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

  A joyful picture of  Arthur Rubinstein  dancing a  sevillana  in the back yard of a tenement house at 78 Piotrowska Street,  Łódź,  where he lived his childhood. Taken on his visit to the city commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic. A number of memorable moments are associated in my mind with the genius of Artur Rubinstein. One was some time after I gave a short recital of Chopin at the age of 8 in the Town Hall in Melbourne. At that time I was vainly cultivating the illusory dream of becoming a concert pianist. I first heard the unforgettable Rubinstein himself play live in the Sydney Town Hall when I was about 15. Years later I took his complete Chopin vinyl recordings and my C. Bechstein piano to a remote Pacific island where I had decided to live and practice. Later Rubinstein performances in London accompanied the slow dissolving of my artistic dreams in the grey fog of reality and recognition of the limitations...

King Charles III arrives at  Kraków  Airport in Poland to attend Auschwitz commemorations   (AP)   To be in Poland on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we commemorate eighty years since the liberation of Auschwitz, is both a sombre and indeed a sacred moment.  It is a moment when we recall the six million Jews, old and young, who were systematically murdered, together with Sinti, Roma, disabled people, members of the L.G.B.T. community, political prisoners, and so many others upon whom the Nazis inflicted their violence and hatred.  In a world that remains full of turmoil and strife, and has witnessed the dangerous re-emergence of antisemitism, there can be no more important message – especially as the United Kingdom holds the Presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. As the number of Holocaust survivors regrettably diminishes with the passage of time, the responsibility of remembrance rests far heavier on our shoulders, and ...