Laks Rediscovered – Polish premiere
On April 19, 2026 at 6:00 PM, the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków hosted Laks Rediscovered, featuring the Polish premiere of the rediscovered String Quartet No. 2 (1932) by Szymon Laks.
According to available sources, the work was performed in the 1930s before disappearing and remaining absent from musical life for nearly a century. Its rediscovery now restores an important and long-neglected part of the composer’s output to the repertoire.
Szymon Laks (1901–1983) – a Polish composer and writer of Jewish origin – is among the most extraordinary figures of 20th-century music. During World War II, he was imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he led the camp orchestra. After the war, he settled in Paris and continued both his compositional and literary work. His music, combining classical clarity of form with refined expressivity, remained for many years on the margins of the concert repertoire and has only recently begun to be rediscovered by performers and scholars. The rediscovered quartet was performed by Messages Quartet, an ensemble long recognized as one of the most important ambassadors of Polish music both in Poland and internationally. Their concert and recording activity enjoys wide recognition within the music community. The ensemble’s extensive discography includes, among others, the complete string quartets of Szymon Laks, enthusiastically received by critics in Poland and abroad. Their recordings have received numerous awards and nominations, and their concerts are met with strong audience response and excellent international reviews.
The event included a panel discussion devoted to the composer’s work and the story of the quartet’s rediscovery. Participants included Anna Rusin – musicologist and specialist in Laks’s oeuvre, members of Messages Quartet – Małgorzata Wasiucionek-Potera, Oriana Masternak, Maria Shetty and Beata Urbanek, and Frank Harders-Wuthenow – a representative of Boosey & Hawkes, the publisher responsible for bringing the composer’s works back into circulation.
Laks Rediscovered is both an encounter with music returning to the stage after nearly a century of silence and a reflection on a composer whose work continues to reveal new and previously unknown chapters.
A video of the event is now available on YouTube on the AMKP channel (link below).
Partners:
Żydowskie Muzeum Galicja, MW Design Studio, Sztuki robi
Patrons:
Akademia Muzyczna im. Krzysztofa Pendereckiego w Krakowie, Żydowski Instytut Sztuki, Boosey & Hawkes
Media patrons:
POLMIC – Polskie Centrum Informacji Muzycznej