Paderewski Festival Raleigh

Paderewski Festival Raleigh News, plans and announcements from the Paderewski Festival in Raleigh, NC.

The Paderewski Festival of Raleigh celebrates the life and music of Polish pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski. The events organized by the Festival in 2014 are financed in part by "Wspólnota Polska" (Polish Community) through a grant from the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Poland under the auspices of the project "Cooperation with Poles and Polish Communities Abroad for 2014."

Just in today, by mail. Another Paderewski concert program, this time on March 14, 1932, in Madison, Wisconsin. This o...
05/27/2026

Just in today, by mail. Another Paderewski concert program, this time on March 14, 1932, in Madison, Wisconsin. This one was well under $70, so I got to it first.
It's not a remarkable program, no great association with personages or events. It was of interest to me, in part, because my mother's next younger sister was a journalism graduate student at the University of Wisconsin that year (1931-1932). She had placed first in her class at Woman's College in Greensboro (now UNCG) and won the Weil Fellowship -- to take anywhere. She later worked for the Madison newspaper, lived 15 years in Hong Kong, and finished out her classic journalist's life with the Clearwater Sun, in Florida. My favorite aunt: 85 pounds of hard-bitten ci******es, liquor, and speech. Outlived all her physicians to die at 96.
I'll bet she was there -- to hear Paderewski.

I celebrated my 82nd birthday on May 25, Memorial Day. More than 31 well-wishes came through on that day. One of them ...
05/27/2026

I celebrated my 82nd birthday on May 25, Memorial Day. More than 31 well-wishes came through on that day. One of them was from the President of the Polish-American Club of the Triangle, an artist: Joanna Pawlak. I challenged her to make up a caricature of me -- I love caricatures.
So, within a very few minutes, she came through with six AI-generated renderings. Three dealt directly with our Paderewski Piano Festival. Here they are, trotted out to maintain interest (we hope) in the upcoming announcement of our four pianists. Fewer than three weeks!
The dog in the picture is Harvey, "Le Comte Coton de Tuléar," who has summarily arrogated to himself the title of "Resident Dog" of the Paderewski Festival. The caricatures were generated from images available on these pages, so Harvey appears -- in mortarboard and glasses -- as history professor at the 235th-anniversary picnic in honor of the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791.

Datelined yesterday, Richard Morrison -- "Chief Culture Writer" for The London Times -- published a list of ten GOATs of...
05/23/2026

Datelined yesterday, Richard Morrison -- "Chief Culture Writer" for The London Times -- published a list of ten GOATs of the piano.
The occasion is the 125th anniversary of Wigmore Hall. He, or whoever, had a number of present leading pianists compile lists and then combined the results through some semi-occult process.

We were disappointed to find no rank for Paderewski. So be it. Subjective in the extreme.
Here is their list:

10. Vladimir Sofronitsky
9. Artur Schnabel
8. Martha Argerich
7. Alfred Cortot
6. Artur Rubinstein
5. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli
4. Radu Lupu
3. Vladimir Horowitz
2. Sviatoslav Richter
1. Sergei Rachmaninov

The celebration of Wigmore Hall begins on May 25 and runs for two weeks. The ranking panel seems to include -- by and large -- a good many of those performing then.

As of 4:30 this afternoon, my posting with the three posters was approaching 1000 views (971, to be exact). I don't ...
05/21/2026

As of 4:30 this afternoon, my posting with the three posters was approaching 1000 views (971, to be exact).
I don't know how this wonderful phenomenon came about. The previous high was over 400; normal runs for my posts are in the range of 50-100.
So, I sat down to see what I could put up to capitalize on this unexpected development. Maybe those 1000 will look again.
Here are two Paderewski programs I didn't win on eBay. Oddly enough, neither is listed in Perkowska's great work listing hundreds of programs played by Paderewski. It seems that quite a number of programs did not make into the ken of posterity. I have half a dozen myself.
These two programs got away because the prices being asked now have gone well above the $10 or so of 20 years ago. I won't bid over $70 unless it's a really pivotal program--like the Herbert Hoover program of 1896. These two programs went for over $70. The first program below was played in Havana, February 17, 1926; Perkowska lists two programs played there/then, bracketing the date of this program. Sometimes programs could vary by a day or two--as in Raleigh in 1939, vicissitudes of travel--but this one listed a different venue. The performance was probably added by some musical entrepreneur/impresario.
The second program was played in Albany, NY, on March 18, 1892. First tour of the US, true -- but Perkowska lists at least 58 concerts on that tour before that date. Run of the mill; he was ruthlessly driven by tour managers to play.

Everything is moving forward for the 13th Annual Paderewski Piano Festival of Raleigh. We have four pianists -- two ...
05/18/2026

Everything is moving forward for the 13th Annual Paderewski Piano Festival of Raleigh.
We have four pianists -- two of them women. We haven't had a woman pianist in, literally, a couple of years. We have worked up a really great poster and the usual bookmarks with the schedule. 'Way ahead of the usual schedule so that we can take posters and other good stuff to Warsaw for the International Conference of Honorary Consuls of Poland at the beginning of July. This will be our first International Conference since 2008--which came just after I was named Honorary Consul.
We will publish names and the poster within ca. five weeks; we're coordinating our efforts with Kaine Riggan of the Chamber Music Raleigh organization. We want to go public at the same time they do.
We give you here our last three posters -- to prime you for the great announcement. Not much longer.

The Final Four slides, 17 through 20. Consequences. Short-term? Long-term? Warsaw School -- Korzon. OR Kraków Sc...
05/15/2026

The Final Four slides, 17 through 20. Consequences. Short-term? Long-term?
Warsaw School -- Korzon. OR Kraków School -- Bobrrzyński. Stańczyk . . . .

Day Four: Slides 13 through 16. The Constitution proper. More parallels: the Federalist Papers had their equivalent. ...
05/14/2026

Day Four: Slides 13 through 16. The Constitution proper. More parallels: the Federalist Papers had their equivalent. You have to sell the product.
Like the French Revolution, the Constitution reflects the rise of the Middle Class -- the urban element. The Dresden Connection? Why is the Hofkirche Catholic -- in a Protestant state?
And Matejko? How many hours do we have? An allegory of life-sized elements . . . . Huge.

Day Three: slides 9 through 12. We start with two more Denoyer-Geppert school/university flip-chart maps. These maps w...
05/13/2026

Day Three: slides 9 through 12. We start with two more Denoyer-Geppert school/university flip-chart maps. These maps were the standard; in fact, one of my college profs, a Czech, actually required us to buy tracing paper and come in after hours to trace maps from various major dates -- like the first map (slide 2) from 1740 -- in order to make us look at exactly where boundaries stood at that moment. We grumbled, but it did us a world of good and started me on a love of geography and cartography.
The first two slides today show the rise of Prussia and Muscovy in the late 17th and early 18th centuries (plus later gains). The centralization and enlargement of these states -- while Poland was mired in internal stasis and decline (liberum veto, first in 1652) -- set the stage for the Partitions. And the need for reform.
Professors can put up one map -- and talk about it for hours.

Day Two brings slides 5 through 8. We held this summer program (through Study Abroad, NSCU) from 2004 through 2019. Th...
05/12/2026

Day Two brings slides 5 through 8. We held this summer program (through Study Abroad, NSCU) from 2004 through 2019. The program proper was in biochemistry -- ergo, the "Agricultural History" in the title -- but I was the historical element. We met in the conference room of the old PZPR building until the history department was relocated to the far outskirts of the city.
These slides were an outline; we would talk about each one for some time. This group of slides brought us up to the First Partition.

Address

Cary, NC

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Paderewski Festival Raleigh posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share