"Timeless Dialogues" - American Debut of Paulina Tomczuk with Dominik Yoder (Vol. 16, No. 2)

 

On 20 May 2025 at the Martin Luther King Auditorium of Santa Monica Public Library, the Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club presented a wonderful concert of two young musicians, Paulina Tomczuk, violin, and Dominik Yoder, piano.  They played a set of pieces for violin and piano, after showing off their talents in solo sections of the well-received concert. 

Born in Zielona Gora, Poland, Paulina Tomczuk is a graduate of Fryderyk Chopin Music University in Warsaw (2024) where she is currently continuing her Masters' studies with Agata Szymczewska. Simultaneously she studies at Hochschule der Künste Bern in Switzerland with Professor Bartłomiej Nizioł. A young soloist's path to fame leads through the thorns of countless competitions, and Ms. Tomczuk has participated in about 70, winning numerous honors.  Three recent ones are: the 4th Prize at the 6th Wanda Wiłkomirska International Polish Music Violin Competition in Częstochowa (Poland, 2024), the 1st Prize at the 1st Miniature Competition in Warsaw (Poland, 2022), the 1st Prize at the Kyoto International Music Competition (Japan, 2021), the Grand Prix at the 2nd Wiłkomirski National Chamber Music Competition in Łódź (Poland, 2021), and the 1st Prize at the ISCART International Music Competition (Switzerland, 2021).  She has performed as a soloist and in chamber ensembles in Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Turkey. This concert was her American debut and it truly revealed her talent. 

For the solo violin portion of the concert, she selected three pieces from different time periods - Johann Sebastian Bach's contemplative and polyphonic Andante and Allegro from Sonata for Solo Violin No. 2, BWV 1003, followed by pensive and chromatic first movement, subtitled L'Aurore from Eugène Ysaÿe's Sonata for Solo Violin No. 5, Op. 27 and ending with brilliant and sparkling with vitality Caprice No. 1 by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. I forgot to ask what violin she played, but it sounded exquisite, filling the auditorium with rich, honeyed tones. Being a classical music weirdo, I used to listen to Bach's solo violin sonatas (that I much prefer to those for solo cello) both as "little night music" at home and while driving, to calm myself down amidst the chaos of Los Angeles freeways. Once I got into the mood of the Andante, I found the peace and serenity of pure musical dialogue - a difficult feat to perform on a solo instrument with four strings and one bow.  Yet, Tomczuk was able to bring out the inner voices and maintain apparent continuity of intertwining melodies.  

The Belgian, late Romantic Ysaÿe is violinists' perennial favorite, yet somehow left me lukewarm. We do not have to like all the world's music, even though I'm sure the young violinist performed this dark piece very well. However, Bacewicz's Caprice in stunning interpretation of Paulina Tomczuk aptly made up for this disappointment - it was so vivacious and brilliant that it seemed that sparks were flying from the musician's bow. Bacewicz was a professional, prize-winning violinist and knew the instrument exceptionally well.  This is a gem in contemporary repertoire, with its virtuosic staccatos, spizzatos, flying arpeggios and shifts of register and texture. What a fantastic piece and what an extraordinary performance!  Looking for words, here, to stop repeating adjectives. Oh, I found it, in the magical vocabulary of Mary Poppins: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Unlike Paulina Tomczuk, whom I have seen and heard for the first time, I've had the pleasure of witnessing the artistic growth of Dominik Yoder over many years.  As former Director of USC Polish Music Center I often lent scores from our collection to Roza Kostrzewska Yoder, a Polish music fan who does the most to promote Polish music in California of all musicians and officials that I know. She finds age-appropriate music by Polish composers for all her students, including her three sons, Kacper, Dominik and Lukasz.  It must be hard to be the middle child in any family, let alone a family of two pianist parents and three pianist siblings. The good thing, there is excellent music heard and played in that cultural oasis of a home every hour of every day. . . The challenge is to find one's individuality and personal style amidst such competition. 

Kasper, Dominik, Lukasz Yoder with their parents and the Board of the Modjeska Club

at the Wojciech Kocyan Residence in Baldwin Hills, CA, September 2019.

And Dominik Yoder did exactly that.  As his official bio notes "he directed unusual passion and determination toward music from a very young age, beginning piano studies at the age of two on his own initiative." If his older brother was playing, Dominik wanted to play as well... When he performed for the Modjeska Club in 2019 along with his two brothers, the audience was impressed with their impeccable technique, virtuosity, and musicality. At that time, Dominik stood out because he was not just a pianist, but also a composer. He played one of his pieces - in a somewhat post-romantic, post-Rachmaninoff style that had little to do with the dissonances and complexities of contemporary modernism, but a lot more in common with the spiritual and emotional world of Romanticism. A beautiful and inspired miniature of dense chords and poignant melodies. Well done! That's what I thought then.  

Since that time, Dominik spent hundreds of hours at the keyboard and traveled to numerous competitions, expanding both his impressive technique, the pianistic repertoire, and the expressive range of music he could comfortably interpret and make his won.  To return to the list of his achievements he recently won the Beverly Hills International Auditions and the New York Music Guild Competition. Earlier, "he  received Second Prize in the 2025 Hartford International Chopin Competition, Fourth Prize in the 2025 Fujairah International Piano Competition, Second Prize in the 2024 Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, the Gold Medal in the 2018 Kosciuszko Foundation Competition for Young Pianists in Washington, D.C., and the Grand Prize in the 2018 Redlands Competition, thanks to which he performed with orchestra. He has been awarded First Prize in more than a dozen local, regional, and state competitions. In 2022, Dominik received the Wybitny Polak (“Outstanding Pole”) award from the 'Teraz Polska' Foundation at the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles."

For the solo piano portion of the concert,  Dominik Yoder selected Franz Liszt's most popular Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor, followed by Chopin's Nocturne Op. 62 No. 1 in B major, filled with nostalgia and musical filigrees of delicate arpeggios, the dramatic and passionate Étude-Tableau Op. 39 No. 6 in A minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff and concluding with Sergei Prokofiev's virtuosic and boisterous Sonata No. 3 in A Minor. The Hungarian Rhapsody is a very difficult choice - since every classical music listener has heard it countless times, and those into popular music treat it as a soundtrack to a Disney cartoon. Alas, in being ridiculed by cats and mice chasing each other, the timeless music does lose its allure. But, luckily, in Yoder's interpretation it gains back its status of a celebrated masterpiece and more. His pianistic technique is impeccable, with hands flying over the keyboard with astounding velocity and accuracy.  The key to technique is to make all keys, all fingers even - so many pianists who do not practice enough after becoming "professional" lose the ability to even-out the dramatic arpeggios and scales, so suddenly there are holes in them when one finger is slightly too weak and "off." Not so, in Dominik Yoder's interpretation! His hands are a joy to behold and the fruit of their work a joy to hear! Virtuosity and brilliance in a Liszt piece is a given. What impressed me the most while listing to Yoder's interpretation of the "timeless chesnut" was how he brought out the inner voices, the sonorous details, the shifts of tempo, mood and touch... These highlights changed and enriched the music, making it sounds fresh and original. So I completely forgot about the cats and mice that stubbornly invaded my mind at the beginning.... Thank you, Dominik, for saving the music from desecration by popular entertainment! Bravo.

He was no less brave in following the Hungarian Rhapsody by one of Chopin's best known and beloved Nocturnes. At one of his home concert I was not happy because the shift from one, fast and dramatic piece to another, slower one was made too fast. It is one thing to practice, and another to completely enchant and delight the audience.  In the Nocturne, Dominik Yoder displayed the "unbearable lightness of being" - the delicate, ephemeral arpeggios, the sweet, slightly sorrowful melodies - the audience was still, almost holding their breaths, so focused on anticipating and hearing the next note, the next climax of a heavenly ascending phrase. . .  If I continue, I'll end up writing too much purple prose, so let's return to the program. The two Russian works, Rachmaninoff's Etude and Prokofiev's Sonata were written by pianists for pianists, with such overabundance and density of chords, scales, arpeggios, contrasts, forte fortissimo accents, that the audience was completely transfixed by this sonic onslaught.  The pianist fully revealed his serious, intense, dramatic side - as a Romantic virtuoso prima facie. 

Thus, when I read comments from Ewa Solinska and Prof. Adam Wibrowski claiming that Dominik Yoder is ready to compete in the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, I was not surprised. He said he does not know enough Chopin by heart yet, so he will wait another five years.  Let's wish that in those years, his talent and musicality expand even further, so he reaches the podium of this most important Piano Competition in Poland. 

For the "dialogue" portion of the concert, the willowy young violinist changed into a stunning red dress.  She brought out some technology on stage - a tablet with the music and a pedal to press on to change the pages. How does the world change! Oh my, oh my... At least she does not have to haul a suitcase of paper around the world when going to concert. On the other hand, who could forget the cosmic vision of harpsichord soloist Elizabeth Chojnacka, with a crown of red curls above a tight silver uniform straight from outer space as she threw to the floor gigantic sheets of music glued to purple cardboard. When the music was over - Xenakis, Boulez et al. - the stage was covered with the music. This was one of my most favorite memories from Warsaw Autumn Festivals... 

Our flame-red violinist and somber black-clad pianist first ventured into the classical territory. The Sonata for Violin and Piano in E-flat major, K. 302 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composed in 1778 in Mannheim and published as the composer's Opus 1, known as one of his "early" sonatas. The work consists of two movements, Allegro and Andante grazioso. The challenge of Mozart lies in the apparent textural simplicity and transparency of his textures. Here's the melody, here's the accompaniment... But the real challenge is the precision of rhythm, phrasing, the delicacy of touch.  And, with two musicians, the challenge is to hear their impeccable coordination. One is the soloist, the other accompanies, then there is a switch and the roles reverse.  Paulina and Dominik met this challenge head on and conquered that mountain! Bravo.  It was a real delight to follow their musical dialogues and interchanges. When I listen to Mozart, it seems the music always dances a minuet in a crinoline and a wig. But it dances in the center of a vast ballroom, so each stumble, each step is clearly seen. Luckily, this time, there were no stumbles. 

I did not remember Claude Debussy's Beau Soir for violin and piano from my music history studies and rightly so - it is an arrangement for violin and piano of a song first published in 1891 and setting a lovely verse by Paul Bourget:

, Lorsque au soleil couchant les rivières sont roses

Et qu'un tiède frisson court sur les champs de blé,

Un conseil d'être heureux semble sortir des choses

Et monter vers le cœur troublé.

Un conseil de goûter le charme d'être au monde

Cependant qu'on est jeune et que le soir est beau,

Car nous nous en allons, comme s'en va cette onde :

Elle à la mer, nous au tombeau.

When at sunset the rivers turn pink / And a warm tremor rustles the wheat fields,/ An advice to be happy seems to arise from the world / and ascend towards the troubled heart.

It is an advice to savor the charm of being in the world / while we are young and the evening is beautiful / For we are leaving, like this wave that goes out / to the sea, so we go out to the tomb.

Debussy was not even 30 years old, and his choice of this melancholy text -  "carpe diem" or else - seems indicative of youthful angst.  Around that age people suddenly realize that they are not immortal, they will not be forever young, and there is a next generation already chasing after them. The music is appropriately sweetly delightful and somewhat nostalgic, even more in the violin-piano version.  When the violin reached the continually ascending while fading notes in pianissimo, the audience was transfixed into silence that was followed with an audible "aaach" afterwards. That's the magic of classical music - to so enchant and entrance the audience, to so take them into cosmic spheres of beauty, that they cannot help but sigh, when the music ends. This was one of my most favorite pieces on the program. 

Sergei Rachmaninoff's Vocalise is the last of his Songs op. 14, written in 1915 without words, and sung in that way by many world-famous sopranos. It was also arranged for many instruments that imitate the voice, in the ebb and flow of its flowing melodies. A charming, romantic piece, allowing the violinist to showcase the emotional versatility.  I must say, having heard it many times before I was struck by the number of repetition of the same melody in the music. If someone is not romantically inclined, is it still as beautiful? Or just repetitive?  The difference between deep romanticism and shallow sentimentality is difficult to maintain. While the musicians gave justice to the music, the piece itself seemed too tedious to me.  But what can I say? Could I even sing or play it? It is easy to criticize and complain while sitting on the sidelines... 

Luckily the fantastic, perfectly structured and played Scherzo by Johannes Brahms from the F A E Sonata brought the listeners back to the highest level of Romantic artistry.  Brahms wrote this movement for a work composed jointly with Robert Schumann and Albert Dietrich in 1853 for the virtuso violinist Joseph Joachim, with the intention of having him play the sonata, but he never did. Instead he premiered Brahms's Violin Concerto.  The work is based on a motive outlining the German phrase that was Schuman's personal motto: "Frei aber einsam" ("free but lonely"). Luckily, the repetitions and recurrences of this phrase in the Scherzo never become as tedious as those of the theme in the Vocalist. Brahms's Scherzo, as interpreted by two astounding virtuosi was truly a perfect ending to this concert. I was grateful to hear classical music so alive and so well under the fingers of these talented young musicians.  

The encore was another treat - Henryk Wieniawski's Romance from Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 22, with the orchestra reduced to the piano.  Again, the two musicians displayed their artistry, seamless collaboration, musicality and sensitivity in the most expressive phrases... Overall, the audience greatly appreciated their versatility, musicality, technique, and poise. The applause only ended because the guards were urging everyone to leave, as it was way past the Library's closing time! 

It will be great to follow the young virtuosos' careers and see how far they will go. Meanwhile, what the listeners took home was another set of unforgettable memories of high art, high class, high society... The Western civilization has such treasures to share...

Modjeska Club's President Maja Trochimczyk, Treasurer Anna Sadowska, Dominik Yoder, Paulina Tomczuk, and Secretary Beata Czajkowska

On Hypnotic Modernism of Maciej Grzybowski (Vol. 3, No. 7)

How can you tell if a pianist is good enough to be worth the effort of driving on our congested freeways to attend his concert on a Friday night, if you have never heard his name before? Hard to tell… perhaps, you should believe what others say about him.  You certainly should watch for the name of Maciej Grzybowski, an extraordinary Polish pianist, who recently visited Los Angeles upon the invitation of the Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club. On May 11, 2011, he performed a solo piano recital at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica.  From there, he went on to play for the Polish Arts and Culture Club of San Diego and then to appear in a recital in Montreal, Canada. (In the interest of full disclosure, I have to state that as the President of the Modjeska Club I personally invited him to L.A., while his tour was sponsored by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute of Poland and supported by the Polish Consulate in Los Angeles). 

The specially crafted Santa Monica program included music by Polish composers (Paweł Mykietyn, Witold Lutosławski, Paweł Szymański, and Fryderyk Chopin) juxtaposed with Western classics – Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel. Some of the best music of the world, played by one of the best pianists you can ever hear…

Born in 1968 and educated in Warsaw, Maciej Grzybowski is the winner of the First Prize and the Special Prize at the 20th Century Music Competition for Young Performers in Warsaw (1992). He made numerous phonographic, radio and television recordings as a soloist and chamber musician and collaborated with Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by such conductors as Jan Krenz, Witold Lutosławski and Krzysztof Penderecki. From 1996 to 2000 Grzybowski was a co-director of the "NONSTROM presents" concert cycle in Warsaw. He took part in numerous music festivals in Poland, such as the Warsaw Autumn, Musica Polonica Nova, Witold Lutosławski Forum, Warsaw Musical Encounters, and the Polish Radio Music Festival. He also performed at the Biennial of Contemporary Music in Zagreb, Hofkonzerte im Podewil, Berlin and festivals in Lvov, Kiev, and Odessa (Ukraine). In March 2005, Grzybowski’s recital at the Mozart Hall in Bologna was recognized as the greatest music event of the 2000s. After Grzybowski’s U.S. debut in New York, in August 2006 EMI Classics released his second solo CD with works by Paweł Szymański (b. 1954). He also appeared in three concerts at the critically acclaimed Festival of Paweł Szymański's Music in Warsaw. In February 2008, Grzybowski premiered a Piano Concerto by an unjustly forgotten composer, Andrzej Czajkowski (Andre Tchaikovsky).

After the 2004 release of Grzybowski’s first solo CD, Dialog, juxtaposing works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Alban Berg, Pawel Mykietyn, Arnold Schönberg and Pawel Szymanski, (Universal Music Polska), critics raved:
·       “His interpretations of Bach, Berg, Schönberg, Szymański and Mykietyn show the touch of genius! There are certainly none today to equal his readings of Bach! (...) How refreshing and exciting it is to be in the presence of such great art of interpretation, akin to a genius!”   (Bohdan Pociej).
·       “The performance of Berg’s youthful Sonata and Schönberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke could easily stand alongside the recordings of Gould or Pollini.”  (Marcin Gmys).

These exorbitant expressions of praise were seconded by attendees of the Santa Monica recital including composer Walter Arlen, the founder of the music department at Loyola Marymount University and for 30 years the most influential music critic of the Los Angeles Times. After the concert, he stated, “this was the best pianist I have ever heard in my life.” His praise was seconded by another listener, Howard Myers: “Maciej is a phenomenon, a marvel, a miracle, a special kind of genius.” The belief in Grzybowski’s exceptional talent is shared by the Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Paweł Potoroczyn: “He is more than just a talented pianist – he is both a virtuoso of the highest order and a great musical personality.  The resultant unique combination is that of an uncommon musical genius that fully justifies comparing him with such masters as Glenn Gould or Maurizio Pollini.”

While admitting to a personal bias towards someone who has dedicated years of his life to the music of Paweł Szymański, one of the greatest Polish composers who ever lived (as it will become apparent in 50 years, when the dust settles and musical diamonds will be found in the sea of ashes), I had no doubt that by bringing Maciej Grzybowski to California, I offered our audiences a special treat.  His recital exceeded even my already sky-high expectations. First the program: arranged in two distinct parts, pairing composers of different generations in a surprising dialogue of musical ideas.

The youngest of the composers featured by Grzybowski was Paweł Mykietyn (b. 1971), his colleague and co-founder of the Nonstrom Ensemble where he has played the clarinet. In an entry on the Polish Music Information Center’s website affiliated with the Polish Composers’ Union, Mykietyn’s style is described in the following way:  “The composer ostentatiously applies the major-minor harmonies, introducing tonal fragments interspersed with harmonically free sections. He also makes use of traditional melodic structures, transforming them in his own individual manner. Mykietyn could be described as a model postmodernist, deriving his inspiration as well as material from all the available sources without any inferiority complex.” These words could well be applied to the virtuosic and wistful Four Preludes (1992) that opened the program with their contrasting moods, textures and tempi.



Grzybowski with Howard Myers and Prof. Walter Arlen.

Grzybowski followed the postmodernist Mykietyn with Twelve Folk Melodies by the dean of Polish composers of the 20th century, Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994). Commissioned by PWM in 1945, and elevating folklore to the realm of high art (in a preview of the official ideology of „socialist realism“ of 1948) these little gems show how unimportant is the ideology or context for a great compositional talent. The popular melodies of Hej, od Krakowa jadę [Hey, I come from Cracow], Na jabłoni jabłko wisi [An apple hangs on the apple tree], or Gaik [The grove] were set to music in a sophisticated harmonic style, reminiscent of Bèla Bartók.

Under Grzybowski’s fingers, these charming miniatures sparkled with a caleidoscope of colors and rhythms. The pianist brought out the complexity of inner voices in seemingly simple pieces and endowed folk melodies with an aura of nostalgia and drama.  In a stroke of genius, Grzybowski followed the folk arrangements with an entirely hypnotic and modernist reading of Drei Intermezzi, Op. 117 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). A standard in every music theory textbook on Schenkerian analysis, Drei Intermezzi could be heard as small interludes only in comparison with Brahms’s majestic symphonies.  Composed in 1892, the intermezzi (No. 1 in E-flat major, No. 2 in B-flat minor and No. 3 in C-sharp minor) transverse cosmic landscapes of feeling evoked in Rainer Maria Rilke’s timeless poem, An Die Musik.

Yet it was the piece that followed, Two Etudes by Paweł Szymański(1954), written in 1986 and available on two Grzybowski CDs, that elicited the greatest enthusiasm of the audience.  It is a work of genius, unparalleled in music in its hypnotic effect on the listeners. The Etudes, played without a break, contrast the slow emergence of music in the first etude with the titanic flows of sound in the second.  The piece arises from silence in what appears to be a series of random, repeated notes and chords, but there is nothing random in Szymański’s music, everything is carefully constructed.  Sometimes called a “neo-Baroque” composer (due to his frequent inspirations with the music of that period, and talent for creating complex polyphony), Szymański refers to his style as “sur-conventionalism” and thus describes his main approach: “The modern artist, and this includes composers, finds himself tossed within two extremes. If he chooses to renounce the tradition altogether, there is the danger of falling into the trap of blah-blah; if he follows the tradition too closely, he may prove trivial. This is the paradox of practicing art in modern times. What is the way out? However, there are many methods to stay out of eclecticism despite playing games with tradition. An important method for me is to violate the rules of the traditional language and to create a new context using the elements of that language." Thus, Szymanski draws from traditional tonal and harmonic language by playing with the conventions of musical styles and with the listeners’ expectations. This game of cat-and-mouse was apparent in the stretching and constricting of time in the two Etudes. The irregularity of recurring chords and notes piqued the listeners’ interest and intensified their expectations. Thus, the music grew and expanded in scope in the first Etude, to reach monumental proportions and then dissolve in massive complexities of the second.

The second half of the recital started with a series of unusual readings of Fryderyk Chopin’s four mazurkas (in A Minor, Op. 7, No. 2; E Minor, Op. 41, No. 1; F Major, Op. Posth. 68, No. 3; G-sharp Minor, Op. 33, No. 1). The originality of the pianist’s interpretations rendered these well-known gems of the repertoire almost unrecognizable.  More angular and modernist than usual were also three Preludes from the second volume of impressionistic masterpieces by Claude Debussy (1862-1918): II  ...  Feuilles mortes, VI  ... „General Lavine” eccentric; VII ... La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune.  These terraces were lighted less by effervescent moonlight than by the brilliant focused light of Grzybowski’s intellect.  Again, they were so different from what I was used to hearing that I would need to hear these preludes again, to render an opinion. Yet, the rest of the audience was hypnotized into a complete silence and immobility: no slow, tortuous opening of candy wrappers at this recital! 

Grzybowski with the Modjeska Club Board

The finale was indeed “grand” -  a monumental rendering of Valses nobles et sentimentales by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). In 1906, Ravel started his “waltz” project, culminating with the 1919 publication of the orchestral suite, La Valse. Inspired by the noble and sentimental waltzes by the Viennese Franz Schubert, Ravel published a suite of eight pieces for piano in 1911 and followed them with orchestral versions a year later. The waltzes are not separated into distinct “noble” and “sentimental” sections; it is up to the listener to decide what is what.  The pieces, in contrasting tempi, span the whole expressive trajectory for which the words are too limited to give the music full justice.  An unusual selection to close a solo recital, the suite ended in a slow tranquil dissolution into silence. 

After a well-deserved standing ovation, the pianist relented and added a melancholy and thoroughly modern version of a Scarlatti’s sonata as an encore to the evening’s inspired and inspiring program.  One thing is certain: the name recognition problem mentioned at the beginning should be resolved, once for all, in the case of Maciej Grzybowski: just go to every concert of his, and if you cannot go, buy his CDs.