Oder Music

Can a city be played? Can its rhythm, movement, sounds, and spaces be heard and transformed into music? During this concert in the Philharmonic foyer, ÉxQuartet will perform Grzegorz Sadowski's Oder Music – a composition that combines the sound of a string quartet with electronics and processed recordings of Szczecin.

Oder Music originated as Grzegorz Sadowski's original album, released in 2021. It was inspired by the sounds of the city – sometimes preserved in their recognisable form, at other times fragmented, transformed, and woven into the electronic fabric of the music. In the original project, Sadowski combined electronics, electric viola, and field recordings. For this concert, the work will be presented in a new arrangement for electronics and string quartet. Recorded, processed, and electronically generated sounds will therefore meet the live sound of two violins, viola, and cello.

ÉxQuartet consists of Monika Sawczuk and Łukasz Górewicz on violins, Grzegorz Sadowski on viola, and Tomasz Szczęsny on cello. All four musicians are members of the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. The quartet was founded in 2019 and made its debut at the opening of the Pilecki Institute in Berlin, performing Mieczysław Weinberg's String Quartet No. 5. From the very beginning, the ensemble has looked beyond the standard repertoire, consistently exploring lesser-known works connected with twentieth- and twenty-first-century music as well as the cultural history of Szczecin and Central Europe.

Contemporary music occupies a special place in ÉxQuartet's artistic work. In 2020, the ensemble recorded three albums in the New Music for String Quartet series, featuring works by composers from Europe and North America. The first volume included six world premiere recordings and received a Silver Medal at the 2021 Global Music Awards in two categories: Album and Composers. The quartet's discography now includes six albums of contemporary music, world premieres, and interdisciplinary projects combining the traditional sound of string instruments with film, electronics, and multimedia.

The ensemble's repertoire includes works by Philip Glass, Mieczysław Weinberg, and Carl Loewe, who was closely associated with Szczecin, alongside compositions by Aaron Alter, Dorothee Eberhardt, and Greg A. Steinke. ÉxQuartet has appeared at festivals including the True Musicians Tournament, MUSIC.DESIGN.FORM, and the Szczecin premiere of the film Apolonia, Apolonia. Their album IV, released by the Philharmonic in Szczecin, brings together music by Loewe, Weinberg, and Alter – composers from different eras whose works allowed the quartet to tell the story of Szczecin as a meeting place of cultures.

This concert is an invitation to experience Szczecin from a different perspective – not through its landmarks or postcard views, but through the sounds that surround us every day and that we so often pass by without noticing.