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In an interview for the Radio Information Agency, he said that four songs have already been completed.Two of them are set to verse by Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's Romantic bard. All the works are to be settings of Polish poetry, which is not an easy task as the Polish language, in Penderecki's's view, 'is not musical'. There was only a handful of composers who used Polish poems in their songs. Stanislaw Moniuszko was the most prominent among them.
Penderecki said that he has made a preliminary selection of about a hundred texts by Adam Mickiewicz and 20th-century poets Tadeusz Myciński, Aleksander Wat and Zbigniew Herbert. The cycle is to be premiered in October 2010 at a closing concert of the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, one of the highlights of the Chopin Year.
Last night, during a gala ceremony at the Warsaw University Library, Krzysztof Penderecki received the prestigious 'Golden Sceptre', an annual prize of the Foundation for Polish Culture, for his entire compositional output and for introducing Polish music into the mainstream of international musical life.
Source: Polish Radio
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