Skweres | Wieniawski | Szymanowski Season Opening Jubilee 2026/2027

Performers
Ignacy Lisiecki | piano
Gaja Wilewska | violin
Marcin Franc | tenor

Academic Choir of the University of Warsaw
Irina Bogdanovich | conductor

Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus im. Jerzego Semkowa
Wojciech Rodek | conductor

Programme
Tomasz Skweres - Piano Concerto
Henryk Wieniawski - Violin Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor op. 14
intermission
Karol Szymanowski - Harnasie op. 55 for tenor solo, mixed choir and orchestra

The Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus im. Jerzego Semkowa opens the 2026/27 season, which marks the beginning of celebrations for its twentieth anniversary. The inaugural concert is conducted by Wojciech Rodek, featuring three soloists and the Academic Choir of the University of Warsaw.

The programme opens with Tomasz Skweres' jubilee Piano Concerto - a work that echoes both the twentieth anniversary of Sinfonia Iuventus and the centenary of Andrzej Wajda's birth. Its three movements correspond to three Wajda films: Man of Marble, The Promised Land, and The Young Ladies of Wilko, each portraying a different face of youth - courage, ruthlessness, and nostalgia. Skweres, a Warsaw-born composer and cellist living in Vienna and Regensburg, expands the traditional piano texture with harmonics and direct playing on the strings inside the resonance chamber. His music is performed by RSO Wien, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, and Münchner Kammerorchester; he is also a regular guest at Wien Modern, Warszawska Jesień, and Musica festivals in Strasbourg. The solo part will be performed by Ignacy Lisiecki, a pianist and conductor specializing in contemporary music, known in Poland for premiering works by Paweł Hendrich, Hanna Kulenty, and Roman Palestra, and for over a decade building his career on the Japanese music scene.

Henryk Wieniawski's Violin Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor op. 14 was composed in 1852, when the composer was barely twenty years old. Written with his own virtuosic performances in mind, it remained in the shadow of the later Concerto in D minor op. 22 for many years. The solo part will be performed by Gaja Wilewska, laureate