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

Today is the second anniversary of the eruption of yet another inhuman conflagration in Ukraine at the heart of Europe. A reminder, as if we needed it after World War II, of how little does humanity learn from history apart from the fact it repeats itself and that humanity does not learn from the past. I have been watching on the BBC the deeply moving funeral of Alexei Navalny and the courage of those who decided to join the endless queue and attend his burial. The cycles of historical inhumanity endlessly repeat themselves. The music of Chopin and the historical context in which it was composed is hauntingly topical today, on his birthday, the composer of the profound melancholy of lost freedom. The situation is worse now with another mindless conflagration in the Middle East. Our leaders in every country have lost moral direction and sense of truth. How I yearn for a man of Paderewski's charisma and his projection of the image of a moral beacon in the world. Rather than add to th