The 4th International Mieczysław Karłowicz Composers’ Competition

The Karłowicz Competition is not only a cherished tradition of the Szczecin Philharmonic and the Polish Society of Authors and Composers ZAiKS, but also an event that has rapidly earned a place in composers’ calendars around the world. There are very few competitions in which young composers, working with the full resources of a symphony orchestra, are limited only by their imagination. It is often said that music reflects the times in which it is created. If you would like to see, as in a musical mirror, the world in which we live today, there is only one place to be: the Szczecin Philharmonic on this very evening.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we invite you not only as listeners, but also as jurors. An inseparable part of every Karłowicz Competition edition is the audience vote and the awarding of the Audience Prize. From experience, we know that the slightly longer intermission required for vote counting becomes an opportunity for lively discussions and critical observations. We sometimes overhear these conversations as we move among you, and we are genuinely proud of having such an engaged and knowledgeable audience.

The previous edition of the competition attracted 284 compositions from around the world. Among the participants were composers from Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands, Iran, Ireland, Iceland, Japan, Yemen, Canada, Colombia, South Korea, Kosovo, Latvia, Mexico, Germany, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, the United States, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and Italy. This makes the Karłowicz Competition one of the largest composition competitions in the world.

This year, participants were broadly encouraged to engage with the artistic legacy of our Patron in connection with the 150th anniversary of his birth and the Karłowicz Festival, which will take place at our Philharmonic in December. How will these young composers respond to that challenge? How will our musicians interpret these new scores? Will we hear entirely new compositional techniques or previously undiscovered instrumental colours? Will we encounter sounds never before heard by the human ear? Will we witness the emergence of remarkable new compositional voices? Might musical history be made before our very eyes? The answers to these exciting questions will be revealed during this extraordinary event.

Selected works from previous editions of the competition: