo-soprano Sophie Harmsen punched out the notes with clarity and accuracy. Martin Platz’s light tenor is not of the heroic mold, but he sang an energetic, precise Turkish March, which had an unaccustomed intimate air.
The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir was excellent. The sopranos floating Beethoven’s long, sustained notes with ease, lightness, and shimmering beauty. Even more impressive was the tenor section, with its rich, burnished sound. The chorus’ singing and the orchestra’s terrific playing brought the symphony to a feverish end.
Formerly a center of mining and heavy industry, Katowice’s economic revival is fueled by professional services, education, and healthcare. With a population of over 280,000, Katowice is Poland’s 11th largest city. It is also home to the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR), which was founded in Warsaw in 1935 and relocated to Katowice after World War II. Since 2014, the orchestra’s home has been NOSPR Concert Hall, a state-of-the-art venue seating 1,800, designed by the Polish architectural firm Konior Studio with acoustics by Nagata Acoustics, headquartered in Japan.
Marin Alsop became NOSPR’s artistic director and chief conductor in 2023 and will conduct Grażyna Bacewicz’s Symphony No. 1 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 for the season finale at the end of June. On June 15, Norwegian conductor Tabita Berglund led NOSPR in a perfectly proportioned and elegant program of Grieg and Sibelius. This past season marked Berglund’s first as principal guest conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, with whom she made her U.S. debut in 2023.
The concert began with Grieg’s Holberg Suite, which he composed in 1884 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ludvig Holberg, the outstanding Danish-Norwegian literary figure of the Enlightenment. Under Berglund’s baton, NOSPR’s strings played Grieg’s exercise in neoclassicism with clean, transparent sound. The subtle emotions of the music were expressed not only in the superb violin and cello solos but also through Berglund’s refined approach to the music, especially her attention to structure and detail.
She brought these same qualities to bear in two movements from Sibelius’ Lemminkäinen Suite, “The Swan of Tuonela” and “Lemminkäinen’s Return.” Piotr Pyc, a member of NSOPR since 2004, performed the English horn solos in “The Swan of Tuonela” with sensitivity and commanding style. In “Lemminkäinen’s Return,” the NOSPR’s trumpets shone, while Berglund’s scrupulous musicianship permitted the woodwinds and lower brass to add extra depth and emotion to the drama of the music.
The final work of the program was Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. Berglund’s sense of the work’s architectural framework resulted in a charming, crisp, sprightly reading of this popular work. It was the conclusion of an exquisite concert in which elegance and purity triumphed.
Krakow was one of the few Polish cities to avoid destruction during World War II. (It is located about 45 miles east of what were the Auschwitz concentration camps.) Although the city had orchestras in the late 18th century, the Krakow Philharmonic was only established in 1937. The orchestra played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony at its final concert in May 1939 before the Nazi invasion of Poland a few months later.
In July 1940, Hans Frank, the Nazi governor-general of German-occupied Poland, created the Philharmonic of the General Government. Its members included some of Poland’s finest musicians, although its concertmaster and conductors were German. The players were granted special status and thus escaped persecution and death at Nazi hands. One of the orchestra’s conductors was Rudolf Hindemith, the brother of composer Paul Hindemith. The latter emigrated to Switzerland in 1938 and then to the United States in 1940. He left because his wife was of part-Jewish ancestry, but his main motivation was his conflict with the artistic policies of the Third Reich.
Reorganized after the Nazis abandoned the city toward the end of January 1945, when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, the Krakow Philharmonic was the first professional orchestra to be formed in post-war Poland. It played its first concert on Feb. 3, 1945.
The Krakow Philharmonic ended its season and its Gustav Mahler Festival with Alexander Humala conducting the composer’s Symphony No. 8, the so-called Symphony of a Thousand, on May 21 at ICE Krakow Congress Centre. The festival began in early May with José Miguel Pérez-Sierra leading Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. It continued with performances of the symphonies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7, although not in chronological order.
The Mahler Eighth Symphony was also the final performance of the FeelharmonICE series, a collaboration between the Krakow Philharmonic and ICE. Opened in 2014, ICE Krakow’s three-story glass lobby provides views of the Vistula River and historic Wawel Hill and Castle. Its auditorium seats 2,000 people, far more than the 1931 Neo-Baroque Krakow Philharmonic Hall, where the orchestra regularly performs, as well as ample space for the 365 musicians who participated in the performance.
Born in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, Humala became the artistic director of the Krakow Philharmonic in 2021. The massed choirs he led included the Krakow Philharmonic Choir, Luslawice Polish Radio Choir, Krakow Opera Choir, Krakow Opera’s Children’s Choir, and Krakow Philharmonic Ukrainian Children’s Choir. The soloists were sopranos Iwona Sobotka and Ewa Tracz, altos Urszula Kryger and Ewa Biegas, tenor Brendan Gunnell, baritone Mariusz Godlewski, and bass Christian Immler.
The Symphony of a Thousand is a massive undertaking. The children’s choirs were perched on a balcony, with the offstage brass opposite them. In between were the choirs and orchestra. Surprisingly, the stage did not appear crowded. Of the soloists, Sobotka, Kryger, and Immler were the most impressive. Gunnell’s tenor was clear and strong, but he wisely eschewed competing decibel-wise.
Humala embraced the drama in the work, as well as its spirituality and joy, from the start. The opening E-flat major organ chord and the brilliant, fortissimo choral invocation of “Veni, veni creator spiritus” were thrilling. He managed to impose clarity and structure on the symphony’s more reflective moments. He took the great central double fugue at “Accende lumen sensibus” at a brisk tempo, but the orchestra and chorus executed it admirably. When everyone onstage was playing or singing at full volume, all one could do was relax into the glorious sound. The reward was a finale that culminated in an ecstatic release of elation and triumph.
