International Musicological Conference 17–19 October 2023, Warsaw - Romanticism in Music: Poland in its European Context
I attended the highlighted fascinating, thought-provoking and inspiring papers presented at this prestigious international conference. I cannot of course cover them all in detail but in the fullness of time many will be published in a Polish National Chopin Institute scholarly book. I have given a brief opinion of some of them below. I must say I cannot understand why so few young Polish music students, pianists and or mature professors did not attend this conference. It was not a 'dry as dust' or 'Professor Smellfungus' musicological conference but a very exciting intellectual stimulation. The lectures were given by many of the foremost world authorities on the music of Chopin. They had traveled to Warsaw from as far as Australia expressly for this purpose. There is a curious tension and mutual resistance between musicologists and professional performing musicians which I have never understood. Many visionary points could be profitably explored and applied to the ind