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.
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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?
(2011), Herosi i łachudry. Wybór felietonów z lat 2002-2011 published in Angora. The author of popular science works Skąd się wzięło moje nazwisko? (2006) and Nazwiska od imion. 3500 ciekawych przypadków (2011). The author of an essay Mit, muzyka, marka (2010) about the musical image of Bydgoszcz. In 2008 his memoirs about I. J. Paderewski International Piano Competitions Wielki akord were published, followed by Wielki akord 2 (2012) and a collection of reportages Tu i tam. The author of reports from the most important events at the time (the opening of the La Manche Channel Tunnel, the funeral of Lady Di, Wiesława Szymborska’s Nobel Prize, the 50th anniversary of ONZ). He has written a lot of texts, inter alia, from China, Vietnam, Japan, Mexico, Polynesia, Africa, the Middle East, South and North America, Europe. His hoax reportage from Costaguna (Angora, 1st April 2008), on the occasion of Conrad anniversary, is to be found in an academic textbook Źródła informacji dla dziennikarza edited by K. Wolny-Zmorzyński (2008). The founder and long-term manager of the Opera Association in Bydgoszcz (19851995). Since 1985 he has been co-creating I.J. Paderewski Piano Competition and as a director (excluding 1994 and 2001) he has been in charge to this day (since 1998 the competitions
Symphony in B Minor, no one expected that a living myth would grow up around the institution’s namesake. That, like a heliocentric system, other artists and other ventures would begin to circle around the Paderewski brand and that, with time, this system would become a self-propelling mechanism. That the choice of namesake, which had demanded a certain courage at the time, would bear fruit in something which would raise the city’s status to that of a world centre of culture and art. Bydgoszcz, a city which, to call a spade a spade, has no great civilisational attainments, has suddenly begun aspiring to the title of European Capital of Culture, along with Wrocław, Warsaw, Toruń or Lublin. A great many of Szwalbe’s contemporaries, though, had tended more toward predicting that the people’s authorities would withdraw their support for the idea of naming the region’s flagship cultural institution after a right-wing politician of the twentieth century interwar years, a man born in Podole, a citizen of the world who had negated the ideas and principles constituting the new, post-1945 Poland throughout his life. And yet they all maintained an Olympian calm, while support for the Philharmonic director’s many and varied projects was treated as the articulation of local patriotism, thanks to which, Szwalbe was able to take the majority of his initiatives from concept to reality with an unprecedented success [Anholt, 2006, p.23] . The previously quoted Simon Anholt notes that, with a national brand, the point is that people should want to take note of a country’s achievements and believe in its strengths and potential. If we take Anholt’s self-evident observation and swap the term ‘nation’ for ‘city’, the meaning of the concept of branding changes not a whit. It was with the adaptation of the figure of Paderewski to the city’s image-oriented requirements that the acceptance of Bydgoszcz as an important centre of musical culture by the country’s opinionforming milieux began. More than fifty years after he first became a presence on its cultural landscape, no other city has come near the position that Bydgoszcz has developed for itself thanks to Paderewski and the inspiration he offered. At the same time, it is a city where he only appeared briefly in person. This is the prime paradox. Documentary evidence merely tells us that yes, indeed, Paderewski came to Bydgoszcz, but that he was there for only… a brief moment. In December 1919, Ignacy Jan Paderewski sailed into Gdańsk on board a British Royal Navy cruiser, the HMS Concord. The maestro had set sail from the United States, where he had concluded a diplomatic strug-
gle which was crowned by President’s Wilson’s granting what had been the Poles’ single greatest dream as regards the peace treaty with which World War I was brought to an end. Poland would regain independence after the many years of the Partitions! Paderewski left a huge legend behind him in America. While calling for the restitution of Poland, the fatherland, he had made more than three hundred ardently fiery speeches. Their fame followed him to Poland. When he stepped onto dry land in Gdańsk in December 1918, he was already surrounded by legend; he was the saviour, the acclaimed Father of the Polish fatherland. The maestro set off for Warsaw via Poznań and there was only one railway route he could take. It ran through Bydgoszcz. There, the locomotive was changed, an operation which took a little time, something which Adam Grzymała-Siedlecki conscientiously notes in his memoirs. [Grzymała-Siedlecki cited by: Baziak, 2007, p. 13] The fifty-eight-year-old Paderewski thus spent a while strolling the platform of Bydgoszcz railway station and smoking a cigarette. This is the sole confirmed incident of his presence in the city and what unexpectedly grew out of it was not an isolated anecdote but a believable myth from which the brand of this city on the Brda River would later be moulded. Naming the Bydgoszcz Philharmonic after Ignacy Jan Paderewski broke through the conspiracy of silence that had blanketed the country. Years later, Andrzej Szwalbe was to explain, …Paderewski was superb at presenting the creativity of his fatherland, he funded the Warsaw Philharmonic and the Battle of Grunwald Monument in Krakow, his achievements were splendid. It was following his passionate speech from the balcony of the Bazar Hotel in Poznań that the victorious Wielkopolskie Uprising broke out. (…) A phenomenal performer, an intellectually extraordinary character, a political flair, a wonderful technician, a composer... all of this went to make up an aura which wholly came up to our expectations regarding the figure who was to grant the Philharmonic his name. [Martenka, 2000, p. 266]
The concept turned out to be worthy of copying and one which, today, we would define as a brand strategy which others annexed. The effect, unforeseen by its director, of electing to endow the Philharmonic with Paderewski’s name, as well as all the ventures which would, in time, ensue from this, were inspired by the fact that the artist made his mark on the city’s brand definition naturally. Today, Paderewski’s name is
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an understandable inspiration for many an activity in Bydgoszcz. It is also a meaningful background to the evaluations of those activities undertaken by scholars, critics and artists from beyond the city’s ambits. For a new generation of Bydgoszcz citizens is now growing up, proud of their heritage, identifying with their own tradition, with a sense of respect for something accomplished barely sixty years ago but already permanently rooted in the landscape of their city’s culture. This is the most crucial of arguments for adopting a natural strategy for promoting the city, since Paderewski, known almost everywhere in the world, is a medium for conveying knowledge of the place, its well-nigh six hundred and seventy years of tradition, its national position and even its proposals for investment opportunities. The branding idea conceived in 1957 slots into the contemporary era perfectly, constituting added value in marketing the city’s position. It has also become a model example of brand management. Andrzej Szwalbe conducted himself like a manager born and bred. Since he had now fixed the name of Paderewski firmly in the public mind, it was worth following through. Two years after the Philharmonic building had opened, he launched into talks in Warsaw and Krakow with the illustrious representatives of Poland’s piano world, an endeavour that was to pay off over subsequent decades… For Szwalbe, the most crucial interlocutor was Professor Jerzy Żurawlew, the initiator of Warsaw’s International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition, held for the first time in 1927, an authority and figure of world calibre. However, there were other encounters which would also prove to be remarkably inspirational for him; his meetings with Professor Henry Sztompka, outstanding pianist and pupil of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, with Wiktor Weinbaum, director of the Frédéric Chopin Competition and with Professor Jan Ekier, eminent pianist and, subsequently, editor of a new edition of Chopin’s works. And thus another important artistic initiative was born in Bydgoszcz, the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Piano Competition.
In the minds of the organisers, this was to be to Paderewski what the Chopin Competition was, and is, to that composer’s legacy. The 1st Ignacy Jan Paderewski National Piano Competition took place in the Pomeranian Philharmonic concert hall in 1961, with the seventeen competitors playing, inter alia, works by Chopin, Paderewski and Szymanowski; these three composers’ names featured in the official nomenclature and press materials. The winner was a young pianist by the name of Jerzy Maksymiuk. Even this early, the competition’s significance to the development of both the city’s and the region’s prestige was being discussed, as was Bydgoszcz’s entry into the orbit of musical interest at the national level. It was suggested that the Paderewski competition might serve to select the young pianists aspiring to future Chopin Competitions. [Kłaput-Wiśniewska, 2006, p. 121]4 In other words, Szwalbe put forward a proposal that the Bydgoszcz concert hall and the Paderewski be used to bring to light the Polish candidates for the Chopin. Because the latter enjoyed such enormous popularity amongst audiences, he was certain that it would also pull in the crowds at the Pomeranian Philharmonic, young listeners in the main, who would then, in all likelihood, become regulars at the concert hall for many a year to come. He wanted to educate musicians, but he was supremely aware that educating music lovers is the greatest jewel of them all. His notion of a national elimination appealed to Henry Sztompka, who duly proceeded to present it to the Frédéric Chopin Society. But when the good professor died three years later, the competition was left wanting for a promoter and the Paderwski was put on the back burner for a full twenty-five years. The topic of the Bydgoszcz eliminations for the Chopin Competition was left to lie as well. Once endowed with Paderewski’s name, it would have been hard indeed for the Philharmonic to avoid the imperative of promoting the art of the piano.5 All the more so, given that the front of the building on what was then Libelt Street, but is now Andrzej Szwalbe Street, is graced
4 In a letter to Professor Sztompka, Szwalbe wrote, “For the city, this would be an element enlivening its concert-going life, whilst, for the pianists it would be an opportunity of verifying their skills in a true concert-hall atmosphere”. 5 Szwalbe himself imparted comprehensive information on the topic in a series of interviews which he gave to the author of this article and which were published in the summer of 1992 in the columns of the Illustrated Polish Courier. In the first, entitled Why Paderewski?, he discussed the problems which had arisen from his idea. In the fourth, Let the Walls Creep Up…, he reminisced about the history of the building of the magnificent edifice which, from the very first concert, delighted the ear with its superb acoustics. In the seventh, he talked about the sculpture and tapestry galleries, which were born in line with his scenario. The interviews are collected in their entirety in Henryk Martenka, Miasto zasłuchane. Muzyczna Bydgoszcz u schyłku wieku (A City Listens, Rapt. Musical Bydgoszcz at the Century’s Close) [2000, pp. 266-302].
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are international). The initiator of I. J. Paderewski Association in Los Angeles, 2007; the member of its Advisory Board. The representative of the competition (since 2010) in the Federation of International Music Competitions in Geneva. The initiator (2009) and chancellor of Paderewski Piano Academy for pianists playing with a symphony orchestra (Bydgoszcz - Ostromecko).
by two stone statues of Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Frédéric Chopin, respectively. Created by a Bydgoszcz sculptor, Józef Makowski, they have given rise to a certain aesthetic controversy. On the other side of the building, the statues of two more Polish musicians can be seen; they portray Henryk Wieniawski and, of particular significance to Bydgoszcz, Karol Szymanowski. These, in turn, are the work of Toruń artists Ewelina SzczechSiwicka and Henryk Siwicki. For Andrzej Szwalbe, one thing which was important as regards rounding out the Bydgoszcz brand was the notion of a synthesis of the arts, an idea that bore fruit in the extraordinary collections of busts, tapestries and 19th century grand pianos lining the walls of the Philharmonic. As conceived by its Platonist director, the Pomeranian Philharmonic was no longer “a workplace established for the planned promulgation of musical culture by means of organising concerts with the input of professional musicians”, as proclaimed in the institution’s statute, but had become, metaphorically, the grove of Akademos, wherein the arts communed with each other on a daily basis. Amongst the sculptures seen by people entering the Philharmonic were... and are!... the depiction in stone of Ignacy Jan Paderewski which stands in the lobby and was created by Alfons Karny for the opening of edifice. There are busts of Mieczysław Karłowicz, Karol Szymanowski and Krzysztof Penderecki, from the chisel of Marian Konieczny; as Penderecki recalls it today, he bypassed the sculpture of himself at the time, unable to take on board the fact that he had been immortalised in stone. There are sculptures of Wojciech Kilar, Michał Spisak, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Piotr Perkowski, Witold Lutosławski, Tadeusz Baird and Artur Malawski. Today, a sculpture of Andrzej Szwalbe, created by Michał Kubiak, also stands in their midst. The Pomeranian Philharmonic has hosted the greatest pianists of our times and the recitals given by the winners of successive editions of the Chopin Competition directly after the final in Warsaw have become a Bydgoszcz tradition. Chopin was surrounded by a particular veneration here, being both then and now a hallmark of the quality of Polish music. Even back then, for Polish and foreign artists alike, it was obvious that playing Bydgoszcz’s trademark Philharmonic was a must. In 1949, the ceremonial celebration of the centenary of Chopin’s death, as well as the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of his stay in Szafarnia as a youth, constituted a multifaceted incentive for Bydgoszcz to promulgate Polish mu-
sic, giving rise to an extensive campaign which was to last right up to the start of the 1960s. As the nearest place to Bydgoszcz associated with Chopin, Szafarnia was brought into the anniversary celebrations. The regional coordinator and creator of the programme for Chopin Year was Mieczysław Tomaszewski, later the director of the Pomeranian Symphony Orchestra and then the director of Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne (the Polish Music Publishing House) for many years; a professor of the Krakow Academy of Music and Chopin scholar, he is the author of core works on the composer. Something that might be considered as an interesting musical titbit is the now-forgotten fact that, in 1948, in honour of Chopin Year, the composer Florian Dąbrowski wrote a cantata entitled Frédéric’s Departure which was performed with élan by the Pomeranian Symphony Orchestra, choir and soloists in front of the historic manor house in Szafarnia. Amongst the audience who heard the work were the competitors in the 4th International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition. And let us recall one more element of memory management linking the names of these two great musicians. In circulation amongst editors, educators and performers in the past and to this very day are the works of Chopin as edited by Ignacy Jan Paderewski. We come across these editions in music-orientated bookshops and scores on every continent and competitors in piano competitions still reach for them most readily. These two names are coupled not only by tradition, but by a universal unifying force of great worth to performers, lovers and scholars of Chopin’s music, wheresoever in the world they might be. The performers who imbued the Poles with the art of Chopin in the 1950s and 60s were Polish pianists of the first water, including Władysław Kędra, another of Paderewski’s pupils, who was always delight to play Bydgoszcz and was capable of giving… seven concerts a day. As Andrzej Szwalbe said of that era: …In the fifties, as the Pomeranian Philharmonic, we organised a Chopin Trail, a festival tour of cities and towns in Pomerania, Kujawy and Dobrzyń Land... In a charming town on the Dręwca River, a town with a hyphenated name, we were received most hospitably by the Chairman of the National Council there. In the spring of 1957, I phoned him to plan another tour in the autumn and what I then heard was, Oh, no, Mr Szwalbe. We’ve got freedom now, we’ve got Gomułka and you won’t be coming here with your Chopin any more. [Martenka, 2000, p. 303]
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n 1985, the notion of a piano competition, which had been forgotten during the well-nigh twenty-five years that had passed since it was first mooted in the 1960s, was reached for by Professor Jerzy Sulikowski, pianist and teacher at the Bydgoszcz Academy of Music, which was taking its first steps as an independent institution at the time. [Martenka, 2000, p. 126] Andrzej Szwalbe had also extended his support for that initiative, since the genetic metropolitan quality of his vision was its complement. If there was a philharmonic concert hall, then there had to be a tertiary institution educating professional musicians. Thus, in 1974, a branch of the State Higher Music School in Łódź was established in the elegant building which had housed the district authority in former times and which faces the Philharmonic’s edifice. Six years later, it had attained the status of an independent Academy of Music, the youngest of the eight such institutions then at work in the country. And since there was now a tertiary facility, the primary and secondary music schools would have to be developed. Which was what happened. Once there was a firm educational base and a professional philharmonic institution, what then needed to be done was to launch endeavours aimed at achieving a permanent stage designed for opera. Which also happened. And thus, given that there was an operatic stage and a concert hall and an ensemble of professional musicians, then an educated and established audience had to be found. And it was! So, let a festival be organised. It was done! Let a musicological academic congress be held under Paderewski’s protective wing! It was held! Since so many visitors were coming to Bydgoszcz either to listen to music or to perform it, the city would have to erect some hotels. And they were erected. To complete the hand, Szwalbe gave thought to the Bydgoszcz Scholarship Society and saw to it that a place was found for a BWA gallery, along with funds for the University of Warsaw’s Bydgoszcz Musicological Scholarship and Research Station. There is no better confirmation of the fact that
funding the development of culture pays off than the efflorescence of Bydgoszcz’s musical institutions between 1960 and 1990. 1986 saw the 2nd Ignacy Jan Paderewski National Piano Competition. The official excuse was provided by the occurrence of two important anniversaries, something which has always helped when it comes to raising indispensable funding. They were the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the maestro’s birthday and the forty-fifth anniversary of his death. Strictly speaking, it was purely a national competition and, de facto, it was an inter-HEI one, but what was crucial was that the phoenix had arisen from the ashes. [Martenka, 2000, pp. 127-130]6 It was won by Wojciech Kocyan, a pupil of Professor Andrzej Jasiński, one of whose alumni, Krystian Zimerman, was already renowned at the time. One of the jurors was Professor Regina Smendzianka; born in Toruń, she was a pupil of Henryk Sztompka and thus, so to speak, Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s granddaughter in art. In order to venerate her, she was given the title of Honourable Chair of the Jury, which bound the contemporary and the past with a generational knot.7 The Paderewski brand presented plenty of opportunities for a noticeable emergence on the piano market and more importantly, for survival there. In 1990, the organisation of the competition was taken over by the former Bydgoszcz Music Association; founded in 1922, by 1990 it had also adopted the maestro’s name, becoming the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Music Association. This made it possible to give the competition an international dimension as of 1998. In December 2000, the Seym of the Republic of Poland adopted, by acclamation, a resolution which was of importance not only to Bydgoszcz. In a short text signed by the Speaker, Maciej Płażyński, we read that, …On the one hundred and fortieth anniversary of Jan Ignacy Paderewski’s birth and in the year prior to the sixtieth anniversary of his death, the Seym of the Republic of Poland wishes to honour this great Pole, statesman and eminent pianist and composer, who, through his life and his works, made an enduring mark on the his-
6 The course of the 1st National Ignacy Jan Paderewski Competition, held in 1961, is reconstructed from archival publications here. 7 Professor Smendzianka [2010] wrote, “This relatively ‘youthful’ competition event is arousing the interest, which is growing over the course of the years, of young Polish pianists and those from distant countries alike, whilst the careful selection of the international jury assures the verdict of objectivism and authoritativeness.”
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tory of our fatherland. In honour and deference to this illustrious Pole, as well as in response to the myriad social and municipal initiatives extolling his person, the Seym of the Republic of Poland declares the year 2001 to be Ignacy Jan Paderewski Year.8 [Ignacy Jan Paderewski Year, 2001]
The Seym’s resolution was the crowning effect of efforts on the part of the artistic milieux and municipal authorities of a city where the maestro had spent a full half hour... An initiative which had smouldered torpidly for years had been taken in hand by the then Chair of the Bydgoszcz City Council and, at one and the same time, Vice President of the Music Association, Felicja Gwincińska. It was she who instigated the council’s adoption of the relevant resolution and sent out a call to arms to the heads of the councils of Poland’s largest cities, requesting them to back the concept, endorsing and promoting it to every parliamentarian. And that backing was received. The letters which can be read today in the Music Association’s archives are overwhelming in their spirit of solidarity and support for the city’s notion that the country join together in honouring this hero of the past. On 7th December 2000, Andrzej Urbańczyk, an MP for Krakow, spoke from the rostrum in the Seym for several minutes, evoking a tumultuous ovation from the MPs of every parliamentary party. Paderewski continues to be an icon which awakens the Poles’ sense of unity. [Ignacy Jan Paderewski Year, 2001] During this period, Bydgoszcz became the kingpin for Poland’s Paderewski Year celebrations and commemorations. They were inaugurated on 16th February 2001 at the Philharmonic, where Andrzej Szwalbe’s successor, Eleonora Harendarska, had been at the helm for several years, with a performance of the composer’s Symphony in B Minor, conducted by Jerzy Maksymiuk.9 The national event consisted of exhibitions, lectures and concerts. And these were given not only at the Philharmonic, but also in the palace in Lubostroń and in Bydgoszcz co-cathedral, where Mozart’s Requiem was performed in June in commemoration of the maestro’s death. A festival of music in
the September of this memorial year was devoted entirely to the works of the composer of Fantasie Polonaise; the event was entitled Paderewski and the Music of His Times. Scholars turned their attention to him during a symposium focused around the topic of Paderewski’s Pianism in the Context of the Epochs. Paderewski Year came to a close on 14th December 2001, at the Philharmonic, with the performance of three famous works by Karol Szymanowski; the Concert Overture, the Violin Concerto No. 1 with Konstanty Andrzej Kulka as the soloist and Harnasie, with Karpiel-Bułecka’s highland music ensemble. The concert was conducted by Mieczysław Nowakowski. Paderewski Year undoubtedly heightened the lustre of both Bydgoszcz and the International Piano Competition and significantly strengthened the city’s existing brand, but it also revealed the competition’s shortcomings. This caused the Music Society’s management to make some radical decisions. A new competition director was appointed, and a new artistic director was invited on board, the competition regulations were amended and a series of preselection auditions were held in Asia, North America and Europe. No pains were spared in the efforts made to increase the competition’s budget. Advertisements announcing successive auditions in New York, London, Hanover. Moscow, Warsaw, Tokyo, Seoul and Los Angeles appeared in British, German and French trade periodicals.10 In 2004, the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Piano Competition became a member of the Hague-based Alink-Argerich Foundation, thanks to which, information about the competition is now constantly out there in the world’s piano milieu. [Martenka, 2008, pp. 56-62] This time, too, Paderewski proved to be a fruitful brand. Within the space of the next two editions, held in 2004 and 2007, the organisers of the International Competition which bears his name had achieved the goals they had set. Piotr Paleczny, a distinguished pianist, highly deserving of the fame he enjoys, professor of Warsaw’s Frédéric Chopin University of Music and laureate of the Chopin Competition in 1970, became the Chair of the Jury. The first prize was raised to the sum of thirty thousand euros. The jury was formed from a
8 The Seym Resolution of 2001 on the Matter of Recognising the Year 2001 as Ignacy Jan Paderewski Year. 9 What is interesting is that the authorities’ decision in respect of the twentieth anniversary of Paderewski’s death also limited the commemorations to the Bydgoszcz’s musical institutions. [See: Kłaput-Wiśniewska, 2006, p. 49] 10 Inter alia, “Piano News” (Germany), “Piano Magazine” (France), “Piano International” and the annual “Musical Britain” (Great Britain), and the bulletins published by Japan’s Piano teachers’ National Association.
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series of first-class arbiters from the world’s piano teaching elite and the names of such professors and performers as Andrzej Jasiński, Jacques Rouvier, Sergio Perticaroli, Wladimir Krajniew, Bernd Goetzke, Daejin Kim, Lee Kum Sing, Dominique Merlet, Jerome Rose and Chong Mo Kang, or the late Japanese artist Yuko Yamaoka, whose love affair with Bydgoszcz was truly authentic, all of them on a par with the great soloists playing the Pomeranian Philharmonic, have entered the annals of Bydgoszcz’s culture. The President of the Republic of Poland regularly agrees to become the Patron of the competition, which is something that can by no means be ignored and neither can the fact the crème de la crème of the piano world, together with their pupils, land at Bydgoszcz airport, which bears the name of... Ignacy Jan Paderewski. All these elements have gone to create a system of trust in the brand. And that is the fundamental requirement, sine qua non, of brand strategy. To date, the number of hopefuls competing in the preselection auditions, which are held in collaboration with the Japanese conglomerate, Yamaha, in eight of the piano world’s most important centres, namely, New York, Moscow, Hanover, London, Seoul, Tokyo and Paris, has reached almost three hundred. The result could only be superb competitors. The upshot is that the winners of the successive competitions, to wit, Maria Kim of Ukraine (2004) and two Russians, Nikita Mndojants (2007) and Eduard Konz (2010) stepped straight onto the world concert circuit, as it were, winning further important awards. A mere six years on, the elevation of the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Piano Competition into these higher spheres brought a measurable result in the form of its acceptance into the World Federation of International Music Competitions, which has its headquarters in Geneva.11 By the same token, the Bydgoszcz venture, inspired by Paderewski’s legacy and born of an authentic Bydgoszcz tradition, now found itself amongst the world’s one hundred and twenty-eight most prestigious music competitions. And this is the most outstanding international achievement of the Bydgoszcz music brand. [Perkowska-Waszek, 2004, p. 75; Perkowska-Waszek, 2010, p. 491]
III.
C
an peripheral circumstances play a role in building brands? Have an influence on their image and the force of their impact beyond that of mainstream phenomena? One of the maestro’s stepbrothers, Józef, lived in Bydgoszcz, which turned out to be a significant aspect of establishing the Ignacy Jan tradition in the city12. Józef Paderewski, brother of Maria, who died in poverty and loneliness in Żytomierz in 1957, moved to Bydgoszcz part-way through the 1920s. He died in 1958. Educated in Kiev, he was a man of impeccable manners and a highly respected figure in the city. He taught mathematics and physics at the Catholic Humanities Gymnasium for Girls and acoustics at the City Music Conservatoire. During the war, he gave lectures to clandestine study groups. He esteemed the city which he had chosen himself, in full awareness, in 1926 and was wont to say to his pupils that he was grateful to his brother, who, in negotiating the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, had drawn up the map of Poland so that Bydgoszcz would lie within her borders. This statement was widely appreciated, for Paderewski was revered beyond measure in the regions of the former German Partition. It was no secret to anyone that, until the outbreak of World War II, Józef Paderewski corresponded regularly with Riond-Bosson, Ignacy Jan’s Swiss residence. He was thoroughly informed as to the details of his brother’s family life, which he would tell his friends about with all the openness typical of the people of the Eastern Borderlands. It was natural for him to relay news of his brother’s successes, which meant that numerous people obtained that knowledge and, to a large extent, identified with the fortunes and vicissitudes of the Paderewskis. As a result, many a resident of Bydgoszcz might even have considered Ignacy Jan almost as kin, as someone known to them and close to them. It is also possible that this psychological presumption contributed to the fact that it was not difficult for Andrzej Szwalbe to propagate the concept of the Paderewski Philharmonic amongst them, a concept which, with time, became a sui generis cult that confuses foreigners, for instance, to the
11 This occurred at the 54th General Assembly of the World Federation of International Music Competitions, which was held in Banff and Calgary, Canada, in April 2009. 12 “The Gdańsk brand is based on a powerful cultural and historical heritage (…) and a superb example of the use of a personal brand to reinforce the recognisability of a city is the naming of Gdańsk airport after Lech Wałęsa”. [Szpak, 2005, p. 192] Translated for the purposes of this article from the Polish version given in the article.
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extent whereby Bydgoszcz is thought to be the composer’s birthplace or, at the very least, a place where he worked over many years. After his death, Ignacy Jan’s will, now deposited in Bydgoszcz, was surrounded by something of a sensation when it became the object of the notentirely honest endeavours of his long-standing secretary, Sylwin Strakacz. After the maestro had died, Strakacz decided to manage his legacy in his own fashion and published a document different from the original. This was the chief reason for his publicly denying the existence of Paderewski’s stepfamily, despite the fact that he had corresponded with Józef personally and had even invited him to America. In connection with this refutation, he also questioned the existence of a valid will. But Józef stood firm against the pressure and the bequests were distributed in accordance with the maestro’s last wishes. Strakacz was not to yield until 1950, after all rights to administer his master’s legacy had been withdrawn.13 Paderwski was a pop-culture hero of his age, an idol, as we would say today, he was the metaphorical heart of an artistic constellation around which the other stars, greater and lesser, spun. [Martenka, 2008, p. 66] Amongst them, three shone the most brightly. The first is Frédéric Chopin, whose works have featured in the repertoire of the Pomeranian Symphony Orchestra, later the Pomeranian Philharmonic, from the outset. In terms of the philharmonic’s artistic plans, Chopin, as an exemplary artist, drawing upon the treasures of folk culture with an unstinting hand, reflected the state’s politics; however, this was no more than a formal servitude. Chopin’s music, performed by the greatest celebrities of the piano world who appeared as guests artists at the Bydgoszcz Philharmonic, was quality in itself alone; it thus never entered anyone’s mind to link it with either the canon of socialist realism in the arts or cultural indoctrination. It was the interpretations of Chopin offered by Halina Czerny-Stefańska, Regina Smendzianka, Tadeusz Żmudziński, Stanisław Szpinalski, Lidia Grychtołówna, Regina Smendzianka, Barbara Hesse-Bukowska, Raul Koczalski and Artur Rubinstein, to mention only the most illustrious of performers who, during the 1950s and subsequent years, left others standing, that became the canon which, over time, would be
rounded out by the names of the young and the great, both Polish and foreign. Nonetheless, without Chopin, Bydgoszcz’s Philharmonic would not have attained the prestige that it did; neither is it, in fact, unique amongst similar Polish institutions in this respect. The distinguishing factor proved to be the brand, to which the national cultural memory contributed. The brand and its constant, consistent and determined management.
IV.
W
ithout Chopin, the Bydgoszcz Academy of Music would not have achieved high renown, either; currently, it is primarily perceived both at home and abroad as a thriving centre of piano teaching, which suits the amassing of the brand’s substance in terms of commercial value perfectly. Frédéric Chopin has played a specific part in this, since the academy’s piano professors are laureates of the Chopin Competition, namely, Jerzy Godziszewski, who studied under Stanisław Szpinalski, himself one of Paderewski’s pupils, Ewa Pobłocka, Tatiana Szebanowa and Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń, all of them teachers who perform to this day, as well as recording award-winning albums. The institution’s fame was augmented in 2005, when Rafał Blechacz, who studied there under Professor Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń, won the 15th International Frédéric Chopin Competition with brilliant style and panache, garnering every other possible prize and distinction as well. Five years later, another Bydgoszcz pianist, Paweł Wakarecy, shone at the Chopin, while Michał Szymanowski was a finalist in the 8th International Paderewski Competition. Both studied under Professor Popowa-Zydroń. By the same token, the academy itself stepped into the spotlight, showing the world its potential. As a result, it is the focus of a growing interest on the part of piano students from Asia seeking centres of excellence in Europe where they can continue their studies. In the 1950s, the Bydgoszcz Opera blossomed from the semi-amateur Opera Studio which was founded for the local musical milieu by Felicja Krysiewiczowa, whom the Bolshevik revolution had ‘knocked off her perch’, forcing her to flee from Kiev,
13 The vicissitudes of Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s last will and testament, which is held in the State Archives in Bydgoszcz, have engaged, inter alia, Barbara Gogol-Drożniakiewicz, who recapitulated them in Testament I. J. Paderewskiego i bydgoski proces spadkowy [The Last Will and Testament of Ignacy Jan Paderewski and the Bydgoszcz Probate], [Ignacy Jan Paderewski, 2001 pp. 146-154].
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from whence she made her way first to Poznań and then settled in Bydgoszcz in 1931. [Pruss, Weber, 2002, p. 363] The sister of Piotr Perkowski, himself a composer, animateur of musical life and Karol Szymanowski’s final pupil, she is one of the figures forming the abiding canvas of the Bydgoszcz tapestry. They were Eastern Borderlanders, a group which enjoyed a natural esteem amongst the residents of Bydgoszcz. Krysiewiczowa, by profession a soprano, picked out a group from amongst the talented amateurs and herself worked to polish it vocally. That group went on to become the ovule of the Bydgoszcz Opera. And since it had emerged, it was obvious that the spirit of Paderewski would flow there, too. But surprisingly, it flowed slowly... For half a century had to pass under the bridge in order for the Bydgoszcz Opera House to see, in 2006, a premiere of Paderewski’s only opera, Manru, based on Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s An Ancient Tale. A Novel from Poland’s History. Indeed, it was with this that the Bydgoszcz Opera, renamed Opera Nova in 1990, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The warmly-received production of this Post-Romantic work provided a fitting note for the golden jubilee and suited the repertoire of the opera house, which is one of the most dynamic in Poland, bringing renown to the city with not only its annual Opera festival, abut also the successive productions of operas, operettas, musicals and ballets that the spirited conductor and director of the institution, Maciej Figas, has presented over the course of more than a dozen years. The notion of building a music theatre was mooted in the 1960s and the man behind the initiative was Andrzej Szwalbe. In 1974, when construction finally began, he oversaw the development on behalf of the investor and never allowed the thirty-year-long project to be forgotten. A happy ending finally arrived in the first years of the new century. Felicja Krysiewiczowa was not the only representative of the Eastern Borderlanders who was to find her new place on earth in Bydgoszcz. A decade before she arrived, Karol Szymanowski made his way to Bydgoszcz along the same refugees’ trail and lived in his mother’s and sister’s home in the city’s Bielawy district from 1921 to 1922.14 His brother, Feliks, lived there as well. It might thus be posited that this brief stay by the Brda River was a
crucial moment in the life of the composer of King Roger, a moment when he was able to gather his strength before stepping into the mainstream of Polish musical life. It was in Bydgoszcz that the innovatory Słopiewnie [Wordsongs], a five-song cycle of settings for words by the poet Julian Tuwim, was written, as was an essay devoted to the music of Igor Stravinsky15. Szymanowski’s sojourn in Bydgoszcz would certainly have passed unnoticed had it not been for the invitation which was extended to the famous composer and his siblings by those of the city’s residents who congregated around the Polish Club. There, Szymanowski made a personal speech, not without emotion, as his contemporaries noted, whilst his sister, Stanisława, sung Roksana’s aria from King Roger, accompanied their brother, Feliks Szymanowski. A “lavish and toothsome supper” was dispensed, during which, Szymanowski said: I’ve thanked people for their appreciation abroad many a time in various foreign languages (…), today, I’ve done so for the first time in Polish. So I make no secret of my emotion. But the fact that I’m doing so here, here in Bydgoszcz, which, until so very recently, was still known as Bromberg, is extremely specific. We three hail from the remote borderlands far to the east. By exertion and perseverance, we shielded the flame of Polish culture there from the gusts of foreign and enemy winds. In the remote borderlands far to the west, they express their thanks to us publicly for that. By the same token, they express their thanks to us in institutions, which, in every other place in the Second Republic, are customarily home to card parties. Whilst here, from the very beginning of its existence, it seems that this has been, and is, above all, a home to Polish culture.
This is an important sketch in the picture of the Bydgoszcz those post-war, post-Partition years. The Polish Club, which was located in an elegant townhouse on the corner of Gdańsk and Śniadecki streets, was a citizens’ association open to local people and visitors, who turned up from the moment that independence was regained. It was established in order to erase the differences dividing its members. And, as Szymanowski testifies, it performed that role exemplarily.
14 The Szymanowski siblings’ stay in Bydgoszcz was noted recorded in “Dziennik Bydgoski” (“The Bydgoszcz News”) in the ‘Personal’ section of No. 117, 5th August 1921. [Cited by Szymanowski, 1984, p. 57] 15 The piece on Stravinsky, written in 1921 after Szymanowski’s return from Paris, was intended for a Warsaw literary and arts periodical, “Krokwie” [“Rafters”]. However, it did not reach publication. [See: Szymanowski, 1984, p. 48]
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In the circle of inspiring musical artists, there stands alongside Frédéric Chopin, Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Karol Szymanowski a man living in contemporary times, Krzysztof Penderecki, who has been a presence in the musical life of the city for decades. His works have been performed here time and again, often with the composer himself in attendance and sometimes under his direction. His The Devils of Louden and Ubu Rex have been presented at the Opera Festival. Penderecki’s arrival always draws media attention and, as a result, wider public opinion. He has become the embodiment not only of a tremendous, world talent, but also of the experience he has gained from his artistic travels, spectacular world premieres and widely analysed reception of his works. For Bydgoszcz’s musical milieu, he has been both an authority and a genuine artistic guru whose words are a truth. As a figure, this brings him even closer to the roles that Karol Szymanowski and, indirectly, Frédéric Chopin and Ignacy Jan Paderewski, played for Bydgoszcz, each in his own time. When interrogated by journalists, Penderecki has unfailingly rated the standard and élan of the Bydgoszcz music scene highly, sometimes doing so in the teeth of the current opinions of the local malcontents. Moreover, whilst extolling Szwalbe and the Philharmonic, he stated that “he owes that institution his gratitude for certain creative triggers, such as, for instance, in the work on Jutrznia / Utrenya [Morning Prayer]”. [Pruss, Weber, 2004] The long-standing familiarity, grounded in respect, of Poland’s greatest living composer with the Pomeranian Philharmonic, bore fruit in an extraordinary gesture. In September 2009, Bydgoszcz, which, in the eyes of Krzysztof Penderecki is first and foremost a city of music, offered the maestro an Honorary Citizenship. This relationship was most fully described in the City Council’s Ceremonial Resolution, which was read out during the ceremony: As both a composer and a conductor, Maestro Penderecki has appeared on the concert posters of the Bydgoszcz Philharmonic with an exceptional frequency. His presence was recorded in the chronicles of the Pomeranian Philharmonic for the first time in 1964, when the orchestra, conducted by Henryk Czyż, performed his Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, which received the UNESCO Award; the performance of other works by Penderecki followed, frequently accompanied by a visit from the maestro himself to this ancient stronghold on the Brda River, often in the role of conductor.
(…) the relationship between the Pomeranian Philharmonic and the maestro, filled with mutual liking and admiration, has always imbued the city with a sense of pride.
V.
P
aris is romance, Milan is style, New York is energy, Tokyo is modernity, Lagos is corruption, Barcelona is culture and Rio is fun. These are the brands of those cities and they are inseparably bound up with the history and destiny of each place. Thus Simon Anholt indexes city brands. Salzburg is Mozart, Bonn is Beethoven and Vienna is… For people involved in culture, scholarship and the arts in a great many countries of the world, Bydgoszcz is Paderewski is music. As we know, a city’s brand, the image of its spiritual identity, is not born of administrative conferment in the space of a day. It emerges from generation to generation, it needs time in order to amass substance and accord its location a glow. Thanks to the efforts made and the endeavours undertaken in the second half of the 20th century, Bydgoszcz attained something which it received with gratitude, but also with a long-lasting stupefaction accompanied by mistrust and disbelief. And lo and behold, it was done! The city gained a brand, it has its own, distinctive image, in other words, attributes and values, which allow it to be distinguished from nine hundred other Polish cities. A brand is not something fixed and immobile like a painting within a frame on the wall of a museum. As can be seen from the example of Bydgoszcz, Poland’s eighth largest metropolis, a city brand inspires further action, it dynamises the sense of a civilisational identity. And it means that the city radiates with its own, unmirrored light in its region, its country and the world. The experts consider that a brand enables a city’s participation in the global game, it generates curiosity, it attracts attention and something which goes hand in hand with that… money. It draws tourists, investors and students. The city emanates its own identity and reputation ever more distinctly. Its brand capital grows and its drawing power acquires further vigour. And a stronger brand exerts an even more powerful pull… But it is worth remembering that a city’s brand also becomes its commitment, for nothing is given once and for all. Thence springs the sense of reminding subsequent generations who was behind it and how the process of its constant, consistent
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and determined creation began. And, in the case of building a brand, constancy, consistency and determination are of immeasurable importance. The example of Bydgoszcz is typical of most Polish cities. Centuries old, afflicted to a greater or lesser extent by history, ambitious and seeking its own place in the global landscape. For the ancient cities of Europe, this is not difficult and the same applies in Bydgoszcz, where it would have been relatively simple to create a cult around the last of the Piasts, King Casimir III the Great, who granted the city its charter and the rights that ensued thereupon. Yet this would have been a gesture less spectacular than empty, since there are several dozen cities like that in Poland. Deriving the city’s brand from a legendary figure present in the mass imagination of a multitude of nations, for such was, and is, Paderewski, as well as from the fact that his journey there was devoid of all significance for the place, was a masterstroke which arouses ever greater admiration as time goes by. Ignacy Jan Paderewski, unique artist, inspirer of ideas and icon of patriotism, has emerged enduringly in the consciousness of the city’s inhabitants as their own brand. He has become the city’s natural image, establishing an harmonic foundation for other artists, whom the Bydgoszcz brand reinforces in every respect; for Frédéric Chopin, Karol Szymanowski and Krzysztof Penderecki. Simon Anholt [2006, pp. 192-193], a highly regarded expert in matters relating to the building of the image and reputation of states, cities, towns
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and nations, maintains that there are places in the world which, although all the rage, have not attained a success in terms of image that would lift them beyond the average. In today’s globalised and interrelated world, every single place has to compete with every single other place in order to obtain a share of the world’s consumers, tourists, entrepreneurs, investment, capital, respect and attention. Cities and towns, the economic and cultural power houses of their nations, are increasingly becoming the centres of this competitive, international fight for funding, talent and fame. They have always been brands, in the truest sense of the word, while culture plays a fundamental role in the process of enriching a country’s brand, serving as a unique demonstration of its additional attributes and values because the consumer trusts nothing behind which stand commercial intentions. To employ a cynical metaphor, as Anholt writes, culture is a promotional keepsake attached to a national brand. What practice teaches us is the vital extent to which brands springing from culture determine a national brand. Half a century ago, this was precisely how Andrzej Szwalbe conceived the import of his idea, intuitively building a brand of the first water, which placed a provincial city amongst the ranks of the exceptional, of brand cultural centres on a national and European scale. Not that this frees anyone from maintain caution, given that, over recent decades, myriad brands have also emerged only to sink without trace.
Literature: Anholt S., Sprawiedliwość marek. Jak branding miejsc i produktów, może uczynić kraj bogatym, dumnym i pewnym siebie, Instytut Marki Polskiej, Warszawa 2006. Baziak J., I. J. Paderewski Artysta, kolekcjoner, mąż stanu, Muzeum Okręgowe w Bydgoszczy and Towarzystwo Muzyczne w Bydgoszczy, Bydgoszcz 2007. Bezwiński A., Andrzej Szwalbe Portret niedokończony, Bydgoszcz 1991. Gogol-Drożniakiewicz B., Testament I. J. Paderewskiego i bydgoski proces spadkowy [in:] Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Twórca w świetle kultury, eds. T. Brodniewicz, H. Kostrzewska, J. Tatarska, Poznań 2001. Ignacy Jan Paderewski Year, Jan Ignacy Paderewski Music Association in Bydgoszcz, Bydgoszcz 2001. Kłaput-Wiśniewska A., Wielka Filharmonia. Filharmonia Pomorska w latach 1953-1990, Wydawnictwo Uczelniane Akademii Muzycznej w Bydgoszczy 2006. Martenka H., Miasto zasłuchane. Muzyczna Bydgoszcz u schyłku wieku, Delta, Bydgoszcz 2000. Martenka H., Wielki akord. Ze wspomnień dyrektora międzynarodowych konkursów pianistycznych im. I. J. Paderewskiego, Bydgoszcz 2008. Perkowska-Waszek M., Ignacy Jan Paderewski o sobie. Zarys biografii wzbogacony listami artysty, Tarnów – Kąśna Dolna 2004.
Perkowska-Waszek M., Paderewski i jego twórczość. Dzieje utworów i rys osobowości kompozytora, Musica Iagiellonica, Kraków 2010. Pruss Z., Weber A., Bydgoski Leksykon Operowy, Kujawsko-Pomorskie Towarzystwo Kulturalne (KPTK)/ Margrafsen, Bydgoszcz 2002. Pruss Z., Weber A., Kuczma R., Bydgoski Leksykon Muzyczny, KPTK/Margrafsen, Bydgoszcz 2004. Raszewski Z., Pamiętnik gapia. Bydgoszcz, jaką pamiętam z lat 1930-1945, Wydawnictwo Pomorze, Bydgoszcz 1994. Smendzianka R., VI Międzynarodowy Konkurs Pianistyczny im. I. J. Paderewskiego w Bydgoszczy. Refleksje jurora i honorowej przewodniczącej Jury [in:] Ignacy Jan Paderewski, ed. K. R. Czekaj, Haag, BazyleaKrakow-Warsaw 2010. Starczak-Kozłowska K., Życie na przełomie: opowieść o Andrzeju Szwalbe, Bydgoszcz 1999. Szpak M., Gdańsk. Morze możliwości [in:] eds. S. Anholt, J. Hildreth, Brand America. Tajemnica mega marki, Aneks, Instytut Marki Polskiej, Warszawa 2005. Szymanowski K., Pisma, vol. 1, Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne (PWM) Kraków1984.