In July, 19 students aged 13 to 19 from the Suzuki String School here did a two-week tour of Poland.
The group was accompanied by pianist Ken Gee and faculty members Paule Barsalou, David Evenchick, and Witold Swoboda, as well as a group of six parents. Two members of the group were students at Wilfrid Laurier University and Brock University. Nine students are cellists who had the good fortune to borrow instruments provided by Polish luthier Jan Pawlikowski from Krakow.
The group performed in four different cities:
– Czartoryski Palace, in Pu?awy;
– National State Music School in Tychy;
– Zamek Pszczy?ski in Pszczyna (a 12th century castle); and
– National State Music School, in O?wi?cim (Auschwitz).
The concert repertoire included: Bartok, Romanian Dances; Telemann, Don Quixote Suite; Gorecki, Three Pieces in Ancient Style; Chopin, Largo from the Cello Sonata; Goltermann, Etude Caprice; Fauré, Pié Jesu (arranged for cello choir by Rick Mooney); Chopin, Nocturne in C sharp minor (arranged for violin by Nathan Milstein); Corelli, La Folia; a group of Newfoundland fiddle tunes (arranged by Christina Smith); and a string quartet arrangement of Coldplay’s Yellow.
The group started in Pu?awy, in eastern Poland, where it shared accommodations with students from various regions of Poland and Ukraine. The language barrier didn’t keep them from interacting with each other through soccer games and dances.
Rehearsals were in a community art centre similar to the Guelph Youth Music Centre. Guelph students observed a Polish folk dancing class about to tour Poland. Their enthusiasm was an inspiration.
The second lap was to the Silesia region in Pszczyna, a 12th century town, home of Pszczyna Castle where the composer G.P. Telemann was a court musician. The group met with students of Ela Wegrzyn from Skola Suzuki of Tychy and rehearsed with them for the next two concerts. The groups had prepared the same pieces, so they could rehearse and perform together within a few hours of meeting each other.
The Suzuki parents gave a warm welcome and provided two meals with all the best Polish recipes. The students shared folk music in a jam session, serenading teachers and parents.
The concert in Pszczyna was a highlight of the tour. The students could not believe they were to perform in such a beautiful venue. To perform Telemann’s Don Quixote Suite in that location was a memorable musical moment for them. Pianist Gee was thrilled to perform on a 9-foot Fazioli piano, one of the best in the world, bought especially for the castle.
The last concert was in O?wi?cim, at the National State Music School. It focuses on students at the Kindergarten to grade 8 levels. Tour organizer Witold Swoboda was a student there. Built during the communist era, the building is dedicated to teaching of music. The concert hall, with beautiful acoustics, is the jewel of the institution – the perfect venue for the last performance. That concert was followed by a reception where Concorde Strings was able to mingle with Polish students, and the Canadian teachers had a chance to talk to the director and some of the teachers from the state school. There was a tour of the facilities, a building with amazing soundproofing, many teaching studios and large classrooms.
Before leaving, the group visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum – a much-anticipated part of the trip. The group had preparation at a lecture by Holocaust survivor Amek Adler, of Toronto. He lectures about the Holocaust and his experience as a Jewish boy in Poland during World War II. At 84, he gladly came to Guelph to speak to the group and hear it perform in June.
But nothing could prepare the group for what it saw and heard at Auschwitz camp. The place of horror, death and silence shook the group. The inscription on the memorial at Birkenau summarizes the reason why it was preserved for future generations: “Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women and children, mainly Jews, from various countries of Europe.”
The next lap took the tour to Krakow where members returned borrowed cellos to Pawlikowski. The cellists performed Fauré’s Pié Jésu for him, which brought tears to his eyes. The cello maker said he was “very happy to see so many young people be passionate about music and to be able to lend them his instruments” One of the Canadian families, the parents of Mary-Margaret Annab of Belwood, who had fallen in love with her borrowed instrument, ended up purchasing a cello from Pawlikowki. It was delivered to her later this summer.
The last few days were spent visiting Krakow’s castle and cathedral, shopping, touring the Jelinka Salt Mine (a Unesco World Heritage site), attending a garden recital at Zelazowa Wola, Chopin’s birth place, then visiting Warsaw’s old town. The group returned to Canada on July 10.
