Event info

Five Central European countries present a selection of film music in different styles and moods. The audience will take a trip through time, over one hundred years and more. The pieces are performed by an international ensemble of musicians who accepted this task enthusiastically.

Program
Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglová, Falling Slowly  for the film Once, by John Carney, 2007
Markéta Irglová (Czechia), The Hill, for the film  Once   
Judit Varga (Austria), Your Beauty Is Worth Nothing, for the film Deine Schönheit ist nichts Wert, directed by Hüseyin Tabak, 2013
Michal Novinski (Slovakia), music for the film The Broken Promise, by Jirí Chlumsky, 2009
Michal Novinski, music for the film The Teacher, by Jan Hrebejk, 2016
Attila Pacsay (Hungary), music for the film The Undesirable, by Michael Curtiz, 1914
Wojciech Kilar (Poland), Waltz for the film The Promised Land, by Andrzej Wajda, 1975
Krzysztof Komeda (Poland), Ballad for Bernt, for the film The Knife in the Water, by Roman Polanski, 1961
Henryk Wars (Poland), Ach, jak przyjemnie! and Juz nie zapomnisz mnie, songs for the film Zapomniana melodia (Forgotten Melody), by Konrad Tom and Jan Fethke, 1938

Performers
Zbigniew Dubik, violin, concert master
Andrzej Kleina, violin
Roland Hartwell, violin
Petur Bjornsson, violin
Ewa Tosik, violin
Zbigniew Zuchowicz, violin
Lucja Koczot, viola
Steiney Sigurdardóttir, cello
Richard Korn, bass
Jacek Karwan, bass
Katie Buckley, harp
Márton Wirth, piano
Soraya Nayyar, timpani

Markétá Irglová, voice and piano, will sing solo and with Tina Dico, acoustic guitar

Orchestration
Zbigniew Zuchowicz

The Academy Award-winning musician Markéta Irglová is a Czech-born singer, songwriter, musician and actress. With Glen Hansard Markéta co-starred in the independent film Once written and directed by Irish director and producer John Carney. Markéta performed a role of a struggling Czech immigrant in an unknown country. She and Glen composed the scores and music for this movie and this earned them a number of major awards, the Critics' Choice Awards for the Best Song, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for the Best Original Scores, and, especially, the 80th Academy Award for the Best Original Song „Falling Slowly,“ all in 2008. In 2012 Markéta moved to Reykjavík. In 2014 she and her husband, producer Sturla Míó Þórisson, released the first Island–born album Muna. That year she received the Olivier Award UK for Outstanding Achievement in Music. With Sturla they also composed music for the 2016 movie Home Is Here, directed by the Austrian-Czech writer Tereza Kotyk. The following year she wrote music for a Czech romantic comedy Miluji te modre (I Love You Heavenly), directed by the Czech producer Miloslav Šmídmajer. In the meantime, Markéta produced several successful singles, the last of which titled Mother was released in May 2021.

Hungarian born Judit Varga is a Vienna-based classical music composer and film music composer, pianist and university professor. Her works, in which she combines the classical tradition with the most up-to-date experimental currents, are performed at such prestigious festivals and concert halls as Wien Modern, the Hungarian State Opera House, Cité de la musique Paris, Juilliard School of Music in New York, Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Budapest Autumn Festival, Mini Festival, Konzerthaus and Musikverein Wien, Muffathalle München, and Warsaw Autumn. She works with lead orchestras and ensembles from all over the world, including Ensemble Modern, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Kontrapunkte, and Riot Ensemble London. Judit Varga is the first prize winner of many prestigious international piano and composition competitions. In 2021 she took up the position of Head of the Institute for Composition, Electroacoustics and Tonmeister Education at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She is the music composer of more than 30 theatre performances and films. In 2014 she won the prize of the Austrian Academy of Films in the category of “Best Soundtrack” for the film music of Deine Schönheit ist nichts Wert, directed by Hüseyin Tabak (Austria, 2013).

Michal Novinski (1971) is a Slovak composer, recognized for his achievements in film and theatre music. He also won the Slovak Film and Television Academy Award “Slnko v Sieti” for the Best Original Score for Jirí Chlumsky’s film The Broken Promise (2009). With The Teacher, directed by Jan Hrebejk (2016), Michal Novinski received a FICX Award for the Best Score at the Gijon International Film Festival, Spain, and a Slovak National Film Awards “Slnko v sieti” Award for the Best Original Score in 2017.

Novinski’s latest works include scores for the movies Kapa, a feature film for children by Slobodan Maksimovic (2021), Zupa Nic, by Kinga Debska (2021, Poland), Dragon Girl, by Katarina Launing (2020, Czechia- Norway), The Watchmaker’s Apprentice, by Jitka Rudolfová (Czechia-Slovakia, 2019).

He composed, among other, Symfony of the Earth, film music concert from Pavol Barabáš films at the festival Viva Musica!, Bratislava 2019; Watching Black, a music album by The Extasy of Saint Theresa - in cooperation with Jan P. Muchow.

The Hungarian composer Attila Pacsay (1970) is particularly known for his music written for films, television, and theatre. His works encompass a wide variety of music from chamber music and symphonic compositions to jazz pieces and contemporary music. He has collaborated on films with directors as Academy Award-winner Ferenc Rofusz, Academy Award-winner and four times nominated István Szabó, multi-award-winning Ferenc Czakó and Géza M.Tóth. Besides his work as film composer, he is constantly present at other areas of the music scene and cooperates with the Hungarian National Opera and Györ Philharmonic Orchestra. In the lighter genres, Atti is known as the permanent orchestrator for legendary Hungarian guitarist Tibor Tátrai. In 2014 he composed the sound track for The Undesirable (directed by Michael Curtiz, 1914). This century-old silent movie is a lost and found, which was given a visual facelift and a voice of its own with an original musical score, assigned by the Hungarian Film Fund to Attila Pacsay.

Wojciech Kilar (Poland, 1932-2013). Composer and pianist, author of orchestral music, chamber vocal-instrumental and piano compositions, and scores for the theatre and cinema. In the 1950s he composed in a neo-classical way, then he was a leading representative of the Polish musical avant-garde, with works such as Riff 62, Générique, Diphtongos, Springfield Sonet, Upstairs-Downstairs. Shortly after this the composer simplified his musical language writing pieces inspired by folklore, such as Koscielec, and Orawa. In the latest works, such as Sinfonia de motu, September Symphony, Advent Symphony, Veni Creator, Magnificat, Easter Hymn, Piano Concerto II, the composer reveals a clear tendency to simplify his musical language, through the use of his characteristic repetitions of themes and musical phrases, and long harmonic-textural planes. Wojciech Kilar has written music for over 140 films and collaborated with many directors, including Andrzej Wajda, Kazimierz Kutz, Krzysztof Zanussi, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Roman Polanski (including The Pianist), Francis Ford Coppola (Dracula). The beautiful, vigorous Waltz composed for The Promised Land (1975), directed by Andrzej Wajda, is the most popular piece of music for the film adaptation of the novel written by the Polish Nobel laureate Wladyslaw Reymont.

Krzysztof Komeda (Krzysztof Trzcinski, Poland, 1931-1969), jazz musician and author of background music for films. As a young child he started to study piano and the foundations of music. Shortly after the war he became interested in jazz. He actively contributed to the nascent jazz movement. Following a spectacular success of Komeda's live performance at the First Jazz Festival in Sopot, he became an unquestionable guru and the brightest star of the fledgling Polish modern jazz. In 1965, his triptych Astigmatic proved fundamental and revolutionary in the history of European jazz. He wrote music for 6 films by Roman Polanski, including the famous Rosemary's Baby. Between 1957 and 1968, he composed over 60 scores to movies by both Polish and foreign directors, winning worldwide acclaim. Ballad for Bernt from the music of The Knife in the Water by Roman Polanski (1961) is dedicated to Bernt Rosengren, a Swedish jazz saxophonist who performed the scores for the film. He was Komeda’s close friend and plaid an important role in his work of composer.

Henryk Wars (Henryk Warszawski, Poland 1902-1977) was a prolific musician known as the King of Jazz. He was a forerunner of Polish jazz, who helped shape musical circles in Poland and abroad, seen as one of the great composers of the era, alongside Jerzy Petersburski and the Gold Brothers. An important pioneering film composer, between 1930-39 he scored one out of every three of the 150 films produced in Poland before World War II. He contributed music to at least 90 films in his career. His first film score, composed in 1930, was for one of the earliest Polish sound films: Na Sybir, directed by Henryk Szaro. Wars’ Polish film scores often took on a popular life of their own, independent of the films. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Wars wrote music for productions under Columbia, Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox and MGM, working on around 60 films and TV shows, and his songs were performed by Bing Crosby and Doris Day. His music continues to be rediscovered in perpetuity by modern-day enthusiasts, who credit Wars with a dedication to Polish sound, alongside innovation and sophistication.

The event is organized by the Platform Culture Central Europe, a cooperation between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, during the presidency of the Republic of Poland.