Their Voices Art Chamber Ensemble

• Joseph Achron (1886 - 1943): Hebrew Melody for violin and piano, Op. 33:
• 1Achron: Hebrew Melody for violin and piano, Op. 3306:43
• Sonata for violin and piano:
• 2Achron: Sonata for violin and piano : Moderato07:23
• 3Achron: Sonata for violin and piano : Andante ma non troppo04:31
• 4Achron: Sonata for violin and piano : Allegro02:33
• Sonata for cello and piano:
• 5Achron: Sonata for cello and piano : Allegro moderato08:25
• 6Achron: Sonata for cello and piano : Andante poco un grave05:17
• 7Achron: Sonata for cello and piano : Presto04:50
• Capriccio for violin and piano, Op. 18:
• 8Achron: Capriccio for violin and piano, Op. 1804:25
• Piano Trio No. 2 “Silent Voices”:
• 9Achron: Piano Trio No. 2 “Silent Voices”16:43
• Total Runtime01:00:50

Info for Their Voices

This new release from DUX presents a collection of recordings commemorating Jewish composers active mainly before World War II. Their music represents various stylistic trends of their era and was inspired by numerous ideas.

The Hebrew Melody for violin and piano, Op. 33 by Joseph Achron (1886?1943) resulted from his fascination with the religious music of Ashkenazi Jews, while the Sonata for violin and piano by Joachim Mendelson (1887?1943), the recording of which is also the Polish recording premiere, reveals neoclassical interests of its author, which is also the case of the Sonata for cello and piano by Szymon Laks (1901?1983).The Capriccio by J?zef Koffler (1896?1944) is an avant-garde composition through and through, using the dodecaphonic technique combined with a neoclassical form.

The recording culminates in a contemporary piece written specifically for a concert commemorating Jewish musicians murdered during the war, which took place at the Washington Holocaust Museum. It is the Piano Trio "Silent Voices" by Benjamin Lees (1924?2010).

"The Hebrew Melody by Joseph Achron is one of the most popular encore pieces in violin literature and opens the CD. Today it is the only repertoire piece from the pen of the pioneer of Jewish concert music. Jozef Koffler was the first Polish composer to compose dodecaphonic music before World War II, but his style was more neoclassical. Benjamin Lees, on the other hand, preferred traditional compositional forms. Joachim Mendelson is best known for his orchestral music, but he also wrote chamber music. Tonality, formal rigor and polyphony are characteristic of the works of Simon Laks, often supplemented by Polish elements." (Uwe Krusch, pizzicato.lu)

"The Art Chamber Ensemble plays with admirable assurance throughout, either collectively or in the sonatas, though as I noted earlier, I wish the Achron had been more Hebraically inflected. Never mind, the programme is finely recorded, very decently documented, and warmly played." (Jonathan Woolf, Web-International)

Art Chamber Ensemble:
Julita Przybylska-Nowak, piano
Agnieszka Kolodziej, cello
Jaroslaw Pietrzak, violin

Art Chamber Duo
We formed the Art Chamber Duo ensemble in 2010. Our experience as soloists allowed us to put into practice an idea we shared – to show in a new way the art of the duo of a violin and a piano as two equal, solo instruments. In contemporary performance practice, very often the piano is treated as a supporting instrument, whose role is limited to providing accompaniment, a harmonic background for the leading soloist part. We, as performers, follow in the tradition of joint concerts of grand virtuosi of the violin and the piano, which is reflected in the spectacular grand duo works they created, enormously popular during the Romantic era.

Duo brillant pieces are to be found among the output of numerous outstanding composers, including such distinguished figures as Giovanni Bottesini, Niccolo Paganini, Fryderyk Chopin (Frédéric Chopin) or Franz Liszt. Our repertoire includes virtuoso pieces by Franz Schubert, Henryk and Józef Wieniawski, Edward Wolff, Michał Bergson and Henri Vieuxtemps. We are constantly discovering many unknown works and our presentations are their world premieres. Here you can find the latest recordings from albums released in 2020 - Grand Duo Brillant (RecArt 2020) and Irena Regina Wieniawska vel Poldowski - works for violin and piano (Grantor 2020).

We invite many superb young musicians to join us, and we play together as the Art Chamber Ensemble. That cooperation provides us with an opportunity to expand our repertoire with works intended for bigger chamber line-ups. We have given concerts at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, at Singer’s Warsaw Festival, and in the Warsaw Philharmonic hall, presenting works by Szymon Laks, Erwin Schulhoff, Ernest Bloch and Felix Mendelssohn.

We also act through the Polonia Music Art Foundation, which we established. The Foundation’s aim is to popularise the output of Polish expatriate composers as well as works written by artists from national minorities, many of which populated Poland until the first half of the 20th century. In 2018, on the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, we organised a concert to present pieces by Polish and Czech composers of Jewish descent, who were Holocaust victims.

We are also very active educators, as tutors of the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław. We conduct numerous workshops and master courses, and act as judges at music competitions. We regularly cooperate with the Eufonium Publishing House, which releases the compositions we discover. So far we have published our performance editions of collections of works by Edward Wolff, Charles Auguste de Bériot and Henri Vieuxtemps.

One of our first joint concerts took place in 2010, at the Righteous Among the Nations medal award ceremony, held by the Yad Vashem Institute. That concert, given during an event organised in remembrance of heroes who helped Jews during WWII, became a turning point in our joint activity. It was then that we decided to save from oblivion works by Polish composers of Jewish descent who died tragically, as well as those that had not been presented on concert stages before.

On our first CD (DUX 2014), we recorded pieces for the violin and the piano by Józef Szulc, a composer born in Warsaw and living in France at the turn of the 20th century. We also recorded works by Joseph Achron and Aleksander Tansman, which were used in a music film ‘Zapomniane melodie’ (Forgotten tunes), produced by Telewizja Polska (Polish television) and Studio Grantor in 2014. We were the first performers in Poland of pieces by Michał Bergson – Grand Polonaise heroique, Op. 72, Joachim Mendelson – Sonata for Violin and Piano, Adolf Sonnenfeld – Fantasia on themes from the Opera ‘Halka’ by Stanisław Moniuszko, Józef Koffler – Capriccio, and Joseph Achron – Lullaby, Op. 1 – previously regarded as lost.

Booklet for Their Voices