IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARIES IN 2010

200th Anniverary of Chopin's Birth

150th Anniversary of Paderewski's Birth

600th Anniversary of The Battle of Grunwald

 

200th ANNIVERSARY OF CHOPIN'S BIRTH
TO BE CELEBTRATED AROUND THE WORLD

 

For the bicentennial of Fryderyk Chopin's birth, many cities around the world are planning tributes to one of the world's most beloved composers. Hundreds of events celebrating his music will take place in the next 12 months. Chopin Year 2010 officially kicked-off in Warsaw on January 7th with a concert at the Warsaw Philharmonic featuring the Chinese pianist Lang Lang.

Poland's Chopin Bicentennial celebrations include the opening of a new museum dedicated to the composer, as well as numerous concerts in Poland, a ballet premiere, and a variety of educational programs. Other events include the 16th International Chopin Piano Competition; concerts at the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall and the Polish National Opera; and a touring festival that will play 1,200 concerts worldwide. The Chopin Museum will open in March 2010 in Warsaw as part of a Chopin Route that will highlight significant landmarks of the composer's life. A Chopin Center near the Museum is set to launch in February. It will include a library, conference room, and offices.

Concerts, exhibits, and competitions will also take place this year in France, Austria, Britain, the United States, and China, among many other countries. The international appeal of the pianist and composer echoes his personal life. He was born in a small Polish village on March 1, 1810, to a Polish mother and a father with French origins; he lived in Warsaw as well as Vienna and Paris, and traveled extensively in Europe. He was a virtuoso performer and an innovative composer who changed the way music for the piano was composed and played by giving it a new prominence as a solo instrument. Chopin lives on in his music-which often echoes Polish folk tunes and ballads-and his waltzes, mazurkas, polonaises, ballades, etudes, preludes, nocturnes, sonatas, and concertos continue to find an enthusiastic audience around the world today, as they have for many generations of music lovers in the past.

For more information on Chopin's Bicentennial events around the world, visit the official Chopin 2010 website at www.chopin2010.pl/en.

 

 

Fryderyk Chopin, born on March 1, 1810, in Zelazowa Wola near Warsaw, is widely considered to be one of the greatest composers for piano of all time. His talent was apparent from an early age and he was considered a child prodigy, like Mozart. His father, Mikolaj Chopin, was a music teacher who had immigrated to Poland from France. His mother, Justyna Krzyzanowska, was also musically talented. Chopin grew up surrounded by music.

He began to play the piano at the age of 5, at first taught by his older sister Ludwika and then by a well known composer and piano teacher, Wojciech Zywny, a kind and generous man who was a close friend of the family. Just before he turned 8, Chopin gave his first recital in Warsaw for a Russian prince and his early compositions were published in a Warsaw newspaper. He continued his studies at the Warsaw High School of Music under his father and at the Warsaw Conservatory under Josef Elsner, and he continued to compose and perform, establishing a name for himself in Warsaw. After he had completed his formal education, Professor Elsner wrote in a report: "Chopin, Fryderyk, third-year student, amazing talent, musical genius."

Chopin now planned a longer trip abroad in order to establish his reputation beyond Poland. In 1830 he traveled to Vienna and shortly after his arrival there, he learned of the November Uprising against Russian rule in Poland. He spent the following months worried about the civil unrest at home and about the fate of his friends and family. In 1831, at the age of 21, he traveled to Paris and was never to return to Poland. In Paris he became a member and financial supporter of the Great Emigration that included other famous Polish political exiles like Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Slowacki, and Prince Adam Czartoryski.

In Paris, Chopin's reputation as an artist grew quickly and he became friends with other Romantic composers of the time, including Liszt, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, and Schumann. He traveled to many European cities, giving widely acclaimed performances while continuing to work on his compositions and giving piano lessons to support himself. In 1837, he met and developed a close relationship with French writer George Sand; she offered support and care when his health slowly started to deteriorate. The years 1837 to 1847 were the happiest and most productive of his life. By 1847, with his health in rapid decline, Chopin stopped performing and composed only a few minor pieces. His sister Ludwika came from Warsaw to care for him. He died on October 17, 1849, in Paris from tuberculosis. The world lost a musical genius much too soon.

Chopin is buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, but his heart was brought back to Poland by his sister in an urn and placed in a pillar in Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.

 

150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF
IGNACY JAN PADEREWSKI
(1860 - 1941)

 

"Those of us who love Poland are glad that she can claim him as a son, but let her always remember that Ignacy Jan Paderewski belongs to all mankind."

-- Charles Phillips, The Story of a Modern Immortal, 1934

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was not only a world-renowned pianist, virtuoso performer, and brilliant composer, he was also a respected politician, statesman, and philanthropist, as well as one of the most famous and interesting personalities on the world stage in the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in a small village in Podolia in Russian-occupied Poland in 1860, and the arc of his extraordinary life carried him through the major historic events of his time to a hero's burial at Arlington National Cemetery in 1941. His dying wish had been to be buried in Poland when it was once again a free nation-that wish was granted in 1992, fifty-one years after his death.

Paderewski was a hero in his homeland and a tireless advocate and ambassador for Poland abroad. His musical career lasted fifty years and took him as far away as America, Australia, and New Zealand where he thrilled audiences with his inspiring piano performances. He spoke passionately about Poland's quest for independence during his concerts, including one he gave at the White House for President Woodrow Wilson. His political activities made him a welcome figure in London, Paris, Geneva, and Washington D.C. during both World Wars. He represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and was one of the signors of the Treaty of Versailles which ratified Poland's new borders with Germany after Polish independence was reinstated. He served as Prime Minister in the first post-war government.

Paderewski founded an international committee to assist the people of Poland with branches around the world and during the first two years of World War II leading up to his death, he continued to fight tirelessly for Allied support of Poland against the invading Nazis. His wife, Helena Paderewska, was a political activist in her own right, helping children who were victimized by war and founding the Polish White Cross. She was named Honorary Member of the PWA in recognition of her many achievements in Poland and internationally.

There are hundreds of organizations around the world named after Ignacy Jan Paderewski to honor his life and efforts on behalf of the Polish people. Paderewski was a great supporter of the Polish Museum of America in Chicago at the time of its founding and you can see many of his personal objects, including his grand piano, in the newly refurbished Paderewski Room at the PMA.

For more information on Chopin & Paderewski Year 2010 activities, please visit

http://www.chopin-paderewski.org/

 

 

600TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE OF GRUNWALD

Jan Matejko, Battle of Grunwald, 1874 , oil on canvas, National Museum, Warsaw

 

The July 15, 1410 battle fought on the rolling fields between the villages of Grunwald and Tannenberg not far from Lodz, Poland, was the largest battle in Medieval European history. It was a battle between the Teutonic Knights, a mounted military order that had created its own German state along the Baltic Sea, and the combined forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, recently joined through their ruler, King Wladyslaw Jagiello.

It was a massive battle with 24,000 knights on the Teutonic side pitted against 39,000 on the Polish-Lithuanian side. The decisive victory of Polish-Lithuanian forces over the Order of the Teutonic Knights stopped the expansion of Germany into Polish territory in its quest for more lands for settlement and trade. Poland's victory secured her western border and the country withstood further incursion from its German neighbors. The Teutonic Order never recovered its former power, and the financial burden of the ensuing reparations eventually caused a rebellion of cities and landed gentry against the authority and wealth the Order had amassed.

In Poland, Grunwald remains a rallying cry for Polish patriotism and the sovereignty of its borders. The battle was immortalized in a famous painting by Jan Matejko (see above) and in the internationally acclaimed epic novel by Henryk Sienkiewcz, The Teutonic Knights (Krzyzacy). Sienkiewcz won the Nobel Prize in Litertaure in 1905 for his historical novels.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was so inspired by the history of the Battle of Grunwald, that at the young age of 9, he decided that when he grew up, he would erect a monument to the heroes of the battle in 1910, the year of the 500th anniversary. His dream came true when he dedicated the Grunwald Monument in Krakow on July 15, 1910, in front of a crowd of 160,000 people. It was his gift to the city and to the people of Poland.