• Lutosławski in the January pipeline

I have just been invited by the Polish Minister of Culture to join the Honorary Committee for Witold Lutosławski Year in 2013, which is an honour in itself.  I’m never quite sure what honorary committees do or are expected to do, but I promise to knuckle down and contribute as best I can.

Having just spent a few weeks preparing for last Saturday’s CD Review round-up of Lutosławski CDs on BBC Radio 3 – an hour’s discussion, live-on-air, with Andrew McGregor – I thought I’d have a few days off.  But Lutosławski continues to beckon.  So here are a few things that are coming up in the next month or so, not all of them yet accomplished.

• Around now, a German translation by Andrea Huterer of my paper ‘Lutosławski and Literature‘ (2010) will appear in ‘Witold Lutosławski. Ein Leben in der Musik’, Osteuropa 11-12 (Berlin, 2012).  This issue is being supported by the Polish Institute in Berlin.

• I’ve just written a very brief essay on ‘Lutosławski and his Performers‘ for the Polish Institute in Brussels.  It is for a Lutosławski tribute to be published in Dutch and French in January 2013 (all three versions should also be available online via www.culturepolonaise.eu).

• Also in January 2013, an interview I did a couple of months ago will appear in a centenary tribute to Lutosławski being published (in Polish) by the Wrocław Philharmonic.  The orchestra is not only named after Lutosławski but is the driving force behind the Opera Omnia series of Lutosławski CDs on the Accord label.

• On 23 January I am discussing Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto with Johannes Moser, in a pre-concert event for the Bournemouth SO, which gave the world premiere in October 1970.  This is part of the bicentenary celebrations of the Royal Philharmonic Society, which commissioned the concerto.  (The actual RPS anniversary is the next day, 24 January.)  I’m really looking forward to this encounter, at the Poole Lighthouse, between a music historian and one of the many young cellists who have taken this concerto into their repertoire.  The Lutosławski centenary falls two days later, on 25 January, when I might just pop over to Warsaw for the Polish inauguration of Witold Lutosławski Year.

• The Philharmonia Orchestra begins its Lutosławski series Woven Words on 30 January at the Royal Festival Hall in London.  Accompanying the series will be a substantial celebratory programme which includes several essays.  My ‘Parallel Lives of a Captive Muse‘ is one of them.  It’s already been published on the Woven Words website.

• Watch out for the fifth Lutosławski CD, with the BBC SO and Edward Gardner, which Chandos is releasing early in 2013 in its ‘Muzyka Polska’ series (First Symphony, Dance Preludes, Partita and Chain 2).  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing the booklet notes for these outstanding recordings and it’s been an(other) honour to be associated with it.

• I am currently writing a substantial profile of Lutosławski and his music for publication in late Spring 2013 (watch this space, and others!).

Well, I think those seven items are more than enough to be going on with!