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Track Listing:

Brahms - 7 Fantasies, op. 116 - Capriccio in D minor

Intermezzo in A minor

Capriccio in G minor

Intermezzo in E minor

Intermezzo in E major

Capriccio in D minor

4 Pieces for Piano, op. 119 - Intermezzo in B minor

Intermezzo in E minor

Intermezzo in C major

Rhapsody in E flat major

Chopin - Mazurkas, op. 30 - Mazurka in C minor

Mazurka in B minor

Mazurka in D flat major

Mazurka in C sharp minor

Piano Sonata in B minor op. 58 - Allegro maestoso

Scherzo, Molto vivace

Largo

Finale, Presto non tanto_ Agitato

Jakub Kuszlik :

Brahms - Chopin

The Music Agency of the Polish Radio is releasing Jakub Kuszlik's debut album "Brahms, Chopin," a release of particular importance to the Polish Radio Chopin.

Anyone who has paid even a moment's attention to the struggles of the participants of the XVIII International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, knows who Jakub Kuszlik is.

On November 11, 2017, the sounds of Fryderyk Chopin's music broadcasted by Polskie Radio Chopin rang out for the first time on the DAB Plus digital radio and online. Every year, on the eve of the November anniversary of the creation of this eight public radio station, anniversary concerts are organized. November 10, 2021 concert at the Witold Lutoslawski Concert Studio featured Jakub Kuszlik, winner of the fourth prize and the Polish Radio Special Prize for the best performance of mazurkas, in the Chopin Competition, which ended just three weeks earlier.

Excerpts from the recording of that November concert fill this debut solo album by Jakub Kuszlik. In front of this just 25-year-old talented pianist, a graduate of the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, Poland, in the class of Prof. Katarzyna Popowa-Zydron, the doors of many concert halls not only in Poland are just opening.

The repertoire of the concert included compositions by Frederic Chopin, including, of course, the cycle of award-winning mazurkas. The program, was expanded to include compositions by Johannes Brahms. Their inclusion in the recital program only at first glance is not obvious in the context of Chopin's work.

Jakub Kuszlik speaks of his repertoire selection as follows: Brahms and Chopin share a multidimensional approach to music. In their works, they refer to the classical traditions that preceded their era, while enriching them with their individual and innovative musical language. On the other hand, the music of both composers contains a very strong emotional charge. Such works have always aroused my interest and I was eager to try to read them and understand them more deeply.
As Marcin Gmys, Director and Editor-in-Chief of Polskie Radio Chopin, writes in the opening text of the CD description: The artist's choice of repertoire at the same time aptly reflects the program line of Polskie Radio Chopin, which, while constantly popularizing the works of its patron, also offers its listeners a broader artistic context of the "long nineteenth century."