Halka

The passion that engulfed me for the music of the great Stanis∏aw Moniuszko was not by chance. In the Europe of the first half of the nineteenth century, filled with the operatic element, under the powerful sway of the phenomenon of Giuseppe Verdi, we are enchanted by the language which the great Polish master succeeded in personalising in such an exceptional, distinctive way. In his scores, we find wonderful lyricism and splendid instrumentation, referring with deference to the great German symphonists, and at the same time to Italian simplicity. Above all, however, we discover the wonderfully mined potential of popular Polish music of those times. This all means that Moniuszko is a composer to whom one cannot but refer with great enthusiasm, if one wishes to better understand the phenomenon of nineteenth-century European music.