“Romantic Does Not Mean Romanticized”: The Ideas Behind the February Programme

Behind The Polish 19th Century Re-interpreted is a question that lies at the heart of Nie | Romantyczni’s work: what can historical sources, period instruments and nineteenth-century performance practices tell us about this repertoire today?

Rather than treating historically informed performance as a fixed set of answers, the orchestra approaches it as a field of research and experimentation — a way of reconsidering familiar habits, testing different possibilities, and listening again to music whose sound world has changed considerably over time.

This also means looking beyond some of the assumptions commonly associated with Romantic performance. Questions of vibrato, articulation, tempo, phrasing, balance and instrumental colour become part of an ongoing process of exploration, with the aim not of reconstructing an unreachable past, but of understanding more about the expressive possibilities available to nineteenth-century musicians.

The February concerts in Tczew, Elbląg and Gdańsk bring this approach to Polish repertoire by Moniuszko, Paderewski, Noskowski and Żeleński, performed on period instruments and placed alongside Kilar’s Orawa. Together, these works offer different perspectives on Polish musical identity across more than a century.

Nie | Romantyczni is represented by Zmigrodzka Artists. Gabriela Żmigrodzka is also the orchestra’s Co-Founder and General Manager.