Greetings from Gdansk, Poland.pdf

GLASS MUSIC WORLD FALL 2006 5

Greetings from Gdansk, Poland

Hello, Anna and Arkadiusz from Poland are speaking!

We play the musical glasses and we do it as the GLASS DUO

ensemble. We would like to say hello to every GMI member.

We hope we have some interesting news for you from our

place - Gdansk, where we live. So...

A few months ago we started to talk about our perfor-

mance at the Mozart Festival in Gdansk. There were many

ideas and suggestions as to which way should we do it, but

after a long talk with the organizer we found the solution. We

were really surprised when we found more information about

other musicians invited to the “Mozartiana”. It was the first

of this kind of festival organized by Mr. Jan Lukaszewski and

his Polish Chamber Choir so it was going to be unusual.

We looked at the festival program and read about

Schola Cantorum Gedanensis, Ryga Philharmonic Orchestra,

Silesian String Quartet and other interesting groups that make

classic as well as jazz and electronic music. We could also find

information about concerts by Jozef Skrzek, Emil Kowalski

Jazz Quintet and Zbigniew Namys ł owski. It was fantastic

enough but we didn’t think we would have a much bigger sur-

prise. It turned out that we would have a unique occasion to

meet other glass musicians there. In addition to our GLASS

DUO, the festival organizer invited the Schönfeldingers - from

Vienna. We were truly excited.

We must say that we hadn’t met other glass musicians

before. Just one time - a few years ago, we were in Warsaw

and heard Mr. and Mrs. Schönfeldinger. There was not

enough time to speak that evening - what a pity... We also

didn’t have a look at their instruments very carefully.

Now we were dreaming about the possibility of touch-

ing and playing these extraordinary instruments. Until now

we saw the glassharmonica just in the museums, and the ver-

rophone we know just by the photos.

A few days before the festival beginning we contacted

Chris and Gerald. We made an appointment.

The evening we met each other was really nice. We

first spoke about problems and doubts concerning playing

glass instruments, being on the stage... And we made another

The Schönfeldingers, left, and the Szafraniecs, right.

appointment in order to try the instruments. The next day we

played an armonica and the verrophone. And we were so sur-

prised. We thought we could play well, but we couldn’t. The

technique was probably similar but, for sure, not the same.

Both the Vienner Glasharmonika Duo and GLASS

DUO concerts had aroused a great interest. There were a lot of

people sitting and standing in Abbot Palace. The atmosphere

was really good. We played the second part of the piano con-

certo, thinking: why Mozart didn’t write it originally for musi-

cal glasses???

After all we can say what was the most important for

us:

1. - a great satisfaction and a new experience we made

there. Two months ago we played a concert just with Chopin

pieces. Now we performed only Mozart.

2. - a possibility to meet with other glass musicians.

Not only on the occasion of rare instruments festival. It was

really nice!

by Anna i Arkadiusz Szafraniec

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