A true musical feast in Kamień Pomorski

The third Friday concert of the 61st International Organ and Chamber Music Festival in Kamień Pomorski, which took place on July 4, traditionally began with an organ piece, but also – which does not happen often – ended with it.

Behind the counter of the baroque instrument of the Kamień Cathedral sat the outstanding Polish organist, Prof. Józef Serafin. The virtuoso is a graduate of the Academy of Music in Kraków and a student of great Polish organ virtuosos – Prof. Bronisław Rutkowski and Prof. Jan Jargoń. He also studied with Prof. Flor Peeters and Prof. Anton Heiller at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. He is a laureate of first prizes, among others at the National Organ Competition in Warsaw (1967) and the International Organ Competition in Nuremberg (1972). He has given concerts in almost all European countries, as well as in the United States, Canada, Japan and Kazakhstan. He is the director of the International Festival of Organ and Chamber Music in Leżajsk and the International Festival of Young Organists “Juniores Priores” in Sejny. He has participated in the jury work of many international organ competitions. He is a retired professor of the organ class at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, where he has been an honorary professor of that university since 2018, and of the Academy of Music in Kraków. In 2016, he received the "Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice" medal from Pope Francis.

Prof. Józef Serafin has special ties with Kamień Pomorski and the Kamień Festival, for which he is a special figure. He made his debut there on June 14, 1968, which was a reward for winning the National Organ Competition in Warsaw, which took place a year earlier. He performed then with the legend of Polish violin, Wanda Wiłkomirska, and the "Camerata Szczecińska" ensemble. Since then, he has played in Kamień Pomorski almost every year, being the most frequent organist at the festival organized in this city, the artistic level of which he has been watching over for over 40 years as its former director, and today its artistic director. On Friday, Prof. Serafin presented three versions of his performance of works by Franz Liszt and Johann Sebastian Bach, whose "Prelude and Fugue in A minor" was the last piece performed during the concert. After its conclusion, the Professor went down to the transept to bow to the audience, which rewarded this doyen of Polish organists with a standing ovation.

The chamber part featured the string quartet "Arte Con Brio" founded in 1999 by violist Mirosław Przybył, violinist Krystyna Prystasz-Przybył – concertmaster of the Pomeranian Philharmonic in Bydgoszcz and cellist Prof. Agata Jarecka from the Academy of Music in Łódź.

In the Kamień Cathedral, in the quartet, in addition to the musical Przybyła couple, also played Beata Bizoń (violin) and Karolina Sczechowicz (cello), who perform daily in the symphony orchestra of the Bydgoszcz Philharmonic. The group performs pieces from baroque to contemporary works as well as film music. Dorota Nowak, a solo vocalist, accompanied the quartet, singing soprano. Five years ago, the artist graduated from the Vocal and Acting Department of the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, where she studied under the supervision of prof. Katarzyna Nowak-Stańczyk. She collaborates with pianist Tomasz Gumiela. She is a guest soloist of the Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz and a consultant for voice projection in the Chamber Choir of her alma mater, where she also teaches and is an assistant in the solo singing class. The members of “Arte Con Brio” began their performance during Friday’s concert with a fragment of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s monumental “Te Deum”.

They also played pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel and Antonín Dvořák, and together with soloist-vocalist Dorota Nowak they presented – “Lascia ch'io pianga” from Handel's opera “Rinaldo” and “Rejoice greatly” from the oratorio “Messiah” by the same great German composer of the Baroque period, “Caro mio ben” by Giuseppe Giordani, “Panis Angelicus” from César Franck's “Mass”, “Ave Maria” by Vladimir Vavilov and “Alleluia” by Mozart from his motet “Exsultate, jubilate”, delighting the audience, whose thunderous applause encouraged the artists to perform an encore.

Blaise Bubnowicz