Basztowa Street

In a different setting, at the ‘Florianka’ on Basztowa Street, several of Lutosławski’s later works underwent their public baptism. The Trio for oboe, clarinet and bassoon was played on 2 September 1945 during a Festival of Polish Contemporary Music held to mark the founding congress of the Polish Composers Union. Melodie ludowe [Folk melodies], composed at the urging of the first director of PWM Edition, Tadeusz Ochlewski, who encouraged composers to write pedagogic works of a distinctly Polish character, was first performed by Zbigniew Drzewiecki on 22 July 1946; that was presumably a grand concert, as the anniversary of the July Manifesto of the Polish Committee of National Liberation was being celebrated that day. Those twelve piano miniatures include the Cracow melody ‘Hej, od Krakowa jadę’ [Hey, I’m coming from Cracow] (no. 2). Similar encouragement stood behind the twenty carols for voice and piano and the eight children’s songs to words by Julian Tuwim. These were all sung publicly for the first time in Cracow, during concerts organised by PWM and broadcast by Polish Radio. Lutosławski’s last Cracow premiere was of the Three Postludes, which adorned a concert held to mark PWM Edition’s twentieth anniversary on 8 October 1965.