Paweł Mykietyn

This is the first monographic album of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic with music by a unique composer from Wrocław: Paweł Mykietyn. The album includes his Symphony No. 2 and his Flute Concerto, the solo part of which is performed by one of the most outstanding flautists of the young generation, Łukasz Długosz.

Album premiere: 2017

Publishers: National Forum of Music, CD Accord

Conductor: Benjamin Shwartz

Performers: Łukasz Długosz, NFM Wrocław Philharmonic

Paweł Mykietyn is one of today’s busiest Polish composers. He creates music for traditional ensembles – chamber, orchestral, and vocal-instrumental – but at the same time does not shy away from modern electronic media. He has been collaborating with the iconic theatre director Krzysztof Warlikowski for over twenty years, occasionally collaborating with other masters of Polish theatre such as Grzegorz Jarzyna. The artist’s flirtation with the tenth muse also dates back to 2000. As the author of soundtracks for films by Mariusz Treliński (The Egoists), Małgorzata Szumowska (Stranger, 33 Scenes from Life, Elles, In the Name of...), Andrzej Wajda (Tatarak, Walesa: Man of Hope) and Jerzy Skolimowski (Essential Killing, 11 minutes), within the decade since 2004, he won the Golden Lions at the Gdynia Film Festival four times and twice won the Eagle, a Polish Film Award, significantly outshining his colleagues who have been working in the cinematography industry all their professional lives. To all this, one should add that he is the musical director of the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, that he is the patron of the International Chamber Music Festival Music at the Top in Zakopane, that he often sits on the juries of composition competitions, and that he provides professional consultations to many young artists. Whether he likes it or not (probably not), Paweł Mykietyn has become a real human institution, despite having only recently turned 45...

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Written on commission and on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Polish Composers’ Union, Symphony No. 2 was written mainly in the late spring 2007 in Kuźnica on the Hel peninsula, where the composer used to spend several weeks a year. (The composition was dedicated to Teresa Krajewska, a resident of Kuźnica, in whose house the artist regularly rents the same apartment with a terrace and a mystical view of the nearby church and the waters of the Bay of Puck and the Baltic Sea.) The piece had its premiere on September 23, 2007, during the inaugural concert of the 50th anniversary Festival of Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn. The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra from Katowice was conducted by one of the greatest European specialists in contemporary music, Reinbert de Leeuw.

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Written for the most outstanding Polish flautist of the young generation, Łukasz Długosz, and premiered on November 29, 2013 at the Artur Rubinstein Philharmonic in Łódź by the local orchestra conducted by Wojciech Rodek, the Concerto for Flute and Orchestra is – after the Concerto for Piano (1996), Concerto for Cello (1997), Concerto for Harpsichord (2002) and Klave (2004) for microtonal harpsichord and chamber ensemble – the fifth instrumental concerto by Paweł Mykietyn. The Concerto for Flute, to an extent previously unheard of from this composer, develops the idea, contained in his Symphony No. 2, of permanently modifying (here, specifically, slowing down) the tempo. Probably due to the artist’s focus on temporal manipulations, this composition seems to indicate a conscious marginalisation (but not complete annihilation!) of the harmonic aspect, despite the fact that most of Mykietyn’s earlier works seemed to have harmony infused into their very stem cells.

Marcin Gmys

Awards: nomination for Fryderyk 2018