Agata Szymczewska (fiolin), Wojciech Szymczewski (klaver), Lidia Książkiewicz (klaver), Thierry Escaich (orgel)
This concert is the second musical tribute of Reconciliation festival to Maria Skłodowska-Curie. Born in 1867 in Warsaw, she pursued science passionately, moving to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, as higher education was forbidden to women in Poland. In Paris, she met and married Pierre Curie, with whom she conducted groundbreaking research. Together, they discovered the radioactive elements polonium (named after Poland) and radium. In 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie, along with Henri Becquerel, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on radioactivity. After Pierre’s tragic death in 1906, Marie continued their research, winning a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for isolating pure radium. She faced many challenges as a woman in science but persisted with quiet determination. Beyond the myth endures the profound love between two individuals, still radiant today, along with their enduring commitment to the service of humanity—an ideal that continues to inspire artists and scientists around the world.
– Readings ( see after artists biographies)
- Letter to Madame Curie by Yves Quéré
- Liebestraum, Friedrich Freiligrath
– Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Liebestraum No3 , A flat maj.
Letter to Madame Curie by Yves Quéré
– Thierry Escaich : Improvisation on Liebestraum
– Clara Schumann (1819-1896):
- Variations on a theme by Robert Schumann, op20
- Scherzo no 2 op14
– Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Intermezzo (excerpt of Carnival Scenes from Vienna op26)
Pause (15 min)
– Henryk Wienawski (1835-1880): The Legend Op.17
– Grazina Bacewicz (1909-1969) : Lullaby
– Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937): Myths, Op.30 (1915)for violin and piano, La Fontaine d’Arethuse
Polish violinist, the winner of the 13th Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznań in 2006, Agata Szymczewska has also received Passport of the Polityka weekly (an annual cultural award), four Fryderyk Awards (the most important music award in Poland), and the London Music Masters Award. Agata is the first violin of the renowned Polish string quartet – Karol Szymanowski Quartet. In the course of her intense artistic career, she has shared the stage with Krystian Zimerman, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Martha Argerich, Maxim Vengerov amongst others and has collaborated with such conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Sir Neville Marriner and Andrey Boreyko. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Sony and Decca. Currently her instrument of choice is a Nicolò Gagliano violin from 1755, on loan courtesy of Anne-Sophie Mutter.
Polish pianist, Wojciech Szymczewski was born in 1991 in Koszalin. He is a graduate of the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk in the solo piano class led by professor Waldemar Wojtal and chamber music class led by professor Anna Prabucka-Firlej and doctor Bogna Czerwińska-Szymula. Wojciech is a laureate of many regional, national and international competitions, including XVIII International Piano Competition J. S. Bach in Gorzów Wielkopolski in 2006, 6th National Music Competition J. Zarębski in Warsaw in 2006, Nationwide Auditions of Students of Piano Grades at II Degree Schools in Jelenia Góra in 2008. Since 2008, he co-creates a piano duet with Bartosz Kołaczkowski, his classmate from the chamber music class at the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk.
In 2015, Wojciech Szymczewski started working at the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk as an accompanist at the Department of Conducting, Composition and Theory of Music. Currently, he is a piano teacher and pianist – accompanist at the Music School in Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz.
Composer, organist and improviser Thierry Escaich is a unique figure in contemporary music and one of the most important French composers of his generation. The three elements of Escaich’s artistry are inseparable, allowing him to express himself as a virtuosic performer, interpreter and creator at the highest level. In 2024, Escaich was appointed titular organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris. Escaich composes works in many genres and forms, including opera, symphonic and chamber music. His catalogue numbers over 100 works which, with their lyrical, rich harmonies and rhythmic energy, have attracted a wide audience. Drawing from the French line of composition of Ravel, Messiaen and Dutilleux, and imbued with references from contemporary, jazz, popular and spiritual music, the distinctive sound-world of Escaich’s music is anchored by an obsessive rhythmic drive and compelling architecture. Escaich’s works are performed by leading orchestras in Europe and North America and by musicians such as Lisa Batiashvili, François Leleux, Andris Nelsons, Alain Altinoglu, Louis Langrée, Semyon Bychkov, Paavo Järvi, Alan Gilbert, Emmanuelle Bertrand and Paul Meyer.
Lidia Książkiewicz is a Polish pianist and organist based in France. Born in Poznań, she began studying piano at age five and organ at twenty. After graduating with first prizes and honors in both piano from the national academies of music in Bydgoszcz and Poznań, she won numerous international competition awards, including the 1st prize at the International Music Competition of the 20th Century in Warsaw (1994), the 1st prize at the International Organ Rimini in Italy (2004), the César Franck prize at the International Organ Competition of Haarlem, Netherlands (2000), and the Reger/Messiaen International Competition in Graz, Austria (2003). She also won the prestigious Grand Prix de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts in Angers, France (2004). After moving to France, she graduated from the Conservatory of Saint-Maur, receiving first prizes for organ and a gold medal for harpsichord. In 2004, she was a finalist at the International Organ Competition of Chartres. As a soloist, she has performed with numerous symphonic orchestras, including the Orchestre Symphonique de Radio France, the Symphonic Orchestra of the Philharmonic in Krakow, Orchestre de Douai, and the Slovak Sinfonietta. Lidia Książkiewicz is currently the principal organist at the Cathedral of Laon, France.
Letter to Madame Curie by Yves Quéré, Member of the Academy of Sciences, godfather of the festival
Madame,
If I take the liberty — a somewhat strange one — of writing to you today, though you left this world long ago, it is because you give me the idea. Did you not yourself — strange enough already — send to Pierre, your husband, after his accidental death, a series of very beautiful and moving letters, recently set to music, songs for soprano and piano? Thus, one may write to someone departed: you, to tell him again of your love; I, to declare to you my fascination.
There are indeed many reasons to be dazzled by you, and I, a physicist — a physicist precisely of radioactive metals — could list quite a few here. But let me set aside science for a moment, and instead gather a few moments from your life as a simple human being, to tell you of my enchantment.
I love your attitude towards that young laboratory assistant who became your “personal preparer,” Marguerite Perey, whom you encouraged to pursue university studies during her working hours. This would lead her, in 1939, to discover a new element, francium, and make her, in our country, the first woman University Professor, and in 1962, the first woman elected to the Academy of Sciences, and even to the Institut de France.
The Academy of Sciences? Ah, let us speak of it — the very institution that dishonored itself by not electing you in 1911, on the eve of your second Nobel Prize. I admire the nobility with which you accepted that blow, but also your sense of honor when, later on, you refused to resubmit your candidacy to an Academy certainly repentant, but a little too late.
I love your devotion to a homeland that had not treated you so kindly shortly before, and the launching of the “petites Curies,” the name given to those vehicles fitted with radiology equipment, which you personally drove to the front in 1917 to care for the wounded.
I love those elementary science lessons you gave to children — lessons that have been rediscovered, their essentials published, and which have now found new life. When Georges Charpak, like you passionate, like you of Polish origin, like you a Nobel laureate in physics, launched in 1995 La main à la pâte for schoolchildren, he did not know that, ninety years later, he was walking in your footsteps and, like you, serving the public good.
And how could I not love the gift you gave my generation — Hélène and Pierre, your two grandchildren, whom you just barely knew, and who somehow embody your presence among us, as did their mother, Irène?
Madame, I believe I know that you never came to Norway, much less to Stavanger. Know that you are admired here, and that in this year 2025, you will be celebrated. Do not be surprised if, then, some distant echoes of our tributes and some musical fragments — reminiscences of your letters to Pierre — reach you.
I beg you, Madame, to believe in my feelings of long half-life, and thus of very slow decay.
Liebestraum by Friedrich Freiligrath
O love, as long as love you can,
O love, as long as love you may,
The time will come, the time will come
When you will stand at the grave and mourn!
Be sure that your heart burns,
And holds and keeps love
As long as another heart beats warmly
With its love for you
And if someone bears his soul to you
Love him back as best you can
Give his every hour joy,
Let him pass none in sorrow!
And guard your words with care,
Lest harm flow from your lips!
Dear God, I meant no harm,
But the loved one recoils and mourns.
O love, love as long as you can!
O love, love as long as you may!
The time will come, the time will come,
When you will stand at the grave and mourn.
You will kneel alongside the grave
And your eyes will be sorrowful and moist,
– Never will you see the beloved again –
Only the churchyard’s tall, wet grass.
You will say: Look at me from below,
I who mourn here alongside your grave!
Forgive my slights!
Dear God, I meant no harm!
Yet the beloved does not see or hear you,
He lies beyond your comfort;
The lips you kissed so often speak
Not again: I forgave you long ago!
Indeed, he did forgive you,
But tears he would freely shed,
Over you and on your unthinking word –
Quiet now! – he rests, he has passed.
O love, love as long as you can!
O love, love as long as you may!
The time will come, the time will come,
When you will stand at the grave and mourn
Pierre Curie’s quote
Our society, where a harsh desire for luxury and wealth prevails, does not understand the value of science. It fails to realize that science is part of its most precious moral heritage, nor does it sufficiently grasp that science is the foundation of all progress that eases human life and reduces suffering.
Excerpt of Marie Curie’s speech at the debate on “The Future of Culture”, Madrid 1933
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its own beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world. If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.…