Nearly 2000 artists performing, 50,000 people in the halls, hundreds of tourists last year. These numbers speak for themselves. The Beethoven Festival, lead by Elżbieta Penderecka, its artistic director, is one of Poland’s most important: Warsaw’s smart calling card and highlight. It brings together famous artists, music lovers, politicians, big business, and the crème de la crème of society.
It is the programme that is the most important. For where else can one hear all Beethoven’s symphonies, if not at the festival bearing his name? Where, outside the National Philharmonic Hall, do great symphonic orchestras of world renown perform? In 2010, we will hear an exceptionally large amount of Chopin’s music, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his birth. I am glad that the organisers of the 14th Beethoven Festival put forth a balanced programme as a counterweight, with works by Fryderyk Chopin’s peer, Robert Schumann. I am satisfied to find what is the most precious in his works among this selection: the piano cycles from 1830–1839. After all, the guiding theme of this year’s festival is the phenomenon of the piano, and Schumann was capable of drawing most unusual moods from it. The theme of great romantic works will be complemented by the stage performance of Euryanthe, the unjustly forgotten opera by Carl Maria von Weber that captivated the young Chopin. Its recording will be the fourth item in the collection of opera rarities, released as CDs by the Ludwig van Beethoven Association and Polish Radio.
Anna S. Dębowska
Editor-in-Chief of the Beethoven Magazine