Classical Music in Poland and the Europe of Chopin - From the Reviewer's Notebook

'Of Angels and Madmen' Today was a day of terrible tragedy in Poland - a land of valiant resistance to oppression, a country still haltingly embracing democratic freedoms. 'For your freedom and ours' was once the guiding ideology, now fading under fierce lights. A brutal shattering of illusions has taken hold of this country as I write in Warsaw, a city that itself exists today only by some sort of miracle. For a man who wrote a literary travel and residence book on the country some 10 years ago in a gesture of love, deep respect and affection for the valiant past, this event was as shocking as an exploding bomb. The powerful liberal voice of the much loved Mayor of  Gdańsk ,  Paweł   Adamowicz (20 years in office) was silenced by his barbaric assassination, stabbed by a 'madman' at an annual charity event.  His personal support of the rights of refugees was encapsulated in this all-embracing remark:  'I am a European, so my nature is to be open,