Festival history

The defining achievement of the cultural impresario Elżbieta Penderecka was the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival. She did not live to see its 30th anniversary edition, though she helped plan it.

by Dorota Szwarcman

In the early 1990s, after 25 years managing the professional affairs of her husband, the composer Krzysztof Penderecki, Elżbieta Penderecka decided to broaden her activities, drawing on the network of artists she had built up over many years. The collapse of communist rule in Poland quickly opened up new opportunities.

Until then musical management had effectively been monopolised by the state agency Pagart. Modelled on the Soviet Goskoncert, it arranged foreign tours but also functioned as a passport office holding artists’ documents and, in practice, as a censorship authority deciding who could and could not travel abroad.

The first private agencies in the new market economy were therefore founded by former Pagart employees, the only people with relevant experience. One of them, Heritage Promotion of Music & Art, was established in 1990 by Janusz Pietkiewicz, (who also worked in broadcasting). Penderecka joined him. While Pietkiewicz worked mainly on the Italian market, she began in 1992 to assist organisationally her husband when he became artistic director of the Pablo Casals Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The agency dissolved after several years, but she remained connected to the festival for a decade.

At the same time, she was active in Poland, initially with the European Mozart Foundation, which in the 1990s organised the International Mozart Academy for young musicians, for several years based in the Kraków district of Przegorzały.

In 1996 she agreed to chair the programme council for Kraków’s year as European City of Culture in 2000. A year later she launched in Warsaw a concert series “Great Masters’ Concerts: Elżbieta Penderecka invites”, bringing artists such as Jessye Norman and Mścisław Rostropowicz to the National Philharmonic. Meanwhile in Kraków she initiated the first Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival.

Many still wonder why this particular composer was chosen as the patron of Kraków’s flagship festival. At the time, however, the choice seemed inevitable. First, 26 March 1997 marked the 170th anniversary of the composer’s death. More importantly, it was finally possible to speak openly about something long understood among Kraków musicologists: the Jagiellonian Library possessed priceless musical manuscripts, including works by Beethoven.

They formed part of the former Prussian State Library in Berlin (today the Berlin State Library). During the second world war the collection had been hidden in a monastery in Grüssau (now Krzeszów) in south-west Poland, where it was later discovered by Polish authorities. Among the materials eventually transferred to Kraków were Beethoven’s sketches and scores.

Penderecka sought help from the German-based arts manager Kari Kahl-Wolfsjäger, founder and long-time director of the Kissinger Sommer festival (where Panderecki’s compositions were often performed) and head of the Bonn association Citizens for Beethoven. 
In practice it was she who organised the first Kraków festival, inviting artists and securing funding for their fees. However, she agreed to do so only once, leaving Penderecka to manage the Festival herself, supported by the Kraków 2000 Festival Office (later the Kraków Festival Office).

The inaugural festival was therefore a Polish-German coproduction. The accompanying exhibition of Beethoven manuscripts at the Jagiellonian Library, prepared by music curator Agnieszka Mietelska-Ciepierska, was also a joint undertaking. The director of the Berlin library brought the manuscripts of the first, second and fourth movements of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony so that it could be shown in full — the Minuet is held in Kraków.

The opening, however, was not without tension. Germany’s consul in Kraków, Laurids Hölscher, remarked that parts of the Prussian Library separated by war “belong together and should be returned to their place of origin”. Berlin library director Antonius Jammers thanked Poland for safeguarding the collection and preventing its removal to Moscow yet simultaneously suggested financial assistance for expanding the Jagiellonian Library in exchange for the manuscripts’ return. The collection nevertheless remains in Kraków to this day, and exhibitions continue annually, even though the festival later moved to Warsaw.

The first seven editions in Kraków had an almost domestic atmosphere, the city has an instinct for celebration. The organisers initially had to persuade a conservative public that attending concerts over Easter was acceptable. Early festivals ran from Holy Wednesday to Easter Monday; on Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday only afternoon chamber concerts were permitted. At the Florianka Hall audiences came almost as if for afternoon tea: music accompanied by cake, tea and wine. Only the Monday finale returned to the Philharmonic. From the fourth edition, symphonic concerts were also held on Sundays. Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, a music lover and regular concertgoer, proved an important ally.

Distinguished soloists appeared: pianists Barry Douglas, Alexander Lonquich, Christoph Eschenbach, Rudolf Buchbinder, Janusz Olejniczak and Piotr Anderszewski; violinists Anne-Sophie Mutter, Vladimir Spivakov, Shlomo Mintz and Julian Rachlin; and cellists Boris Pergamenschikow and Arto Noras. Most orchestras were Polish, while visiting ensembles were usually chamber groups. Period performance was also represented. At the first festival Melvyn Tan performed on a Beethoven-era hammerklavier with Leipzig’s Neue Bachische Collegium Musicum, probably the first solo recital in Poland on a period piano. At the second edition Alexei Lubimov appeared with the Wiener Akademie; the fourth featured the Frankfurt ensemble La Stagione, and the seventh artists from the Warsaw Chamber Opera and Boston Baroque.

The first programme consisted entirely of Beethoven. Later editions expanded to include Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms, and by 2000 when Kraków was European Capital of Culture also Bach, Mozart and Mahler. A year later Krzysztof Penderecki appeared not only as conductor (he had already appeared in that role during first edition) but as composer, with his Credo. The festival repertoire was planned by its programme council, chaired by Professor Mieczysław Tomaszewski, which also organised symposia devoted to Beethoven’s music; this remains the case today, following his death the council was taken over by Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa.

Kraków also hosted a Krzysztof Penderecki Festival marking the composer’s 65th birthday, spanning repertoire from Mozart to Stravinsky and Shostakovich. Mścisław Rostropowicz  appeared alongside several major orchestras, including MDR Leipzig, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the Munich Philharmonic (two concerts). The opera The Black Mask received its premiere and several oratorios were performed, including the Polish premiere of Credo.

Five years later Penderecka planned another large-scale celebration. That same year the Beethoven Festival expanded to ten days. Kraków’s mayor, Jacek Majchrowski, concluded the city could not fund two festivals of such scale in a single year. The Penderecki Festival was cancelled and Penderecka decided to move operations to Warsaw. In 2003 the Ludwig van Beethoven Association was founded for that purpose, with several staff transferring from the Kraków office. Soon afterwards Kraków launched a new Easter festival, Misteria Paschalia.

From the outset the Warsaw Beethoven Festivals lasted ten days, with concerts not only at the National Philharmonic but also at the Royal Castle and the National Opera. Today they run for nearly two weeks and end on Good Friday so visitors can travel home for Easter.

The audience changed too: business and diplomatic circles became prominent. Sponsorship increased, though not without complications. At one edition, violinist Gidon Kremer and his ensemble Kremerata Baltica were scheduled to perform, but the concert was to accompany a business gala. After a delay of more than an hour for speeches and awards, most guests left for the reception, leaving only a handful in the hall, while regular concertgoers were unable to attend.

For several years the National Opera evenings were followed by lavish foyer banquets with light music and abundant champagne, a sponsor’s idea of celebration.

A more durable innovation came from Andrzej Giza (director of the association from 2008 and now its president), who invited young visual artists to design the festival’s identity: programmes, posters and merchandise. Contributors included Agata Bogacka, Wilhelm Sasnal, Marcin Maciejowski and Ewa Juszkiewicz. The printed programmes themselves grew into book-length volumes, sometimes in several parts, prompting accusations of extravagance; only recently were they discontinued, with programme essays now published online.

Warsaw has also hosted several Penderecki Festivals, in 2008 and 2013 lasting four days, and in 2018, the last during the composer’s lifetime, lasting a week. A piano festival (also transferred from Kraków) ran for several years at the Philharmonic, and for the past seven years a September festival of Romantic music has taken place in the Royal Łazienki Park under the patronage of Józef Elsner, Chopin’s teacher. Penderecka also founded an artists’ agency supporting young musicians.

Her death leaves a notable absence in musical life. Yet thanks to her collaborators, the work she began is set to continue.