POLAND. Danuta Gwizdalanka, renowned musicologist, author of several works on the history of music and notable monographs, notably those on Witold Lutosławski, devotes a biography to Maria Szymanowska at Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne (PWM). Under a title of great sobriety – Szymanowska – and in keeping with the spirit of the collection – “Małe monografie” [short monographs] – Danuta Gwizdalanka retraces in broad strokes the stages of the life and work of the first Polish international composer-concertist. Despite the brevity of the chapters, the whole is marked by the desire to base the information given on a solid academic reference. Due to the synthetic nature of the book, the pieces of Maria Szymanowska, available in the appendix, cannot be analyzed in depth and certain shortcuts can certainly leave a deceptive feeling (for example the chapter Szymanowka a “sprawa polska” [Szymanowska and “the Polish question »]) … or on the contrary invite to continue the investigation! This is undoubtedly a quality work which confirms the growing interest around Maria Szymanowska, a Woman of Europe. Note, throughout the pages, the strong references to Elżbieta Zapolska, founder of the Maria Szymanowska Society, and to the present site that she had created.
An essential complement to reading the Cahiers Maria Szymanowska!
Also to listen to on this Szymanowskian news the interview between Danuta Gwizdalanka and Mariusz Gradowski:
www.youtube.com/watchA german translation by Peter Oliver Loew is now available from Harrassowitz Verlag Wiesbaden under the title Der “weibliche Vulcan”.
POLAND. On the occasion of the 192nd anniversary of the death of Maria Szymanowska, young pianists from various conservatories in Poland and winners of international competitions offered, on June 18, 2023, at the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw, a concert exclusively devoted to the works of the composer. Poems by Gœthe and Mickiewicz were read by Marcin Majchrowski, programmer at Polish Radio II, and Justyna Galant, president of the Maria Szymanowska Association in Poland (Towarzystwo im. Marii Szymanowskiej) and initiator of the event. In partnership with the Adam Mickiewicz Literature Museum in Warsaw, the Maria Szymanowska Society (France) and the Polish Historical and Literary Society in Paris.
MOROCCO. In the very inspired space of the Lutétia cinema in Casablanca, the Franco-Lebanese pianist Ilona Dip devotes a very beautiful video recording to Maria Szymanowska. Served by a remarkable black and white photo, this particularly delicate and chiselled interpretation of the composer's Nocturne in B flat major is to be discovered without delay on
youtu.be/giQ3m_3KkWE (online May 29, 2023).
In partnership with the Maria Szymanowska Society (France), the Polish Institute of Paris, the Polish Historical and Literary Society.
Production team:
Hassan Ouazzani - director
Hisham Tanzimat - photographer
Amir Salih - sound engineer
POLAND. Under the direction of Irena Poniatowska and Elżbieta Zapolska Chapelle, PWM editions publish the Twenty Studies and Preludes of Maria Szymanowska. For the first time since Breitkopf & Härtel's partial edition of 1824/25, all the studies and preludes of the first polish international composer are finally brought together in a single volume. This collection, which perfectly combines editorial elegance and critical erudition, can be discovered on the PWM website:
Maria Szymanowska: Dwadzieścia etiud i preludiów / Twenty Etudes and Preludes
PWM edition (Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzycne) Kraków 2021 (PWN 12139)
We will also refer with benefit to the article by Irena Poniatowska “Studies and Preludes by Maria Szymanowska: a school of virtuosity” (Cahiers Maria Szymanowska N°3 / Winter-Spring 2023, p.29-35).
POLAND. "It is time for the story told to children to stop contributing to the shaping and perpetuation of prejudices and stereotypes", wrote Isabelle Flambeaux recently in the second issue of Cahiers Maria Szymanowska (N°2 / Spring 2022, p.145) about Nannerl, Mozart's sister. This is precisely what the Chopin Institute in Warsaw (Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina) did in devoting its latest youth publication to Maria Szymanowska (Marysia Szymanowska, ISBN: 978-83-965552-5-0, February 2023 ). With an alert style and a very inspired drawing, in the great lineage of the polish graphic tradition, Marta Bacewicz and Kasia Walentynowicz retrace with accuracy and joy, the life and career of the one who, by divorcing a "beautiful marriage", will win the freedom to become the first polish international composer-concertist.
An album accessible from the age of eight and which is now expected to open up new visibility for creative women...
NETHERLANDS. Patricia Wener Leanse presented our new CD 'Romance à Joséphine. Women's Songs in Maria Szymanowska's time' on her Radio Monalisa at Concertzender.nl on March 22, 2020.
Maria Szymanowska, Queen Hortense and Fanny Hensel found themselves in the company of Polish composers Grażyna Bacewicz (1909–1969) and Katarina Głowicka (born in 1977).
podcast:
https://www.concertzender.nl/programma/radio_monalisa_548807/
FRANCE. Michèle Tosi, in the resmusica.com magazine, presents the CD ‘Romance à Joséphine. Women’s Songs in Maria Szymanowska’s time’ in a very beautiful way.
Indeed, the talented women who regained their voices through the recorded program deserve our attention and each of them could become the heroine of a book. Their desire to go beyond the limits imposed on them by the age and social class means that they constantly try to remain creative.
POLAND. Maria Szymanowska's music resonated again at the ‘Chopin and his Europe' Festival, organized every year by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. In this 15th edition, Dmitry Ablogin, a young Russian pianist, played on a Pleyel 1848 six Minuets by Maria Szymanowska with which he began his recital on August 26, 2019 at the Warsaw Philharmonic Chamber Music Hall.
Video recording of the concert
POLAND. The TVP POLONIA invited the President of the Society Maria Szymanowska, Elisabeth Zapolska Chapelle, to give an interview in the magazine HALO POLONIA of 23 July 2019. The interview was brilliantly conducted by Adam Krzykowski, who highlighted the importance of the project she has been leading for ten years and the undeniable qualities of Maria Szymanowska - a musician and ambassador of Polish culture, a woman of great modernity and efficiency of action.
POLAND. On 19 May 2019, Karolina Głowacka in her Sunday Radio TOK FM Magazine talked again about Maria Szymanowska and together with Elisabeth Zapolska, president of the Society of her name in Paris, she tried to determine what exactly meant the ‘European character’ of this woman and artist.
Podcast on the page:
https://audycje.tokfm.pl/gosc/11292,Elzbieta-Zapolska
POLAND. Maria Szymanowska among the ‘Engineers of Independence’: nobody has ever thought about her in this way, nor about the role that she played since she settled in Petersburg in 1828.
Marta Panas-Goworska and Andrzej Goworski, in their latest book
Inżynierowie Niepodległej, PWN Publishing House, 2018,
described her history alongside the history of seven Poles (only men ...) who in Tsarskoye Selo made great careers, not ceasing to act with the hope that the Polish state would one day will be reborn.
The book begins with the chapter ‘Warsaw woman's foot on St. Petersburg's pavement’ dedicated, of course, to the one who was named the ‘First Pianist of The Empress of all the Russias’. Her indisputable status, as well as many influential relatives, enabled her to support and promote compatriots living in the Russian Empire, and even to protect some from political persecution. For many, Maria Szymanowska embodied the noblest form of Polishness, with which they easily identified.
POLAND. ‘The missing Half of History. A short History of Women in the Polish Lands’
Such could be the English title of the book written by Anna Kowalczyk and published by W.A.B., Warsaw, end of 2018. Maria Szymanowska is presented there, according to Goethe's words, as ‘a great talent bordering on madness’.
The book is full of energy that invigorates the reader by opening to him the prospect of new, extremely stimulating analyzes.
It is the author's great merit to question the traditional view of history, encouraging us to go to the hidden aspects of our past.
POLAND. 'Chopin himself was fascinated by her - about Maria Szymanowska'
On the occasion of the Maria Szymanowska Year established by the Polish Senate for 2019, Karolina Głowacka of TOK FM Radio, in an interview with Irena Poniatowska, musicologist and professor emeritus at the University of Warsaw, evokes the personality of this prodigious cultural figure who enjoyed exceptional celebrity in the Europe of her time and had been somewhat overshadowed by national memory.
Program « Weekend morning » 13 January 2019
POLAND. Marc-André Hamelin played three compositions by Maria Szymanowska in the recital he gave in
Warsaw on August 30, 2018 as part of the festival "Chopin and his Europe" organized by The Fryderyk Chopin Institute.
SWEDEN. Since 2016, Marc-André Hamelin, a great Canadian classical pianist, has begun a number of his recitals with Maria Szymanowska's Nocturne in B-flat major. His performance full of poetry and his desire to associate this music with the works of S.Feinberg (1890-1962), Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Rubinstein or Prokofiev brings out the timeless qualities of the Szymanowska's works.
NETHERLANDS. Maria Szymanowska & Johann Nepomuk Hummel : the story of a friendship between two exceptional musicians, presented by Thijs Bonger in his excellent series of programs Second chance for Hummel produced for three years on the radio Concertzender
RUSSIA. A video (25.09.2010) of the inaugural ceremony of a monument devoted to Maria Szymanowska in Saint Petersburg, made by the sculptor and architect Vyacheslav Bushayev.
The text of Aleksey Oliferuk about the inauguration of the Maria Szymanowska cenotaph. The web page of the daily VESTI (29.09.2010)
В Петербурге открыт памятник польской пианистке Марии Шимановской…
The web page of the Mitrofanevski Association in Saint Petersburg
Juri Piriutko presents Maria Szymanowska in the context of the exhibition “Necropolis of Art Masters” at the National Museum of Sculpture in Saint Petersburg
Пианистка, композитор, деятель музыкальной культуры,её игрой восхищались при дворе императора Николая I, от неё без ума был А.С.Пушкин, она была близко знакома с Жуковским, Гнедичем, Грибоедовым, Карамзиным, Мицкевичем
Maria Szymanowska in USA
On Szymanowska and Chopin in Paris, by Maja Trochimczyk, Chopin with Cherries
On Virtues of Musicians and Romances of Aristocrats, or Szymanowska in Paris, by Maja Trochimczyk in MEA KULTURA
On Szymanowska and Chopin in Paris, by Maja Trochimczyk in MEAKULTURA
O Marii Szymanowskiej w Paryżu, by Maja Trochimczyk in Gazeta Kulturalna N°2/2012
Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831) : a bio-bibliography, by Anna Kijas
Maria Szymanowska : pianist and composer, by Slawomir Dobrzanski, (Figueroa Press, 2006)
The book spotlights the achievements and celebrates the fascinating life of one of the first internationally renowned piano virtuosos of the early 19th century A divorced mother of three, Szymanowska was a close friend of Goethe, Pushkin, and Mickiewicz, a colleague of Cherubini, Hummel and Field, and pianist at the Imperial Court at St. Petersburg. Her compositions, including virtuoso Etudes and Preludes and Polish dances such as the Polonaise and the Mazurka, undoubtedly influenced Chopin’s own development as pianist and composer.
Maria Szymanowska in Japan
O Marii Szymanowskiej, Asako Fukui, the daily „Gazeta Polska w Japonii”
Czy istniał w ówczesnym języku polskim rodzaj żeński słów takich jak „kompozytor” i „pianista”?...
Maria Szymanowska in Europe
Szymanowska Maria Agata, née Wolowska, 1789 – 1831, Jean Marc Warszawski, 2004
Née à Varsovie 14 décembre 1789, morte à Saint-Petersbourg 25 juillet 1831. Pianiste et compositrice…
Maria Agata Wołowska (Szymanowska) n. 14 décembre 1789 d. 24 juillet 1831 – The Maria Wolowska Family tree
Cet arbre contient 3 familles de 14 personnes en 3 lignées…
Maria Szymanowska. Biografie, Ewa Rieger, 1996
Obwohl Frauen es im 19. Jahrhundert auf dem Konzertpodium nicht leicht hatten, weil der Typus des männlichen Pianisten vorherrschte, der mit Virtuosität, Klangfülle und gebieterischer Beherrschung der Tastatur das Publikum in Aufruhr versetzte, gab es immer wieder Musikerinnen, die den großen Schritt von der geschützten Atmosphäre des heimischen Salons an die Öffentlichkeit wagten…
Szymanowska, Symanoffska, Maria, Marie, Marie Agata, geb. Wołowska, Jasmin Jablonski, Sophie Drinker Institut
* 14. Dez. 1789 in Warschau, † 24./25. Juli 1831 in St. Petersburg, Pianistin, Klavierlehrerin und Komponistin. Maria Szymanowska stammte aus einer wohlhabenden jüdischen Großfamilie…
Werthers Wiederkehr oder Die abgewendete Tragödie, Friedrich Dieckmann
A text about the book by Martin Walser, Ein liebender Mann, describing the platonic love of 73 year old Goethe for 19-year-old Ulrike von Levetzow and the role that his meeting with Maria Szymanowska played at that precise time …
Goethe a Maria Szymanowska. Historie Mariánských Lázní a okolí
Maria Szymanowska, Polish Music Information Centre
Pianistka i kompozytorka; ur. 14 grudnia 1789, Warszawa; zm. 24 lipca 1831, Petersburg. Uzdolnienia muzyczne ujawniła bardzo wcześnie – nie znając jeszcze nut improwizowała na szpinecie i klawikordzie...
Maria Szymanowska Music Primary School in Kedzierzyn-Kozle, Poland
Maria Szymanowska in Australia
Music, the economy and society: Szymanowska’s career path in Russia in the 1820s by Anne Swartz
A study of the career of Maria Agata Wołowska Szymanowska (1789–1831) as a composer, performing musician, and teacher in Russia sheds new light on the social and economic status of the Polish-born musician at the St. Petersburg court in the decades that followed the last partition of Poland in 1795…
