United Kingdom Edinburgh International Festival [7]: Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh. (SRT)
Wroclaw Baroque Ensemble © Lukasz Rajchert
14.8.2025 – Bomsori Kim (violin), Thomas Hoppe (piano).
Fauré – Violin Sonata No.1 in A
Szymanowski – Nocturne and Tarantella, Op.28
Bacewicz – Kaprys Polski
Paderewski – Violin Sonata in A minor
Wieniawski – Fantaisie brilliante sur les motifs de l’opéra Faust de Gounod
16.8.2025 – Wrocław Baroque Ensemble, Andrzej Kosendiak (conductor)
Mikołaj Zieleński – Offertoria et communiones totius anni
Marcin Józef Żebrowski – Vesperae in Visitatione Beatae Mariae Virginis
It might seem a little odd to have the Edinburgh International Festival’s Focus on Poland strand being continued by a Korean violinist and a German pianist. However, Bomsori Kim has been an advocate for Polish music since her prize-winning turn at Poznań’s Wieniawski Violin Competition in 2016, and this programme offered very different music from four different Polish composers.
First, however, was the small matter of Fauré’s First Violin Sonata, which was full of intense musical passions, not only from Kim but also from Thomas Hoppe’s piano, which seemed to take the lead in Fauré’s roiling first movement. Kim took the prime spot during the gently wilting slow movement, however, while the scampering Scherzo and decorative finale showed how lightly she could dash off the faster music.
The Polish remainder of the programme was just as developed. Szymanowski’s Nocturne was full of swaggering beauty and inflections of the exotic east, a world away from the gentler Nocturnes of Chopin and Field, while the Tarantella was swirling and febrile, as was Grażyna Bacewicz’s Polish Caprice, an exquisitely worked-out miniature with whirls of magic in its brief duration. Paderewski’s Violin Sonata was full of dark romanticism with a firecracker ending, while Wieniawski’s Faust Fantasy was very silly (slower themes associated with the opera’s goodies, faster music with its baddies) but played with a brilliant dose of showmanship.
Saturday morning’s concert included Polish music from perhaps a more authentic source. Like the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra (review here), the Wrocław Baroque Ensemble are resident in Wrocław’s National Forum of Music, and they specialise in rare repertoire from Central Europe; especially Poland, obviously. They brought a programme of two extensive rarities, including Mikołaj Zieleński’s 1611 Offertoria et communiones totius anni, which is apparently the earliest known Polish collection of liturgical music. Zieleński’s set a series of brief, mostly Biblical texts, using polychoral techniques and instrumental flourishes that cannot help but put you in mind of what Monteverdi was doing at the same time on the other side of the Alps, albeit with a little less finesse. The small orchestra with two choirs of four brought it to life with something like evangelical zeal, relishing the ornamentational flourishes, culminating in a hymn to St Stanislaw of Poland.
Żebrowski’s Vespers on the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the other hand, brought Mozart to mind with some delicate grace notes and some marvellously florid vesper Psalm settings. Conductor Andrzej Kosendiak shaped the whole thing with the affection of someone whose life’s work has been to make this music better known, and his musicians responded by playing and singing with a remarkable degree of polish (or do I mean Polish?…).
Simon Thompson
The Edinburgh International Festival runs at venues across the city until Sunday 24th August. Click here for further details.
Featured Image: Violinist Bomsori Kim and pianist Thomas Hoppe at Queen’s Hall © Jess Shurte