Baczynski gets pushed back a bit, it turns out that the version with orchestra will be needed later than I assumed. I won't put it off for very long, but for a while, yes. In the meantime, for academy-related reasons, I started working on a sort-of summary of the last fifteen years. A somewhat boring activity, but perhaps a useful one. It seems that what I write comes in cycles. Several instrumental pieces, most often related to the form of a sonata, concerto or a kind of a poem, finally lead to a dramatic form, somehow summing up the cycle. “June-December” sonata, “Fiddler’s Green”, “Last Days of Wanda B.” and then “Sudden Rain”. “King of Kosmos”, “Dark-haired Girl”, “Guitar Concerto”, “Half-Filled Diary” and then “Space Opera”. “NANINANA” “Sonata in Three Moods” “The Heavens in Niedabyl” and then “ahat ilī”. But genre-wise, at this point it all starts to blur and merge. “Drach”, “Siren”, “Humility” and “The Mask” are all both dramas and types of concert-ready forms. And I begin to see it more and more clearly that what they have in common is singing. Either singing directly, using the voice, or indirectly, using figures with implicit singing.

Singing touches me deeply. It does it in different ways; sometimes it has something to do with the text, sometimes it does not. Among other things, (I’ve mentioned it here before, I think), as the involvement of a basic life function (breathing), using the most intimately felt, visible to the world part of the body, which is in some sense the centre of identity (the face) in artistic expression. I don’t like the word ‘artistic’ here, but I don’t have a better one at the moment. What I mean is the sublime, the unusual, in some (best) sense artificial. Unnecessary. So, singing is the key. Also more broadly, more generally. Even, to tell the truth, the trivial, pompous platitudes such as “the Space sings” do not disturb me that much.

The “Mask” was performed in Warsaw. It felt a little bit more confident and mature than during the Vienna performance. With more ease. Just a bit out of place in the hall (the chamber hall of the National Philharmonic Orchestra) and in the concert programme. And next week, in Krakow, this time with completely different performers – Asia Freszel and the Spółdzielnia Muzyczna Contemporary Ensemble.

I listened to Warsaw Autumn Radio for a while, but switched to Young Leosia and was not disappointed.

(transl. Magdalena Małek-Andrzejowska)