• Jan Ekier (1913-2014)

Happy Birthday to the Polish pianist Jan Ekier, whose 100th birthday today is being celebrated by a ten-hour marathon of Chopin performances (by younger pianists!) as part of the Chopin and His Europe festival in Warsaw.  This is entirely appropriate, because Ekier was the editor-in-chief of the National  Edition of Chopin’s music which followed Paderewski’s long-standing Complete Edition.  Chopin scholarship has moved on again since Ekier started his edition, but I’m surprised that he has no entry in the New Grove dictionaries, neither in 1980 nor in 2001.  His role within Poland as a pianist, teacher as well as editor is significant. He received Poland’s highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle (above) in 2010, at the same time as Henryk Mikołaj Górecki.  For a time he was also a composer – Kolorowe melodie for piano (1948) is his best-known work.

Ekier was a good friend of…