In the Depths of Emotion

Witold Maliszewski belongs to the generation of composers who helped shape the musical landscape of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alongside figures such as Karłowicz, Nowowiejski, and Różycki. Although his output remained for many years in the shadow of more dominant artistic personalities, it is now returning to the concert stage as evidence of a mature and highly conscious approach to musical composition.

His life’s journey led him through various cultural centres of Eastern Europe – from Mohyliv-Podilskyi, through Tbilisi, to St Petersburg, where he studied with leading representatives of the Russian compositional school. After a period of activity in Odesa, he returned to Poland in 1921 and became actively involved in Warsaw’s musical life as a teacher and organiser. He played an important role in organising the first International Chopin Competition and was among the founders of the Chopin Institute. His students at the Warsaw Conservatory included Witold Lutosławski.

As a composer, Maliszewski remained faithful to a clearly defined artistic ideal: “In music, I seek only content expressed in a distinct, clear, and concise form.” His works – including the Joyful Overture, Op. 11, completed around 1902, are distinguished by masterful craftsmanship, colourful orchestration, and a remarkable ability to create drama through contrast and the interplay of motives between different instrumental groups. Rooted in tradition yet vibrant and communicative, this music provides a compelling introduction to the composer’s style. For many years, Przemysław Neumann, Director of our Philharmonic, has devoted himself to rediscovering, promoting, and preparing editions of Maliszewski’s works, and has become their most respected interpreter.

At the centre of the evening will be Vincent Ong, the young Malaysian pianist who will perform the solo part in Chopin’s Piano Concerto in E minor. He attracted international attention at the 2025 International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, where he was awarded Fifth Prize. A graduate of the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, he belongs to a new generation of pianists steadily building distinguished careers in the Chopin repertoire. He was the first representative of Malaysia in the history of the Chopin Competition, and he received his first major international distinction at the age of seventeen during the International Piano Festival in Taipei in 2018.

And if all of this were somehow not enough encouragement – though we find that difficult to imagine – the second half of the concert will feature Debussy’s symphonic masterpiece La mer. We will discuss this work in greater detail the following day as part of the Symphonic Monuments series. For now, it is enough to say that this evening at the Szczecin Philharmonic promises to be a wonderfully rewarding experience, filled with beautiful, richly coloured music, presented – as Maliszewski himself might have wished – “in a distinct, clear, and concise form.”