by Róża Światczyńska

In Krzyżowa, a place steeped in Polish-German history, a second decade begins with an additional, new identity. The former von Moltke estate, once the centre of the anti-Nazi Kreisau Circle and the setting for the historic Reconciliation Mass of 1989, is now vibrant with life through the music of Beethoven, Shostakovich, Ravel and Weinberg. 

The Krzyżowa-Music festival: “Music for Europe” marks a further stage in building bridges through musical dialogue. In Krzyżowa, music is an invigorating intercultural bridge, providing a forum for the exchange of thoughts and emotions and inspired by the ideals of democracy and harmonious coexistence. 

This small village, in the heart of Lower Silesia, is surrounded by the picturesque landscapes of the Świdnica Plain. From the nearby town of Świdnica, it takes about a quarter of an hour to reach the village, passing golden lupine fields and a few sleepy villages along the way. However, once you enter the gate of the former estate, the scenery changes completely: a complex of well-kept buildings with a magnificent neoclassical castle opens up before you, and the sounds of various instruments blend together through the wide-open windows to create a polyphonic fusion of musical styles and languages, charged with the fresh energy of youth. These are the participants of the Krzyżowa-Music Festival, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2024.

The rehearsals, which are open to all, continue until lunchtime. Everyone is welcome to take part and listen to quartets and quintets preparing for the evening concerts. After lunch, there is a short relaxation period during which the musicians practice individually before returning to making music together, which is often interrupted by bursts of laughter. Interestingly, nobody is permanently sitting around with their smartphones or scrolling through social media, which is so common among young people in the digital world. Following afternoon rehearsals, some play football and others spread out their yoga mats. What is important to them is spending time together, and this happens at its own pace. As the sun sets, the campus comes alive with cheerful chatter as preparations are made for the evening performances. Many Krzyżowa participants are already looking forward to the bonfire, where they will roast sausages and sing — because celebrating together is also an important part of festival life.

For me, walking through the charming surroundings, overlooked by the “Berghaus”, has a specially touching significance. It was in this house, on a somewhat remote hill, that the defiant Kreisau Circle held its conspiratorial meetings. It was here that plans were made for a new democratic Germany and a united Europe, free from Hitler, free of war and totalitarianism. Dorothy von Hülsen, a descendant of the von Moltke family, recounts this story with evident emotion. She holds a collected edition of poignant letters that Helmuth James von Moltke wrote to his wife, Freya, while on death row. Von Moltke, lord of manor and one of the leaders of the resistance, was executed by the Nazis in January 1945.

Everything I have heard from friends about Krzyżowa’s extraordinary “genius loci” and unique atmosphere proves to be authentic. There is a spirit of partnership through-out, and everyone is equal when it comes to the music. There are no stars here, no secondary performers. So-called “juniors” and “seniors”, as well as attentive guiding “mentors”, gather at their music stands to work on their interpretations together. Although the hierarchy of voices is important in chamber music, the focus is on a dialogue based on partnership and democratic principles. This colla-borative spirit permeates both the chamber music-making and the daily office work under the direction of Dr Matthias von Hülsen, the general director and co-founder of the festival. He organises the annual events with undiminished enthusiasm.

The results of this work can be heard at concerts in Krzyżowa and several neighbouring towns, which have historically attractive venues. Despite the demanding programme,
audiences listen to the performances with absolute concentration, both at the historic theatre in Szczawno-Zdrój and at the monumental Church of Peace in Jawor. The repertoire, compiled by Viviane Hagner, the festival’s artistic director, is extremely varied. As well as canonical works, it includes rare chamber music pieces that are seldom heard in every-day concert programmes.

Polish music is also an important focus of the programme, which fits naturally into the Krzyżowa concept and is becoming increasingly prevalent in the European musical 
landscape. During the opening concert of Krzyżowa-Music’s autumn tour 2024, which was broadcast by the radio station Dwójka from the Royal Castle in Warsaw, works by Chopin and Lutosławski were performed alongside compositions by Franz Schubert, Bedřich Smetana and César Franck. However, this is just one aspect of the Polish presence at the festival. Over the past decade, pieces by Karol Szymanowski, Grażyna Bacewicz, Krzysztof Penderecki, Andrzej Panufnik, Mieczysław Weinberg and Władysław Szpilman have also been performed. Szpilman’s wife and son participated in one of the festival symposia.

Intellectual discourse and the exchange of ideas are an integral part of every festival edition. A series of panel discussions, moderated by the outstanding cellist Alexey Stadler, combines humanistic reflection with current problems of our present time. Highlights included a memorable meeting with Evgeny Kissin, an uncompromising artist who has openly criticised Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and a discussion with Jessica Duchen, an eminent British writer and publicist, about the negative effects of Brexit on the music scene.

Once more, this year’s edition of the festival promises to be exciting and full of surprises. Its programme is based on various key themes commemorating several composers whose milestone anniversaries are being celebrated by the music world this year. The focus is on the 150th birthday of Maurice Ravel and the 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich – two great artists who worked overshadowed by wars and emerging totalitarianism. In this year marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the festival programme will reflect on composers’ attitudes towards totalitarian oppression. This is all the more significant given that the music they created expressed the horrors and unrest of this era in many different ways. It reflected the composers’ existential fears and often revealed their personal dramas.

For Maurice Ravel, the outbreak of the First World War was a pivotal moment that shaped his subsequent work. However, the composer, who served on the front line as a military lorry driver, avoided making direct references to reality in his music. Instead, he preferred stylistic masks that helped him keep his distance from the outside world. He processed the trauma of war by revisiting traditional forms, as seen in the suite “Le Tombeau de Couperin” dedicated to his fallen friends, and the poem “La Valse”, which some interpret as a depiction of the destruction of Europe at that time. The 1914 piano trio included in the festival programme reflects his state of mind at the beginning of the war, being imbued with subtle melancholy and nostalgia, as well as featuring a constant interplay between idyll and emotional tension.

At the opposite pole is the work of Dmitri Shostakovich, a composer who was forced to live in the shadow of war, Stalinist terror and the communist regime. In his endeavours to preserve his artistic identity, he became the tragic victim of a repressive system. Following the scathing criticism of his avant-garde opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” in 1934 and the increasing accusations of formalism, Shostakovich was compelled to submit to the authoritarian regime he privately despised. This ambivalence is reflected in his work: on the one hand, it met the requirements of socialist doctrine; on the other, it concealed the horror of his time and his resistance to reality under a cloak of irony and grotesquerie. This tragedy is evident in Shostakovich’s chamber music, including the Piano Trio from 1944, the Piano Quintet composed after the war, the Eighth String Quartet and the Ninth Quartet, which will be performed during the festival, as well as the emotionally intense Romance Suite, based on poems by Alexander Blok, from 1967.

The drama of the Second World War and the tragedy of National Socialist victims is evident in the works of Hans Krása and Dick Kattenburg, two extremely talented Jewish composers who were murdered 1944 in Auschwitz. Survivors of the Holocaust included Paul Hindemith and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who were able to develop successful compositional careers thanks to their emigration overseas. Their pre-war compositions are featured in this year’s festival programme, serving as a reminder of the trauma experienced by many artists who left their homelands in search of artistic recognition elsewhere.

These are the main themes of this year’s festival. Nevertheless, the music of Krzysztof Penderecki, who died five years ago, should not be forgotten. He was a composer whose work – above all the St Luke Passion and the monumental Polish Requiem, written over many years – reacted vividly to the historical upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries. Penderecki himself found the strength to resist oppressive reality, first through avant-garde music and later through spirituality. For him, chamber music was always an expression of his turn towards universal values, as can be seen in his Sextet from 2000 and the slightly earlier Clarinet Quartet, both of which are included in the festival programme.

This year’s festival will feature more Polish music, with works by Mieczysław Karłowicz, Karol Szymanowski, Grażyna Bacewicz and Witold Lutosławski. When listening to Bacewicz’s 1955 Partita for violin or Lutosławski’s “Bukoliki” Cycle, composed three years earlier, it is important to acknowledge the courage of these exceptional composers who preserved their artistic independence in the face of the pressure of Socialist Realism and the political guidelines in the Polish music scene of the 1950s. The struggle for moral integrity and artistic identity in times of oppression and political authoritarianism should be pursued with special vigour in Krzyżowa.

 

Róża Światczyńska 
is a journalist and radio editor 
at Polish Radio, Dwójka 2