In keeping with the tradition, the Violin Competition will begin with a concert featuring the performance of the chairman of the Jury. In this year’s edition this role will be played by a world-famous artist, Professor Konstanty Andrzej Kulka, who will perform with two eminent musicians, Professor Andrzej Dębski and Professor Andrzej Wróbel. The concert will be attended by all participants in the Competition and the members of the Jury.

Artists:
Konstanty Andrzej Kulka - violin
Andrzej Gębski - violin
Andrzej Wróbel - viola
Piotr Matwiejczuk - introduction

Programme:
K. Lipiński - Trio in A major op. 12
K. Lipiński - Fantasy on themes from the opera "The Presumed Miracle, or Krakovians and Highlanders
K. Lipiński - Variations on themes from the opera :cindarella" by Gioacchino Rossini op. 10
and Adam Siebers - violin (world premiere of 'Kep' composed by Tomasz Citak)

Karol Lipiński (1790-1861) became famous in the musical world as a virtuoso violinist and composer. His fame as a composer was based mainly on his pieces for violin, by far the largest part of his oeuvre. His compositions were most often written for himself and it is no coincidence that a significant number of his works was composed for solo violin or for violin as the leading instrument in the case of his pieces for larger ensembles. He performed to great acclaim in Poland and abroad giving concerts of music composed by himself or other composers. In 1818 he played and competed twice with Niccolò Paganini: he was deemed equal in talent to the Italian virtuoso whose skill in the view of most listeners and critiques was unsurpassable. The contemporaries applauded the exceptional clarity of intonation in Lipiński’s playing and his capacity to operate immensely deep and vibrating tones, which might have been due to the fact that initially he was a successful cellist.
The violin works by Karol Lipiński are rarely performed on account of being tremendously difficult. The Trio in A major op. 12 for two violins and cello was dedicated to prince Nikolai Golitsin, who was a cellist himself: hence the virtuoso ‘brillant’ part for the first violin (which Lipiński intended for himself) and for the cello, composed for the dedicatee. The second piece to be performed is the Fantasy on themes from the opera „The Presumed Miracle, or Krakovians and Highlanders” by Jan Stefani op. 33, which was inspired by the first Polish opera work and features a number of folk music themes with numerous virtuoso embellishments. The Variations on themes from the opera „Cinderella” by Gioacchino Rossini op. 10 include alternating octaves with fiendishly difficult primes (especially in the Fifth Variation).

Konstanty Andrzej Kulka - (born 5 March 1947) Polish violinist, recording artist, and professor of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw since 1994, also heading the Institute of String Instruments there. Kulka graduated with honors from the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk in 1971. He played over 1,500 recitals internationally, including in the United States, Japan, and Australia. Kulka is a guest performer with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He took part in leading music festivals including in Lucerne, Bordeaux, Flandria, Berlin, Prague, Barcelona, Brighton, and Warsaw.

Andrzej Gębski – violinist, soloist, chamber musician. He graduated with distinction from the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw (the class of Professor Mirosław Ławrynowicz). A student of Wolfgang Marschner and, for chamber music, Krystyna Makowska-Ławrynowicz and Andrzej Wróbel, he won in international musical competitions in Łódź, Cracow and Paris. As an avid promoter of Polish music, he performed 54 world premieres and archival recordings of the violin works composed by contemporary Polish artists for the Polish Radio and Television. Since 1998 he is engaged in teaching, since 2011 as a professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music (UMFC). He runs a violin class at the International Courses in Łańcut, the String Academy in Goch (Germany) and musical workshops for the Polish Children’s Fund, which gathers the most gifted young musicians of the whole country. For his accomplishments in art and teaching he has received a number of prizes, including the Special Award and the First Class Award from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, the Prize of the Director of the Centre for Artistic Education (three times), the GLORIA ARTIS Medal, the UMFC Medal, and the Medal of the Radzyński Music Society.

Andrzej Wróbel - Andrzej Wróbel graduated from the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw in 1972. After his graduation he worked in the Warsaw Philharmonic and in 1972-1985 he was the concertmaster of the Warsaw Chamber Opera. Together with Jerzy Maksymiuk, he founded the Polish Chamber Orchestra and, in 1986, the chamber music ensemble ‘Camerata Vistula’, of which he has been the director ever since. Apart from performing chamber music he is also a noted soloist. Among his many arrangements for chamber music ensembles one should mention the chamber versions of all Chopin’s works for piano and orchestra (the first since the times of the composer). He is also known for his arrangement for string orchestra of the six Épigraphes antiques by Claude Debussy. He organized two editions of the Festival of Polish Chamber Music in 2003 and 2004.