We established the Mieczysław Weinberg Institute Foundation in February 2020.
We all got to know each other through the persona of Mieczysław Weinberg. Ania met Alek in Tel-Aviv on the occasion of the local premiere of “The Passenger,” Marysia and Alek met in Moscow at a conference devoted to the composer, and Ania and Marysia began their cooperation at the WarszeMuzik Festival. –It soon turned out that we share a fascination with Weinberg’s music and the conviction that we need an organisation that will dedicate its actions to the composer’s heritage. In 2023, Aleksander Laskowski resigned from the board of the Institute but remained a close associate of the foundation.
Maria Sławek
President
Violinist, lecturer, researcher, professor doctor habilitated of Fine Arts. She teaches violin at the Academy of Music in Cracow and the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and a course in Jewish Music as part of the post-graduate Polish-Jewish Studies of the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Science.
She became fascinated with Mieczysław Weinberg and his music as early as 2011 when she began working on his sonatas for violin and piano. Her fascination resulted in a CD recorded with Piotr Różański for the CD Accord label and a doctoral thesis defended under the guidance of professor Wiesław Kwaśny in 2015. In 2019, she organised the International Conference “Mieczysław Weinberg – artist in the face of history. Contexts, attitudes, interpretations” on the centenary of the composer’s birth at the Academy of Music in Cracow.
She has published, among others, in the “Ruch Muzyczny” magazine, the Jewish Historical Institute publishing series, the “The Holocaust of Jews” year’s issue, and the Nicolaus Copernicus University publishing house.
Maria Sławek performs as a soloist and chamber musician, and in the concert season 2017/2018, she was a resident artist at the Karol Szymanowski Philharmonic in Cracow. In 2018, she was granted a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (i.a., the “Young Poland” scholarship), and in 2019, her next album “Rejoice” was released, recorded with cellist Marcin Zdunik (re-issued on vinyl LP in 2020).
In 2021, she was awarded the Artistic Scholarship of the Capital City of Warsaw.
Ania Karpowicz
Vice President
Ania Karpowicz is a flautist, activist, and curator. Founder of the Hashtag Ensemble, with which she has been performing at the most important festivals of contemporary music since 2013. She is involved in promoting women’s art, as well as various projects carried out in cooperation with local communities. She is the initiator of the Warsaw Music Festival, discovering and popularising the forgotten compositional works of Polish Jews. Winner of the 2020 “Paszport Polityki” Award in the category of Classical Music.
“I got to know Mieczysław Weinberg through his flute literature, so it happened naturally. First, I included his excellent flute concertos in my repertoire, and then he was increasingly represented in the programme of the WarszeMuzik festival. Later it was time to issue an album and perform at concerts as part of the celebrations of the composer’s centenary in 2019, including the perfectly programmed Wajnberg@100 jubilee at the POLIN Museum. The result of this journey was the initiation of the Mieczysław Weinberg Institute. Mieczysław Weinberg’s music fascinates with a thicket of figures, motifs, and references, which – for musicians – are an excellent field of interpretative research. It combines Slavic lyrical expression and darkness, sometimes seemingly impenetrable. I am not at all surprised by the great and sincere enthusiasm of the artists performing Weinberg’s music.
We began our work by bringing Mietek back to his beloved city, Warsaw.
Already in November 2020, even before the official establishment of the Institute, we managed to get a commemorative plaque installed on Weinberg’s family home at 66 Żelazna Street. Thanks to our efforts, a new street was also created, Mieczysław Weinberg Street, in close vicinity of Żelazna, between Krochmalna and Chłodna Streets.
Friends of the IMW
Gidon Kremer
Driven by his strikingly uncompromising artistic philosophy, Gidon Kremer has established a worldwide reputation as one of his generation’s most original and compelling artists.
His repertoire encompasses standard classical scores and music by leading twentieth and twenty-first century composers. He has championed the works of Russian and Eastern European composers and performed many important new compositions, several of which have been dedicated to him. His name is closely associated with such composers as Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Luigi Nono, Edison Denisov, Aribert Reimann, Pēteris Vasks, John Adams, Victor Kissine, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass, Leonid Desyatnikov and Astor Piazzolla, whose works he performs in ways that respect tradition while being fully alive to their freshness and originality. It is fair to say that no other soloist of comparable international stature has done more to promote the cause of contemporary composers and new music for violin.
Gidon Kremer has recorded over 120 albums, many of which have received prestigious international awards in recognition of their exceptional interpretative insights. His long list of honours and awards include the Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis, the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Moscow’s Triumph Prize, the Unesco Prize and the Una Vita Nella Musica – Artur Rubinstein Prize. In 2016 Gidon Kremer has received a Praemium Imperiale prize that is widely considered to be the Nobel Prize of music.
In 1997 Gidon Kremer founded the chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica to foster outstanding young musicians from the Baltic States. The ensemble tours extensively and has recorded almost 30 albums for the Nonesuch, Deutsche Grammophon, ECM labels. In 2016/17 Kremerata Baltica was on landmark tours through Middle East, North America, Europe, and Asia to celebrate the orchestra’s 20th anniversary.
His commitment to the “discovery” of the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg, for which Kremer has rendered particularly outstanding services in recent years, should also be emphasized. In 2019 and 2021, Deutsche Grammophon and Accentus Music released albums recorded by and with Gidon Kremer with orchestral and chamber music works by Weinberg.
Since February 2022 Gidon Kremer is officially named a Friend of The Mieczysław Weinberg Institute.
Ilya Gringolts
One can hardly play the violin more expressively and uncompromisingly than Gringolts. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Harald Eggebrecht
Ilya Gringolts wins over audiences with his highly virtuosic playing and sophisticated interpretations and is always seeking out new musical challenges. As a sought-after soloist, Ilya Gringolts devotes himself to the great orchestral repertoire as well as to contemporary and rare works; he is also interested in historical performance practices. His concert programmes include virtuosic early repertoire by Leclair and Locatelli as well as Paganini’s solo and orchestral works. New works by Peter Maxwell Davies, Augusta Read Thomas, Christophe Bertrand, Bernhard Lang, Beat Furrer and Michael Jarrell have been premiered by him. In the summer of 2020, Ilya Gringolts and Ilan Volkov founded the I&I Foundation for the promotion of contemporary music, which awards commissions to young composers.
Ilya Gringolts started into the 2023/24 season with an extensive tour to Australia and New Zealand. Further collaborations this season include appearances with the Hungarian National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, and Brussels Philharmonic. Committing himself to historical informed repertoire, new projects will feature concertos by Mendelssohn with La Scintilla and by Sibelius with Finnish Baroque Orchestra. He will also premiere new works by Lotta Wennäkoski, Chaya Czernowin, Boris Filanovsky and Mirela Ivicevic.
Ilya Gringolts has performed with renowned orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Recent highlights have been joint projects with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra Rome, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Oslo Philharmon-ic, the, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra,the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and the National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan. From his violin, he has recently conducted projects with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, the Camerata Bern, and Ensemble Resonanz.
For his Diapason d’Or and Gramophone Editor’s Choice Award-winning recording of Locatelli’s Il labirinto armonico (2021), Ilya Gringolts also led the Finnish Baroque Orchestra from the instrument. This was followed in the same year by the solo CD Ciaccona with works by Bach, Pauset, Gerhard, and Holliger, which also received the Gramophone Editor’s Choice Award. His extensive discography of highly acclaimed CD productions for Deutsche Grammophon, BIS, and Hyperion, among others, also includes the critically acclaimed recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin and the recording of the complete violin works of Stravinsky (2018), recorded with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia under Dima Slobodeniouk and awarded the Diapason d’Or.
As first violinist of the Gringolts Quartet, he has enjoyed great success at the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and Teatro La Fenice in Venice. A highly esteemed chamber musician, Ilya Gringolts regularly collaborates with artists such as Nicolas Altstaedt, Alexander Lonquich, Peter Laul, Aleksandar Madzar, Christian Poltera, Lawrence Power and Jörg Widmann.
After studying violin and composition with Tatiani Liberova and Zhanneta Metallidi in St. Petersburg, he attended the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied with Itzhak Perlman. He won the International Violin Competition Premio Paganini (1998) and is still the youngest winner in the competition’s history; he was also named a BBC New Generation Artist at the outset of his career. In addition to his professor position at the Zurich University of the Arts, Ilya Gringolts was appointed to the renowned Accademia Chigiana in Siena in 2021. He plays a Stradivari (1718 “ex-Prové”) violin.
Yulianna Avdeeva
Yulianna Avdeeva gained worldwide recognition at the 2010 Chopin Competition, where she won First Prize with a “detailed way of playing” that “matched Chopin’s own” (The Telegraph). A pianist of fiery temperament and virtuosity, Avdeeva plays with power, conviction, and sensibility, having won over audiences all over the world.
A favorite artist in Europe with recurring concert engagements at the Warsaw Philharmonic or Rudolfinum in Prague, Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, Vienna Konzerthaus and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Yulianna has also given concerts for Ukrainian Relief, including one together with Anne-Sophie Mutter at the Lucerne Chamber Music Festival.
Her 2022-23 season begins with a Tippet Rise Festival recital in the US, followed later by a Carnegie Hall debut recital. She performs with the Vienna Symphony and after an acclaimed first collaboration in 2021 tours again with Teodor Currentzis and SWR Symphony in Munich, Hamburg and Vienna. In mid-winter she returns to Japan with concerts in Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama and Kyoto to be followed with concerto appearances with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (Andris Poga), RAI National Orchestra (Juraj Valčuha), Bergen Philharmonic (Petr Popelka), Basque National Orchestra (Robert Trevino) and Camerata Salzburg (Finnegan Downie Dear). She will also perform in recitals in Leipzig, Florence, Madrid, Barcelona, Aarhus and Naples.
Among her other extensive orchestral collaborators are the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Rundfunk- Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Finnish and Danish Radio Symphonies, Czech Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Kremerata Baltica, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, KBS Symphony and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony.
A dedicated chamber musician, Yulianna has toured regularly throughout Europe with violinists Julia Fischer and Gidon Kremer, with appearances at Wigmore Hall, Tonhalle Zurich, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, among others. In addition to being a regular guest at Festival Chopin Warsaw and the Festival International de Piano La Roque d’Anthéron, recent seasons have seen Avdeeva in recital at the Salzburg Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Boulez Saal, Vienna Konzerthaus, Palau de la Música Catalana, Musikfest Bremen, Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival and Shostakovich Festival Saxony.
Avdeeva’s recordings of Chopin concertos with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and Frans Brüggen (2013), her 3 solo albums featuring works by Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, and Prokofiev (2014, 2016, 2017), and her collaboration with Gidon Kremer in Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s chamber music (2017 and 2019) comprise a formidable record of Yulianna’s art topped off by a Deutsche Grammophon (2019) solo recording as part of a milestone collection dedicated to Chopin Competition Gold Medalists.
Piano aficionados around the world also enjoy her educational online streaming project, the #AvdeevaBachProject, which she started during the lockdown gaining more than half a million views.