Żydowska muzyka w Polsce międzywojennej – Dawid Ajzensztadt i jego Warszawa

Read­ing any book about pre-war War­saw’s musi­cal life, or about the Jew­ish cul­ture of the cap­i­tal, one is like­ly to encounter a longer or short­er men­tion of Daw­id Ajzen­sz­tadt. He is described every­where as the great­est, the most out­stand­ing, the most bril­liant, and above all the most ded­i­cat­ed musi­cian and com­pos­er.
Daw­id Ajzen­sz­tadt was born in 1890 in Nasiel­sk, and after a peri­od of study, trav­el and var­i­ous short-term posi­tions he set­tled per­ma­nent­ly in War­saw, where from 1921 he served as choir direc­tor of the Great Syn­a­gogue on Tło­mack­ie Street. Dur­ing the occu­pa­tion he became
one of the most active musi­cians in the War­saw Ghet­to. He found­ed a sym­pho­ny orches­tra and con­duct­ed choirs. He accom­pa­nied on piano his daugh­ter — Marysia, whose mirac­u­lous voice earned her the title of “Nightin­gale of the Ghet­to” from her lis­ten­ers. In 1942 Daw­id Ajzen­sz­tadt was
deport­ed to Tre­blin­ka and mur­dered there.

How did the artists come across the music of Daw­id Ajzen­sz­tadt, long believed to be lost? What exact­ly was found? Why did some of the scores come into their hands for the first time after 80 years since they were writ­ten? What does the music of
Daw­id Ajzen­sz­tadt tell us, and what can we learn from it?
Answers to these and oth­er ques­tions will be pre­sent­ed by Jakub Ste­fek and Lil­ian­na Krych, who can be heard on the album Music of David Eisen­stadt — the first album in the his­to­ry of sound record­ing to fea­ture the music of this great cham­pi­on of Jew­ish music. They will be joined in the dis­cus­sion by vio­lin­ist Maria Sławek, a spe­cial­ist in the his­to­ry of Jew­ish music who teach­es her own course on The His­to­ry of Jew­ish Music with­in the Post­grad­u­ate Polish–Jewish Stud­ies Pro­gramme at the Insti­tute of Lit­er­ary Research of the Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Sciences.

To close the event, tenor Woj­ciech Parchem, organ­ist Jakub Ste­fek and the vocal ensem­ble Match Match Ensem­ble under the direc­tion of Lil­ian­na Krych will give the world pre­miere of three works from the album, which will be released on 17 Novem­ber on vinyl.

Jakub Ste­fek har­mo­ni­um
Woj­ciech Parchem tenor

Lil­ian­na Krych con­duc­tor

Sopra­nos
Alek­san­dra Drogosz-Szymańska

Kon­stanc­ja Molews­ka
Adri­an­na Żołnier­czuk-Malec
Maria Złotek

​Project co-financed by the Euro­pean Union from the Recov­ery and Resilience Facil­i­ty under the Nation­al Recov­ery and Resilience Plan.

The album record­ing was made at the POLIN Muse­um of the His­to­ry of Pol­ish Jews in War­saw in 2024.
The release of the album Music of David Eisen­stadt was co-financed from the funds of the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Nation­al Her­itage drawn from the Cul­ture Pro­mo­tion Fund, with­in the pro­gramme “Muzy­czny ślad”, imple­ment­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Music and Dance.