A Modern Festival with a Memory

»Are you Simon Steen-Andersen?« A high school teacher from the Danish city Køge has spotted the composer's name in the festival program. But Simon Steen-Andersen has not been seen in Warsaw yet. Inside Polish Radio's fine Lutosławski hall the youth from Køge enjoyed in a very deep listening-manner the organic pulse of Magdalena Gorwas Four Roots of All Matter (2024) which alternated inspirations from sun, water, fire and air into a lush meditation garden. The high school class came across the Warsaw Autumn Festival somewhat by accident and missed both the festival opening, Christian Winther Christensen's Piano Concert (2018) and a work for orchestra and record players by Mariam Rezaei and Matthew Shlomowitz. Nor did they hear the young Ukrainian Yurii Pikushs Domi Res Militaris (2024) about the day in 2022 when his home was attacked. The same concert featured a work by the experienced Russian living in Berlin, Sergej Newski. People will be talking about this confrontation for a long time.

When the earmuffs are removed, there is still some flapping

We are not talking about the weather. The sun is confused and – as in the rest of Europe – baking hard, even though October is coming. Everything is fluid. And with its location in the middle of Europe, Warsaw has always been a meeting place, and this year Warsaw Autumn, with its theme of »permeation«, will allow effortless traditions to flow into each other: The old music will meet the brand new, hip-hop, baroque, popular music, Neue Musik, you name it. At least that's what the 400-page long festival programme promises. 

The flesh trembles

Yellow hearing protection is provided at the entrance to the Chopin University's concert hall. The Black Page Orchestra from Vienna tends to play hard, and not only the volume is aggressive in Maja Bosnić's ((mno.go)) (2024) – it means »very, very« in several Slavic languages ​​– the pianist is free like Cecil Taylor, and the cellist lets his instrument freak out. The distorted tones, probably close to 120 decibels, produce factory noise inside the stomach. The body still remembers them deaf performers in Warsaw in 2021. When the earmuffs are removed, there is still some flapping. 

Afterwards, it is life itself that trembles in the Oslo-based Iranian composer Idin Samimi Mofakhams Blood did not seep into the ground (2024) with recordings of street noise somewhere in the Middle East. And you feel that Christof Ressi have had fun working with Am Anfang war das A (2022), where ABBA and Roxette's »Na-na-na-na-nah« builds up a trashy energy until a sampled female voice moans with pleasure.

»Go through the Chopin Park. Beautiful route. The lights should be on« 

The night is young in Warsaw: in a theater the punk-folk group Hańba! perform songs by 10 contemporary composers for tuba, accordion, banjo and lead singer Andrzej Zagajewski, who jumps around the stage. We look into a Stanley Kubrick red industrial lamp. The action of the songs takes place at 04.14-07.30 and describes a life of Uber and stupid dishwasher jobs. But all songs – despite very sparse use of chords – sound off kunszt, and one song takes the next. 

»It's the first timer ever we have songs at Warsaw Autumn!« say my Polish editor colleagues who in an article on Hańba! emphasize Niels Rønsholdt, because he also writes songs. And one of the songs tonight – the quietest song – was by Monika Szpyrka, Rønsholdt's former student in Aarhus. Will classical composers now be songwriters?, I think for myself. The editors indicate a shortcut to the hotel: »Go through the Chopin Park. Beautiful route. The lights should be on.« 

The five seasons

Save the Vinyl is the title of an art exhibition (the festival also has one) with Austrian Uwe Bressnik's whimsical vinyl record images: A giant vinyl has burrowed into an Alpine landscape, an angel carefully holds a vinyl in his hands, a vinyl is stranded on a cornfield. A pictures is titles 4’33’’, and Bressnik seriously believes that John Cage would have wanted to be reborn as a vinyl record. 

Just cool sounds and mysterious glissandi, as if they came from a fifth season

The walls of the Chopin University look very imposing with their pictures of Domingo, Boulanger, Pärt and other Honoris Causa from the international music elite. Once Warsaw Autumn was an inescapable showcase of a Europe divided into East and West. When Per Nørgård presented his music to the Polish audience, it was an event, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. And in that important year 1989 the Radio Symphony Orchestra was here with music by Nielsen, Ruders, Lorentzen and Nørgård. Today, Poland's oldest festival of contemporary music, which takes place on the border between September and October, like so many others – omnivorous, inclusive, music by composers from 24 countries, club-events, festival radio - »Radio Autumn«, so to speak – and an extensive children's programme. 

And an evening only with new works for percussion. For example Moritz Eggert's Master and Servant (2023), which explores – the all too rarely explored – power relationship between soloist and orchestra. Orkest de Ereprijs resolutely responds to Konstantyn Napolov's dribbling drum swirls. But the sound of the beaten skins eventually becomes completely overwhelming. At exactly the same moment, Napolov throws water bottles at his bongo drums, lists a guest, otherwise pleased to see so much percussion on stage, out of the hall.   

Eclectic worlds, East and West, collide during {oh!} Orkiestra's concert of new works for historic instruments. The »soft« sound that resides in these instruments is no straightjacket or limitation for Yu Kuwabara, who in Toki no Koe (2024) explores the four seasons. The harpsichord waltzes away with a stylish pulse and a wealth of tonal detail. Without the use of extreme registers, the music nevertheless moves on many levels, at different speeds and in different sensual spaces. The mystery of the East? Yes, but a strict and logical schedule is also followed: Just summer, autumn, winter and spring. Just cool sounds and mysterious glissandi, as if they came from a fifth season.

The concert's curator, the composer Krzysztof Wołek, who usually lives in Louisville, says afterwards:

»The project was intended as a workshop where composers could consult with performers on techniques unique to their instruments. 

For the composers, this offered the chance to engage with the sounds and tunings of instruments that had been ‘forgotten’ for some time and are not very often used in the contemporary music context. For performers, who mostly work with the music of past composers, it was an opportunity to collaborate and interact with living composers.«

Do we have a ghost?

In Rei Nakamura's dressing room – the most beautiful dressing room she has ever had – hang pictures of Stravinsky and Berstein and on the hallway one poster – the VII Chopin piano competition in 1965 with the names of all these famous pianists: »Martha Argerich, Hiroko Nakamura, and Arthur Moreira Lima, a star in Brazil, where I grew up. Surrounded by all these artists, and the significance and history of this place, I feel pressured. When I saw the beautiful hall – seats in Bourdeaux velvet and wood – I felt my black Alexander Wang dress wasn’t enough, not ideal for this venue, because it’s black. I had to go out into the city to search for a dress and ask at eight hair salons if they had time. My hair was a nightmare. Julia, a festival crew, lent me her own hairdryer. I made it onto the stage.«

»When I saw the beautiful hall – seats in Bourdeaux velvet and wood – I felt my black Alexander Wang dress wasn’t enough«

Rei Nakamura recounts her experience at the opening of Warsaw Autumn, where she performed Christian Winther Christensen's Piano Concerto, despite some technical challenges: »MIDI pianos often misbehave. In the piece, Piotr plays ghost piano with me, and during rehearsals, I often heard conductor Yaroslav Shemet say, ‘Mamy Ghost?’ I’ll never forget that ‘Mamy’ means ‘Do we have…?’ 'DO WE HAVE A GHOST?'« Nakamura froze when she learned that Warsaw's famous Chopin Competition grants access to a steady stream of new Steinways: »Please, don’t give me your best instrument; I’m going to prepare it with tape.«

After the concert, festival director Jerzy Kornowicz came backstage to thank her. »People don’t realize how important such a gesture is,« says Nakamura, who is now preparing for her second performance at the festival: Wojtek Blecharz’s concert for piano and wireless speakers (2023). The setup includes 51 small speakers that can be held to the ear, offering echoes of Scriabin and the sound of a large orchestra compressed into intimate ASMR-like moments.

Immersive experiences are also available in a more traditional way. At the venue Pardon, To Tu, the duet translates Surreal Voyager's inspirations blurred Polaroid snapshots and psychedelic rock for a soft ambient addressed to the head. Afterwards, the whole body is addressed – pianist Magda Mayas and The Necks drummer Tony Buck improvise as if they were one quivering corpus. 

»We create new names and new environments«

Not far from the Chopin Park is a disused swimming pool and now a cultural center under the name Basen artystyczny (the »art pool«). Here, festival director and composer Jerzy Kornowicz and the NeoQuartet have a dress rehearsal of The Rat and the Tree (2024), a so-called ecological opera about hope and the regenerative power of nature. Kornowicz has spent four months composing the 265-page score. But the libretto is on two pages, »so I had to express EVERYTHING through the music,« says Kornowicz. »It's about sensitivity to nature, to other people. You can debate whether it's an ecological opera,« he laughs, everything on stage is made of plastic, and he discovered that the music works best with electronic instruments and lots of samples to imitate the sound of wind and water. 

»We do not claim to present all the good music being written today«

»Every edition of this festival is different. This year, we have many ensembles and fewer installations. We’re not chasing star conductors but are focused on supporting and creating new names. The festival can therefore be seen as a movement. The composers are young, around 35-45 years old. Sixty-five percent of the audience is between 23 and 43. Warsaw Autumn has a different sociological character compared to, say, Wien Modern, März Musik, or ManiFeste in Paris. Besides we’re not here solely for the composer community or music publishers but for the people who live in this city. We aim to be a festival that shapes identity and is conscious of being part of a process – we weren’t born yesterday. We try through thought and aesthetics somehow influence reality. We don’t claim to present all the good music being written today. But one that has a strong cognitive aspect, and not one that confirms what is recognized.

»It is our duty to show when contemporary music enters into polemics with politicians, stereotypes and populism«

We present works created in the last five years or so. But sometimes we remind of earlier music that the current generation should experience personally.There are works that are important to perform live, not just on recordings. That’s why, two years ago, we performed Les Espaces Acoustiques by Gérard Grisey. And, in 2018, the year of the 100th anniversary of Poland's rebirth, we raminded De Staat by Louis Andriessen. Such pieces from years ago, if they are still important, play the role of a »lighthouse« in the structure of the festival program,« says Kornowicz.

»Festivals shouldn’t be isolated from society. We believe that it is our duty to show when contemporary music enters into polemics with politicians, stereotypes and populism. We’re flexible and not just focused on sounds but on creating new ideas and environments, Kornowicz says, just before the final rehearsal of the rat opera begins.

»This festival has raised me,« shouts Krzysztof Wołek

Dance Modern 

In the evening there is a rave at an abandoned school. Or Dance Modern – »a manifesto, a metaphorical pact between Neue Musik and EDM,« as curator Rafał Ryterski calls it. 

While FOQL (Justyna Banaszczyk) unfolds his industrial drones inside the hall, Ryterski stands and talks to Rafał Łuc and Marta Śniady. All three have studied at the Jutland Conservatory of Music in Aarhus. Now Śniady is part of the festival's program committee. As Jerzy Kornowicz says: »It is impossible for one person to program one whole festival.« And because it is now late in the club, he would like to reveal that in 2026 the Aarhus festival Spor will play a bigger role at Warsaw Autumn.

Yes, Warsaw is a meeting place. Especially in autumn. 

»Such a festival would be impossible in the U.S. There’s no funding for it«

»This festival has raised me,« shouts Krzysztof Wołek, trying to make himself heard over the music. »I’m glad that, because I’ve lived in the U.S. for many years, I can bring something to the table. The festival has succeeded in creating a healthy snobbism. Often, it’s impossible to get tickets. Five hundred people, many of them young, listening to new music… It’s absurd!« he laughs. »There’s a violist from Virginia and a sculptor from Chicago – they come here every year solely because of Warsaw Autumn! Such a festival would be impossible in the U.S. There’s no funding for it. Just having an office working on a festival year-round is unheard of. Private sponsors don’t invest in avant-garde music. Warsaw Autumn is special, even in a European context,« says the Polish-American from Louisville.

»This is a modernist festival with a memory. We try to juxtapose the present with historical works. It’s a festival where we are always searching. Of course, there are misses. When you commission new music, you have no idea what will come. But we do our best.«

Instagram says Simon Steen-Andersen is driving around Warsaw in a minibus

As H31R aka Brooklyn rapper maasai and New Jersey producer JWords add a new hip-hop gear to the Dance Modern party, Instagram says Simon Steen-Andersen is driving around Warsaw in a minibus. Tomorrow he will use the big band, symphony orchestra and choir when he closes the festival with his magnificent work Trio. Krzysztof Pendereckis is also on the program Actions (1971) for free jazz orchestra and Paul Hendrich's work Beatles(s) (2024). It can get eclectic.

Just like day and night and perhaps the seasons can be intertwined. On the very last day of Warsaw Autumn, as part of the series of events accompanying the festival, Norwegian Tine Surel Lange, who has been rehearsing all day with the Sinfonietta Cracovia in the National Museum will perform Ritual for Changing Times: Spring Equinox (2024). A work which contains video recordings made on an ordinary spring day at home in the composer's icy Lofoten. 

Warsaw Autumn, 20-28 September. The Polish Art Music Festival saw the light of day in 1956.

Seismograf's travel and accommodation was paid for by The Adam Mickiewicz Institute. The organization has had no influence on the content of the article.  

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
Proofreading: Seb Doubinsky