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LINK TO BUY CD or VINYL (physical album): unfolded.pl/en/produkt/lidia-grychtolowna-plays-in-2022-polish-composers-cd/
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ABOUT THE ALBUM

"When I hold Lidia Grychtołówna’s album in my hands, it strikes me how the selected track list is lined up to create a thread woven throughout her entire life – a life with the piano. (...)"
Mateusz Ciupka • "Ruch Muzyczny" magazine, podcast "Szafa Melomana"
Excerpt from album cover text – the whole album cover text – below and in the bonus items.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lidia Grychtołówna, a Polish pianist (born 1928 in Rybnik), winner of the 7th award V Frédéric Chopin International Piano Competition in Warszawa (1955), later sat 6 times on the juries of this Competition (1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005) as well as of the The National Chopin Piano Competition of Chopin Foundation of the U.S. (1990).

For 21 years she has been a piano masterclass professor at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany).

She has played concerts in all the European countries, in North and South America, Asia and Australia and still continues her concert activities. Lidia Grychtołówna has worked with conductors such as: Constantin Silvestri, William Steinberg, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Roberto Benzi, Hiroyuki Iwaki, Kurt Sanderling, Kurt Mazur, Günther Herbig, Carlos Spierer as well as Stanisław Skrowaczewski, Stanisław Wisłocki, Kazimier Kord, Jerzy Salwarowski, Witold Rowicki, Antoni Wit, Andrey Boreyko, Wojciech Rajski and many others.

Since the beginning of the pandemics in 2020 the Artist plays her piano recitals live from her Warsaw apartment and streams them online as: Lidia Grychtołówna Live from Home" – YouTube playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtTp_9-4iO5Hg6KihWDTx8k8IPU0sB2gj

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ALBUM COVER TEXT (full)

'When I hold Lidia Grychtołówna’s album in my hands, it strikes me how the selected track list is lined up to create a thread woven throughout her entire life – a life with the piano. It all started early. Her mother, a woman from a cultured background, did play but never as a soloist on stages of philharmonic halls. Her dream had not come true but she never gave up on music and played to calm her crying baby.

I wonder if back then she played Paderewski’s Melody – a miniature which enchanted so much Stanisław Barcewicz, the great Polish violinist. Perhaps. Its swaying, singing, ear-enveloping melody could indeed soothe the child’s sadness. Soon, Lidia touched the keyboard for the first time. At the age of five, with no previous learning, only by hearing, she did perform in front of the Polish Radio microphone, and it was, among others, the Minuet in G minor by Paderewski. Now, she returns to that piece in the album, performing it in a truly Mozartian style; this is a “slimmed down” version, as if played on a spinet, not a concert piano. Everything here reminds of the anecdotal story on how the composition was written, told by Paderewski himself: out of spite for Tytus Chałubiński, who cherished Mozart beyond measure, he wrote a small piece intended to imitate Mozart’s music. Chałubiński fell for the trick.

In Grychołtówna’s childhood, you will also find traces of Cracovienne
fantastique. When browsing through her memoirs, W metropoliach świata [In the Metropolises of the World], you will easily come across a photograph of a three-year old toddler in a Cracovian folk costume. She loved that one most and insisted on her mother constantly dressing her in that costume.

Grychtołówna’s father, an official at the district office, paid for lessons she took from Wanda Chmielowska, a teacher of renown, educated in St. Petersburg, and a student of Anna Yesipova. It took the girl only six months of study to enter the conservatory where her precocious talent caused a sensation.

Grychtołówna was eleven when WWII broke out and had already celebrated her first successes – concerts, recordings, and a scholarship from the province governor. She had also known her first sufferings – a bout of angina who had almost took her life, and a broken arm which healed miraculously so that she could continue to play. The war shattered everything: it interrupted Lidia’s studies, forced her family out of home and pushed them into poverty. Her father, an associate of Korfanty in the Silesian uprisings, hunted by both the Nazis and the Soviets, had to flee. Over just one year, the child turned into an adult and took a job. The only time when she could practice was between her desperate attempts to procure some food in the villages near Katowice and clandestine classes she took in Sosnowiec. She would play at a restaurant, in woolen gloves, on a piano completely out of tune, between crates of beer and wine casks.

After the war she had to rebuild her life from scratch. Lidia was 17, and she desperately wanted to resume her studies but she had to take teaching jobs as every penny counted. She was aware though that if she wanted to achieve something, she had to give up teaching and hone her own skills instead. She became Chmielowska’s student again. When she performed Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor, the tutor uttered: “This piece is just tailored for you”. Woven out of anxieties and “elegiac musing”, it unfolded under her fingers as if rising from the dark, fear-filled wartime night. It would stay with Grychtołówna for life. She never included it in the programs of her numerous recitals, she would always add Nocturne at the finale, as an encore.

The darkness of the night slowly gave way to the light of the day. Ten years after the war, Grychtołówna took part in the Chopin Competition, and ended in the 7th place. In later years, she would be member of the competition’s jury many a time and Chopin would be a permanent guest in her expanding repertoire. She became familiar with Variations in B flat major, Op. 12 in their full splendor, interpreted by Teresa Rutkowska. The cycle, based on a small aria from Ludovic, the now forgotten opera by Ferdynand Hérold, which Chopin listened to at the Opéra Comique, reveals his face as a socialite. It also demonstrates that Grychtołówna felt equally at ease in the glow of candles or the moonlight.

After her performance during the Chopin Competition a string of successes followed: in 1956, the 3rd prize at the Schumann Competition in Berlin, and in 1958 and 1959, respectively, extra prizes at the Busoni Piano Competition in Bolzano and in Rio de Janeiro. In Rio, she dazzled the audience and reviewers with her interpretation of Szymanowski. The first in his collection of twenty Mazurkas op. 50 is a direct reference to Chopin’s work, as a gesture of fusion with tradition and a clear message to Chopin that “mazurkas are not only yours”. Together with the melodious and melancholic Etude in B flat minor, written at the dawn of the 20th century and performed all over the world by Paderewski (and by Grychtołówna later on), they are the keystones of the album.

There is one exception, though: Folk Melodies by Lutosławski. Written exactly in the year when the World War II ended, they are often prompted to child pianists as “easy” pieces. Seemingly easy, as they are true diamonds which require a skilled hand to be cut properly and to bring out their shine. Lutosławski and Grychtołówna and their spouses became acquainted in Essen, during the Polish Music Days held in the city. “We had tons of laughter. We would pop into our hotel rooms and talk for hours” – recalled Grychtołówna. Lutosławski confirmed what her mother and Chmielowska used to say about her performance: “Ah! This sound and this legato of yours! I don’t need any radio presentations to recognize them at once” – he would say, and she would return the favor by playing Melodies and some other of his compositions. And Lutosławski, together with his wife, did his best not to miss any of her Warsaw recitals.

At the end, let us return to Chopin. One month before the death of Janusz Ekiert, Grychtołówna’s beloved husband with whom she spent almost her entire adult life, she asked him to tell her whether it was not too late for her to perform. She was 88. She trusted his judgment: he was strict, critical and always honest with her. She played to him, among others, Variations in B flat major. “You can continue to play” – he replied. “So, I have been playing until today” – she told me when we met in her drawing room in Marszałkowska Street.

And how does she play? Just listen!"

Mateusz Ciupka • "Ruch Muzyczny" magazine , "Szafa Melomana" podcast and blog
szafamelomana.pl

More info on the project and album: artprogress.org