1992 Warsaw

May 15, 1992 – May 23, 1992
Warsaw

Festival info

Start: May 15, 1992

End: May 23, 1992

Locations: Warsaw

Hosting member(s)

Description
Description

From contemporaneous reviews:

“It is rare for one of these annual events to be hosted by an Eastern European nation. In fact, there have been only two such in the past twenty-five years: Budapest in 1986 and Warsaw in 1968. The Warsaw ISCM festival held in the fall of 1968 was especially unfortunate in its scheduling, as many delegates boycotted the events in response to the then-recent invasion of Czechoslovakia. By contrast, the 1992 location in Eastern Europe was appropriately well-timed to celebrate that region’s political and economic renaissance.

…

“There was one crucial factor underlying much of the Warsaw World Music Days: the desire to build a sizeable new-music listening audience of nonprofessionals. To this end, the festival organizers tried to make the act of encountering unusual, unfamiliar music a part of everyday life; in this regard, they placed high priority on the idea of “accessibility”-not by programming ‘accessible’ works, overly tame or simplistic in content, but by creating an accessible experience for a large mass constituency. The programming, therefore, while appropriately eclectic and international, nevertheless ensured that the most highly visible elder statesmen of the Polish compositional community, Penderecki, Lutosławski, and Górecki, were all featured.”

— Elliott Schwartz, “1992 Warsaw ISCM,”
Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 1993), pp. 316-317.

“Maybe one of the most outstanding qualities of the festival organized by the ISCM-Polish Section was not only the presence of the President of the Republic of Poland, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, but also the impressive young audience that attended everyone of the concerts realized. This alive presence of people interested in the contemporary music, new names and the enthusiasm we saw in each one of the concert halls was, I think, the most touching and moving side of this wonderful festival.

…

“The program was one of the few of the ISCM festivals that included the major quantity of composers belonging to all musical trends and countries.”

— Alicia Terzian, “World Music Days 1992 – A commentary report,” 
World New Music Magazine 3 (1993), p. 118.

Programme information
Locations