The award-winning Silesian Quartet presents a new album featuring two composers from Warsaw – Joachim Mendelson and Grazyna Bacewicz. After completing his music studies in Warsaw and Berlin, Mendelson moved to Paris in 1929, where he joined the Association des Jeunes Musiciens Polonais, a society founded in 1926 to facilitate the study, publication, and promotion of the works of young Polish composers. Bacewicz also received support from the Association, and from Paderewski, and studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. The association’s aims included re-establishing a national musical life at the highest level back in Poland (after more than a century of joint occupation by Russia, Prussia, and Austria), and both composers returned to Warsaw and worked there until 1939. Mendelson taught at the Institute of Music, and Bacewicz became leader of the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and continued her career as a composer and soloist. Mendelson was imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto until 1943 when he was murdered by the Gestapo. Five of his works survive, thanks to the French publisher Max Eschig, including the Quartet and Quintet recorded here. The two works by Bacewicz on this recording were rejected by the composer, and never included in her catalogue of works. It is extremely lucky that the manuscripts have survived, preserved at the National Library in Warsaw. Half a century after her death the Royal String Quartet prepared performing editions and gave the first performances.
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