New Work

Painting used for the cover of Kraj z Ksiezyca
(the Polish edition of A Country in the Moon)

The Australian concert pianist Edward Cahill

I am wrestling with the final translation of the Polish book into Polish and the comments from professional historians at the Jagellonian University. Debilitating in the extreme. I extended the Chopin chapter a great deal and have managed to express my own views concerning Chopin performance for the bicentenary celebrations in 2010. I think too many young pianists have gone off the rails into a physical obsession with the instrument at the sacrifice of poetry sensibility, charm, elegance......except for a rare phenomena like Rafal Blechacz.

I am planning my peregrinations in the quest for the ‘imaginative biography’ of my grand-uncle the concert pianist Eddie Cahill. He came from a dusty tiny town in outback Australia (Beenleigh) to play Chopin for Queen Mary and all the aristocratic Mayfair set of the London and Paris of the 1920s. The Australia Council through the Australian Government have given me a very generous grant over two years to complete this work.

I am turning up very interesting material indeed. Eddie was a friend of the French / Russian surgeon Dr. Serge Voronoff who carried out the first transplantations of monkey testicles into humans in an attempt to prolong and enhance old age. He wrote a diverting illustrated text entitled From Cretin to Genius or The Sources of Life of which I have managed to obtain a copy. Bulgakov wrote a most amusing novella based around this idea called The Heart of a Dog. Perhaps you know it? Also Eddie knew the great Italian air ace Baron Leonino da Zara who flew paper and wire in the 1910 air races. I have a picture of Eddie, V and de Z at the Roman Theatre in Bordighera where Eddie gave the first performance for 2000 years. I have a short video (taken from 16mm film) of this event. He also met the German conductor Fürtwangler who gave him a written apologia for his tolerating the Nazis ‘in the cause of immortal German music’. Hm….

Cape Town and Somerset West where he lived for many years may well be in March or April next year – really am not sure. Monaco, Menton and the French Riviera in the summer, all in the cause of research. Australia sometime later.

Am fighting Harper Collins to reissue the New Guinea book in other than POD form (‘Print on Demand’ – dreadful stuff all in b/w and poor quality – printed only when ordered even if one copy - shops will not buy them because they cannot return unsold copies and no-one wants them). ‘For Barabbas was a publisher!’ so said Lord Byron as an opening remark at a dinner in St. James's. I have written a number of stiff letters based on their contractual obligations and asked the Society of Authors to give me advice and help. If they are not going to reissue the book the rights come back to me and I can resell the book to someone else (I have had offers) or reprint it myself. We will see what happens as publishers never like to give up rights.

Above is the painting used for the cover design for the Polish edition. Superior I think to that mapmakers dream on the Granta edition. I never liked it very much. This was the painting I originally wanted on the English edition. The Poles instantly decided it was perfect! No need for discussion. Yes it is a bit strange the way they have arranged it, but very ‘Polish’ – always a bit odd. It is a strongly horizontal picture so the Poles typically perverse have arranged it vertically. But perhaps people looking at it in bookshops will look for longer this way.

One day some years ago I was visiting the Teutonic Knights Castle of Gniew on the Vistula. In the castle there was an exhibition of amateur paintings mainly of cavalry manoeuvres by a Polish cavalry officer from the period of World War I. Tomasz Kucharski had a very distinguished military career as an cavalry officer both in the Great War and World War II and was awarded the Virtuti Militari . He was also an amateur artist. I did not know this and it is a beautiful additional detail to this particular book.

Over the New Year for a week or so we I am going to stay in the ‘Ghost Room’ of my favourite Polish castle called Niedzica in the Pieniny on the mountainous Polish-Slovakian border. Hope it snows though with climate change altering the nature of the seasons here. I hope to explore some of the medieval towns, wooden churches and castles in this rather remote and unknown part of Slovakia known as the Spisz (once Austrian) during the couple of weeks I have given myself from my Australia Council commission already mentioned.

A Thoughtful Day in Warsaw after two Weeks of Glorious Music

'The Ghosts of Warsaw' Isaac Bashevis Singer Jewish Festival, Próżna Street, Warsaw – 1 SEPTEMBER 2009

• A wonderful two weeks of concerts featuring the music of mainly of Chopin and Mendelssohn has just concluded in Warsaw.

It was the 5th Chopin i jego Europa (Chopin and his Europe) Festival - an annual event and a sign of how the capital has at last begun to attract some of the finest musicians on the planet. Now all the city needs is a proper modern concert hall and a more productive attitude and responsible financial support for the many fine and neglected home-grown Polish rather than foreign musicians.

In the festival I listened to the fine pianism of Martha Argerich, Garrick Ohlsson, Emanuel Ax, Alexander Melnikov, Nikolai Lugansky, Janusz Olejniczak, and the Japanese prodigy Aimi Kobayashi. The fortepiano virtuoso Andreas Staier and the tenor Christoph Pregardien gave a sublime and unforgettable performance of Schubert's Winterreise. The conductors Frans Bruggen and Philippe Herreweghe were presiding over Concerto Koln, Sinfonia Varsovia and and The Orchestra of the 18th Century.

• However 1 September put me in a far more thoughtful mood with the historical realities of life rather than the consolations for its tears. There was a huge remembrance commemoration in Gdansk of the outbreak of WW II which was tarnished rather by the continuing tension between Poland and Russia over retribution, acknowledgement of blame and the apportioning of guilt. The wounds of war are slow to heal if ever they can be when 1 in 5 Poles (6 million) died as a result of their innocent country being sandwiched between two imperial nations with expansionist, ideological and genocidal agendas.
  

There is a deeply moving Isaac Bashevis Singer Jewish Festival running in Warsaw just now in the famous Jewish remnant Prozna Street. There is a modest renaissance and regeneration of Jewish cultural life in Poland, but tender shoots as yet. I leave you with a photograph I took of that street on September 1. The final night of the festival ended with a concert on stage. It was absolutely brilliant - humorous and professional in every respect with an accomplished and seamless musical score. Choreography, characterization, costuming all of Broadway standard. So much more entertaining than the classical music scene in Warsaw just now and I am deeply involved with that and the music of Chopin. The Jewish Theatre in Warsaw is always superb of course. I am slightly excluded as I am not fluent in the Polish language but Polish theatre in general is among the greatest in the world. No, I am not Jewish just amazed.

Lithuania Pictured

'Bathed in Amber, the substance of the sun'
Sunset at Palanga on the Baltic coast of Lithuania



Rustic House in favourite Lithuanian yellow near the village of Marcinkonys




Trakai Castle near Vilnius



Country House of Uzutrakis built by the Polish Count Jozef Tyszkiewicz at Trakai














Vilnius from Gemidinas Castle








Millenium Celebrations in Vilnius Lithuania July 2009



I have always wanted to complete my picture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and recently spent two weeks touring Lithuania.

The weather has been pretty frightful in Warsaw this summer - storms nearly every afternoon and evening.

Lithuania was much better. As those who read this blog will know I have recently returned from two weeks touring Lithuania by car. It is a great shame that the tourist industry in this fascinating country is not sufficiently promoted to assist growth in the economy. The country beyond Vilnius seemed unaccountably deserted.

I spent a week at the Baltic resort of Palanga which was an absolute delight - the Curonian Spit is on the UNESCO World Heritage list and I can quite see why with its magnificent sand dunes and kilometres of deserted beaches. I learned so much about that glorious and fascinating resin, amber, 'the substance of the sun' that trapped insects 40 million years ago. At the charming town of Nida Thomas Mann built a summer house and wrote the masterpiece 'Joseph and His Brothers' - an inspired writer's choice of location but then he loved the Baltic shore with a passion. I am planning another travel book following the ancient and unknown Amber Road trading route from the Baltic to Byzantium. Plenty on the Silk Road but so little material on this fascinating ancient European route which was so important in the exploration of the unknown and barbarian 'northern shore'.

Excellently resurfaced and deserted roads pass through magnificent pine and birch forests following the picturesque Nemunas River (the Niemen) to Kaunas. This city perhaps more than any other authentically indicates the full extent of the economic crisis now gripping the country. Museums here are excellent although some are still trapped in a Soviet time-warp.

Vilnius is a fine city of superbly restored baroque churches - 'an orgy of the baroque' commented the Nobel prize-winning author Czeslaw Milosz - a city heavily populated with the ghosts of Poles. Pilsudki's heart and the complete body of his mother are under a formidable black slab of marble at the entrance to the main cemetery. Large numbers of young Poles there unaccountably reading the bible in the shade. The KGB museum is one of the most gruelling I have visited in East-Central Europe. It indicates the true extent of the Soviet transportation of Lithuanians to Siberia and paints a graphic picture of their deep, largely unknown, suffering. The miraculous Madonna of the Ostra Brama lies deep within the Polish psyche.

I was there during the 1000 year independence celebrations and the intense nationalism was expressed in marvellous dancing in full folk costume (folklore is massively important in Lithuania) and massed choirs - a unique spectacle in Europe. The flaxen-haired Lithuanian girls I saw everywhere in Vilnius are achingly beautiful.

The monumental restored island castle of Trakai just outside the city was an extraordinary discovery. On my return to Poland I visited the Lithuanian spa town of Druskininkai not far from the frontier - a charming place and marvellous 'discovery' with scarcely any tourists and fantastic new facilities and magnificently restored fin de siècle hotels desperate for clients. A serious, even entertaining, Social realist sculpture museum set up by a mushroom millionaire called Grutas Park lies outside the spa - the megalomania of the vast statues of Lenin et al give one an excellent insight into the vain and paranoid Soviet mindset. I heard not one British voice my entire time in Lithuania - a smattering of Americans and Australians of Lithuanian descent seeking their roots and some Germans lamenting their losses.

This excursion was a wonderful and insightful surprise - a European country mercifully lacking any mass tourist development. Palanga is a discriminating seaside choice for those tired of fighting the European summer hordes of July and August flooding the Mediterranean.

Baltic as opposed to Slavic culture is fascinating in its pagan elements. I felt great sympathy for their present economic plight after finally kicking off the Soviet boot.

64th. Duszniki Zdroj International Piano Festival

I am off for a week to the 64th. International Chopin Festival at Duszniki Zdroj (a charming tiny spa in Silesia on the mountainous Czech-Polish border not far from Wroclaw) tomorrow August 6th. I am greatly anticipating the usual fine collection of outstanding pianists that the artistic director, international competition judge and excellent pianist Piotr Paleczny has assembled. It is always a fabulous festival and my enthusiasm for it will be familiar to all the readers of my travel book on Poland. Not all the music is by Chopin - Liszt, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Rachmaninov, Scriabin.....the entire piano repertoire is on offer. This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Mendelsshon who visited Duszniki Zdroj (then Bad Reinerz) on many occasions visiting relatives. Of this year's performers Cyprien Katsaris is an immensely entertaining and brilliant pianist, as is the Ukrainian virtuoso Alexander Gavrylyuk (one of the greatest of the younger generation of pianists who plays in the great nineteenth century pianistic tradition of Hofmann, Rosenthal and Horowitz). Eugen Indjic and the poetic and sensitive Nikolai Lugansky will join a host of younger artists. The masterclasses are always illuminating. There is unfailingly a musical surprise at Duszniki and I am on tenterhooks to hear what it might be this year. I stay at the hotel where all the pianists lodge which gives me a wonderful opportunity to chat to them informally. Old acquaintances among passionate pianophiles will be renewed.

Adventures in England Complete

Fountains Abbey North Yorkshire

Water Garden and Temple of Piety Studley Royal Landscape Garden North Yorkshire

• 
  
  The RGS Lecture on Polish landscapes and associated ecological issues delivered on May 18th went particularly well with an audience of around 750 at the headquarters in Kensington Gore, London. It was a particularly busy day at the Society with various dinners and meetings which rather distracted specialist attention from my lecture - thank goodness. The gorale wedding music was particularly successful, as were the musical elements from the great Hungarian pianist Andras Schiff playing Chopin mazurkas and the extract from Andrzej Wajda's wonderful nostalgic film Pan Tadeusz which concluded the lecture. The listeners seemed particularly surprised at the beauty of the Polish countryside despite so much of it being flat. As usual at these events a surprisingly small number of copies of A Country in the Moon were sold - about 20 I think. "There are always books at these events which we are supposed to buy!" moaned one Fellow. Ah well....most commented to me later that it was 'a more beautiful and aesthetic lecture' than usual at the RGS.

• The drive in the 1949 MG TC through the Yorkshire Dales was absolutely fantastic. But the car was not quite ready and there was some drama on collection - oil leaks remained (but where from as the notorious rear crankshaft seal had been replaced - eventually tracked down to a microscopic hole in an oil line). The new high ratio differential is excellent for faster and more comfortable touring. The car badly needed tuning. Half the front number plate fell off in peak hour traffic in Shipley which made a dragging sound on the tarmac fit to raise the dead, much to the delight of the inhabitants driving home from work in their Euroboxes. Lost in the lanes I managed to reverse into a rock and completely stuffed the exhaust system.

All this palaver meant hovering in my farmhouse B&B for two days as the rain bucketed down and car was properly sorted. Classic car buffs are masochists all in order the better to celebrate the aesthetics of the golden days of motoring. To the village of Austwick on the edge of the Dales where there was a Cuckoo Festival. I arrived in the middle of a Morris Dancing display in the street outside the pub called 'The Game Cock' and upstaged the dancers somewhat on arrival. Much interst in the car. Stayed at superb Austwick Hall where the accommodation, food and service were impeccable. Drove across the switchback roads of the Dales to Hawes with the windscreen folded flat - wind tearing at my cap and singing in my ears.

A couple of days later strapped the case to the luggage rack and on to Settle, Skipton, Grassington, Pateley Bridge and finally idyllic Lawrence House in the village of Studley Roger adjacent to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal landscaped garden. A magnificent and very demanding drive with many 14% gradients and wild wind whipping the moorland. Cuddly spring lambs everywhere. Spent two full days wandering in this enchanted spot. Mist and rain the first day with scarcely a soul about gave the Cistercian Abbey and gardens a metaphysical and mysterious atmosphere. Sunshine on day two revealed one of the finest and most refined eighteenth century 'green' landscape gardens in England - and I have visited most of them over 30 years. One could have been wandering in a painting by Nicholas Poussin. The architect of the notorious South Sea Bubble (some things never change) John Aislabie laid it out in consolation for his disgraced retirement.

Having now tested the car for a week on demanding roads it is back in the garage Shipley for a few more final tweaks. However I have decided not to drive the car back to Warsaw. This mad idea in modern fast-moving traffic was born of overwhelming nostalgia for my youthful escapades in my original TC while at university in Australia. Will decide what to do after the Goodwood Revival classic car event in September.

• At the end of June two weeks exploring Lithuania to complete my picture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. First from Warsaw to Palanga and Nida on the Baltic Shore, actually the Curonian Spit which extends from Lithuania to Kaliningrad. It is an amazing UNESCO World Heritage site of extensive and breath-taking sand dunes, famous in ancient history as the beginning the Amber Road trading route to Venice and Byzantium. My interest in amber was fired by the excellent display of superb examples of the resin at the Museum of the Earth in Warsaw - captions notably in Polish and English. The Teutonic Knights benefited from the profitable trade in this beautiful material even having a Bernsteinmeister (Amber Master) who lived in the castle of Lochstadt near Konigsberg (present-day Kalinigrad). I found this witty epigram by the Latin poet Martial in Book VI of his Epigrams:

A drop of amber from the weeping plant

Fell unexpected and embalmed an ant

The little insect we so much condemn

Is, from a worthless ant, become a gem

This tour of the Baltic shore will be followed by a visit to Kaunas and the capital Vilnius concluding in the spa town of Druskininkai near the Polish and Belarusian frontiers. This trip in the Peugeot 307 CC (the elegant first series before the current guppy mouth ruined its looks) for all sorts of practical reasons.

Polish Country Houses near Warsaw

The weather has been so wonderful in Warsaw over the last three weeks - clear, coolish and gloriously sunny. Perhaps climate change is going to emerge as a positive development in Poland! Late April and early May are wonderful months in the country as spring literally explodes across the landscape and the trees come into leaf. Warsaw is utterly transformed from the foolish accepted view of it as a miserable city, cold and mired in slush.

I have made a definite decision to use the old Royce more this spring and summer so on Sunday (April 26) Zosia and I packed a pic-nic, collected some friends and headed for a house I knew of but had never visited. This charming baroque country house is called Otwock Wielki and is situated about 25kms south of the city off the road to Pulawy. It is built on an island on a loop of the Vistula river. The house is surrounded by a superb park with the usual Polish practice of closely planted limes and a small area of English lawn with a fine fountain of two leaping dolphins. Otwock Wielki was built in 1693-1703 for Franciszek Bielinski, Grand Marshal of the Crown, by the remarkable seventeenth century Dutch architect Tylman van Gamaren who designed so many of the finest surviving buildings in Poland. It was subsequently expanded in the eighteenth century by the talented architect Jakub Fontana. The interior has recently been restored and furnished in period with a stunning stucco what one might call 'Roman' Ballroom. Two rooms are interestingly dedicated to the Polish military hero Jozef Pilsudski who presided over the brief flowering of Polish independence between the wars. They are furnished with remnants of his personal furniture and a cabinet containing a copy of his death mask and uniform.

The elderly owner of the house before the communist state stole it is now attempting restitution of the property. However, Poland is some way behind other former Soviet satellites in this process and he has a long road ahead I fear.

We set up our pic-nic table beside the long water of the lake between an ancient avenue of willows coming into leaf. Nothing could have been more civilised as we opened an old Fortnum's basket left over from Christmas festivities but now packed with excellent Polish cold cuts, fresh bread and a chilled bottle of Macon Rose. Nothing could have been further from the absurd view of Poland as still a melancholic uncouth country. Here was no interference from 'guards' or private 'policemen' urging you to move elsewhere. One wonderful aspect of motoring in Poland is that you can stop almost anywhere scenic and pic-nic without problems of invading private territory or being accused of trespassing. Bliss if you love this activity as much as I do. The country is relatively unregulated concerning leisure activities and one never feels that 'pressure of people' that often spoil country excursions in so many European countries.

Lovely drive home at dusk with scarcely any traffic.

The financial crisis has made publishers wary of decisions on new commissions as sales of books slow. At present I am 'consolidating on past achievements' you might say. Publisher interest in new books on the South Pacific - the most glamorous and comparatively untouched region on the planet - is nil. The excitement of cultural and historical discoveries in East Central Europe also seems to be fading fast as commentators feel the financial crisis here arising from borrowing in foreign currency for mortgages threatens Western financial stability. However Poland is the largest and one of the strongest of the newer member states of the EU, the fundamentals are strong, so we hope for a smoother ride.

In brief then:

• The Polish translation of A Country in the Moon will be published in 2010. As this is the bicentenary year of the birth of Fryderyk Chopin I am at present extending the Chopin chapter of the book. During editing I lost some 28,000 words of the original submitted manuscript. Of course since I have finished writing the book a host of memories and forgotten details continue to burst upon me during the small hours and I will try to include some of them. I keep a little Moleskin notebook beside my bed - indispensable and vastly superior to a notebook computer when traveling. I continue to interview elderly Poles who have extraordinary memories. An 82 year old I met yesterday was a teenager during the Warsaw Rising of 1944 but lived his entire life in Praga, a suburb of the capital. He watched the horror of the systematic destruction of the city by the Nazis from the opposite bank of the river and wept. 'It was like an Australian bushfire.' he said
  
• I am advising on a new art exhibition on Papua New Guinea which is opening in September in the Queen's House at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich near London. It is based on a 'tropical' play written by the extraordinary surrealist Polish writer, photographer and painter of genius Witkacy and will deal mainly with the Trobriand Islands
• I am a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and have been invited to give the Monday Fellows Lecture on Poland on the evening of May 18th. at the society headquarters in Kensington Gore in London. This is a great honour as few, if any, lectures on Poland and its geography have ever been given at this august institution. Normally vastly more remote and exotic places on the planet are chosen. However the eastern regions of Poland are fascinating especially the primeval forest of Bialowieza (the last remaining lowland primeval forest in Europe) with its herds of bison, lynx, elk, deer and wolves. I am planning and writing the lecture now - nervous as hell.
  
• Those of you who have read A Country in the Moon will know of my passion for classic cars. This has led me to decide to drive my superbly restored 1949 MG TC to Poland. At present it is in Yorkshire at Naylor Brothers having various things done. I will tour the Yorkshire Dales in it for a week after the lecture to test it. I hope to drive to Poland this July with 'Zosia'. I will take the overnight ferry from Harwich to Esbjerg in Denmark and thence south through Schleswig-Holstein to Lubeck (where Thomas Mann set Buddenbrooks), across the Polish frontier at Szczecin into Pomerania and thence south-east to Warsaw. Anyone who knows these great cars will realize what an adventure this will be.

Spring is coming slowly to Poland. May is a glorious month here and the present attractive exchange rate with the weak zloty should encourage you to make a visit to this fascinating and valiant land.