Apolinary Kątski - Grande Fantasie on Lucia di Lammermoor Op. 2 (Wilga)

Apollinaire Kontski - Grande fantaisie sur 'Lucia di Lammermoor' 1850 Violin: Sławomira Wilga Piano: Izabela Wilga The Kątski musical clan was full of able musicians, but two, in particular, shone brightly enough to cause the others to fade into the background. Apolinary Kątski (1824 - 1879) stood alongside his brother, Antoni, as one of the foremost virtuosos of his day, though both have lost their fame to history and are now mostly forgotten. Apolinary boasted an incredible career in which he played for Queen Victoria, stood as the court violinist to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, and received a signed testimonial of Paganini's amazement at his playing. He founded a quartet, gave concerts with other famous figures, and composed popular pieces in his day. Beyond all of his immediate contributions, he left a long legacy though his students at the Warsaw Institute of Music, which he helped Antoni to reopen. There, he served as a director, diligently raising funds for the staff and operation of the institute, and as a professor of violin. Among his students was the Polish titan Zygmunt Noskowski, who revivified orchestral music in Poland and built upon that foundation which Kątski laid. Today it is Apolinary's educational contributions that are ineffaceably engraved on all Polish music that flowed forth from the students of the institute that he worked to build. Apolinary studied first under his brother, Karol, and he first publicly played violin at the age of four. He rapidly developed into a touring musician, impressing audiences across Europe by age eleven. Paganini took an interest in him and gave him some lessons, bolstering his already massive talent. He also toured extensively in Russia, where he performed as a soloist and in a chamber ensemble with Anton Rubinstein, Teodor Leszetycki, and Alexander Dargomyzhsky. The work involved in running the institute prevented Apolinary to go on touring for a few years, but he was able to give performances again after 1864, this time bringing his daughter, Wanda, along. Taking up yet another post, in 1865, Apolinary became the music director at the St. John Archcathedral, where he frequently brought his students to perform. As a violinist, Apolinary had an unusual technique, and his virtuosity was stunning. His compositions serve to showcase these abilities, often featuring double stops, massive chords, brutal tremolos and trills, and delicate work in some of the highest registers the violin can reach. After hearing Apolinary play in Paris, Paganini wrote the following: "Having heard M. de Kontski, aged eleven years, perform several pieces of music on the violin, and having found him worthy of being ranked among the most celebrated artists of the present day, permit me to say, that if he continues his studies in this fine art, he will, in course of time, surpass the most distinguished performers of the age." Today, lying in obscurity, we have the opportunity to hear not the young Kątski that Paganini experienced, but the studied Kątski that did continue, sounding to us as a fresh and unfamiliar discovery. Sources: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolina... https://polskabibliotekamuzyczna.pl/e...