Programme:

Szymanowska - Nocturne ‘Le Murmure’                                                                             
Chopin - Tarantella op.43                                                                                     
Szymanowski - Prelude op.1 no.2, Etude op.4 no.2, 2 Mazurka op.50 no.1, L'Île des sirens op.29 no.1             
Debussy - Preludes [selection]                                                                                    
Winterberg - Suite (1950), Toccata (1929) [world premieres]                                                                    
Chopin - Rondo op.16

This programme brings together composers from Poland and the Czech Republic, and places their music alongside a selection of Debussy's preludes, in an attempt to highlight the strong musical and broader cultural connections between these often disparate traditions. Especial attention is placed on Hans Winterberg, a Czech-Jewish composer from Prague who survived internment at Terezin, escaped communist Czechoslovakia, only to have his manuscripts sealed in a Bavarian archive for decades after his death in 1991. After legal wrangling, his music is at last being explored thus permitting a long-overdue evaluation of his significant oeuvre.

Born in Lancashire, Jonathan Powell now lives in southern Poland and travels internationally throughout each year for concerts, recordings and masterclasses. He has played at many of the major European venues and festivals including the Elbphilharmonie, the Wigmore Hall, Heidelberger Fruehling etc. His many recordings mostly encompass late 19th- and 20th-century repertoire; his 7-CD recording of Sorabji's Sequentia cyclica was awarded the Preis des deutsches Schalplattenkritiken in 2021. He has recently been editing from manuscript the music of Hans Winterberg, and his recordings of the First Piano Concerto (with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra) and his five piano sonatas have already appeared. His concert programmes encompass standard repertoire (Chopin, Schumann, late Beethoven especially), as well as much turn-of-the-century material from Central Europe (Szymanowski, Suk, Janáček etc) as well as contemporary music.