From Myth to Brand. Paderewski, Chopin, Szymanowski and Penderecki in Bydgoszcz Henryk Martenka
H
ow did it happen that a large, industrial city, a vital rail hub, an administrative centre and the heart of an agricultural region attained elite brand recognition as a city of music? Why did it happen, given that not a single great composer or charismatic performer was born there, created their works there or exerted any real culturally productive influence there?1 What caused a city widely associated solely with manufacturing and speedway to develop an exclusive brand for itself that would befit cities such as Salzburg, Bolzano, Bonn or Vienna?2 The father of this paradox is a Bydgoszcz visionary who, on the threshold of the 1950s, barely a few years after World War II, anticipated the city’s future as a metropolis to be reckoned with, a city emanating artistically and intellectually both in Poland and around the world. His vision, greeted for many years with incredulity, was to be fulfilled half a century later. Andrzej Szwalbe [see: StarczakKozłowska, 1999; Bezwiński, 1991], director of the Pomeranian Symphony Orchestra, later the Pomeranian Philharmonic, was a visionary upon whom fortune smiled. Not only did any number of the then decision-makers, both local and in the capital, not hinder him, but they also quite simply
supported this Warsaw-born lawyer of Toruń in his designs, which we are only now clearly perceiving as projects on a grand scale. Under the domestic conditions of the time, these were pioneering projects which were only to be defined subsequently, and outside Poland, at that, as textbook branding, in other words, exemplifying the skill of creating, imparting and getting the very most out of a brand.
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ne characteristic feature of a brand and its value is that it can be neither touched nor measured. As Simon Anholt writes, a brand “is a multiplier of value […] it’s as good as money in the bank”. In a capitalist system, it embodies an intangible value which does not awaken the same suspicion as “any other form of commercial worth”. [Anholt, 2006, p. 8]3 In April 1957, eighteen months before the new concert hall was opened to the public [KłaputWiśniewska 2006, p. 49], when the Pomeranian Philharmonic was granted the right to name itself after Ignacy Jan Paderewski, creator of the Polonia
1 The building of the Bydgoszcz brand is reminiscent of the situation in Fort Worth, the fifth largest city in the state of Texas, a thriving industrial centre, but devoid of a distinct and meaningful cultural substratum. Yet, at more or less exactly the same time, which is to say, in 1962, the city instigated the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition; Van Cliburn, winner of the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1958) has lived in Texas for almost his entire life. In terms of the city’s image, the Van Cliburn Competition, today one of the most prestigious in the world, is automatically identified as a part of the Fort Worth brand. A similar process was to occur in subsequent years with, inter alia, Hamamatsu in Japan, Shen Zhen in China and Tromso in Norway where, even without being named after a renowned figure, the piano competitions have become distinctive features of those cities’ brands and the most powerful indicators of their cultural status. 2 Zbigniew Raszewski presented an authoritative and encyclopaedic outline of Bydgoszcz’s musical, theatrical and literary culture during the interwar years and under the German occupation in his Pamiętnik gapia. Bydgoszcz, jaką pamiętam z lat 1930-1945 (Memoirs of a Gawker. The Bydgoszcz I Remember from 1930 to 1945) [1994]. 3 The concept of branding was extensively described by Wally Olins, the precursor of research into the phenomenon, in On Brand [2003] and The Brand Handbook [2008]. Anholt adapts Olins’ definitions to related fields.
Culture Management 2012, Vol 5 (5)
Henryk Martenka Graduate of The Jagiellonian University (Polish and Classical Philology, 1981) and the University of Warsaw (postgraduate editorial studies, 1986). He has lived in Bydgoszcz since 1982. Publicist, columnist, translator, publisher. The music life organizer. From 1982 to 1990 the manager of music department in “Pomorze” publishing company. The “Japan Foundation” scholarship holder (1987). In 1982-1994 cooperated with Ilustrowany Kurier Polski, in 1994-1998 chairman of the board and editorin-chief of Radio El. Since 2001 the manager of foreign department in Tygodnik Angora. Since 2003 columnist of Samo Życie, a biweekly magazine (Dotrmund, Germany). The author of a collection of reportages Podróże i powroty (1998), a monograph Miasto zasłuchane. Muzyczna Bydgoszcz u schyłku wieku (2000); selections of columns Fajki, diesel i szparagi (2006), Kolczyki malej Friedy (2009), Kabanosy czy Westerplatte?