‘The Polish Duo’ Debuts This Weekend: 'Not Just Sausage and Kolaches,’ Says Violinist of Her Native Land
Jan. 25, 2023
POLISH-BORN HOUSTON violinist Dominika Dancewicz is on a mission. A highly respected instrumentalist, educator, and founding member of the Axiom Quartet, Dancewicz is also a strong advocate for the culture of her native country. “It’s not just sausage and kolaches,” says Dancewicz.
With that in mind, on Sunday, Jan 29 at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Dancewicz and pianist Alina Klimaszewska make their debut as The Polish Duo to present “Between Myth & Life,” a program featuring compositions by Polish composers Karol Szymanowski and Henryk Wieniawski.
Born in 1975, Dancewicz grew up in the city of Katowice, the capital of the Silesia region. Her mother is a cellist, her father a violist, and both played professionally in orchestras. In those years, during the buildup of the Solidarity movement and growing opposition to the Communist government, playing music offered Dancewicz a way out of an environment of repression and scarcity. “My parents would tell me, ‘If you practice, you’re going to be able to see the world,” says Dancewicz, who explains music was then one of a few professions in Poland that offered the potential for traveling outside of the Eastern Bloc.
Her mother, however, was unable to get a passport for several years, since her sister, also a cellist, had defected to the Netherlands. Before that, when Dancewicz was eight, she and her mother traveled to visit her mother’s sister in Holland. “Everything was just beautiful and manicured,” says Dancewicz of the village where her aunt lived. She was delighted when her aunt offered to buy her a Barbie doll, a rare and coveted item in Poland at that time; Dancewicz chose a show horse rider with blond hair, dressed in a shiny costume and a cape, and kept the doll for 15 years. “It was my first glimpse of the West,” says Dancewicz.
Upon completing a violin performance degree at the Music Academy in Krakow, Dancewicz came to Houston in 2001 to get her master’s at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. She left Houston in 2003 to complete her doctorate in violin performance at Denver University’s Lamont School of Music, and soon after, decided to settle in Houston, home to a large Polish diaspora. “I’m very, very strongly connected to Poland,” says Dancewicz, who travels to the country each year to see her family and friends. Playing music with Klimaszewska is another way for Dancewicz to maintain a connection to her Polish roots. “When Alina and I talk about sounds or certain cultural references in the music we play, it’s much easier,” says Dancewicz. “Because we quite literally speak the same language, as well as the same cultural language.”
With this Sunday’s “Between Myth & Life” concert, Dancewicz is excited to introduce Houston audiences to the sophistication of and range of expression to be found in Polish classical music. “The arts are a great reflection of the history of Poland,” says Dancewicz, whose own dramatic personal history informs each note she plays. “Every single thing that happened in these composers’ lives bears a stamp in their music.”
Donations will be accepted at “Between Myth & Life” to support the recovery of pianist Donald Doucet, who is recovering from a serious stroke. Dancewicz and Doucet have performed and recorded for several years as Duo Dramatique, and in 2021, released Crossroads, an album of music by Houston composers Arthur Gottschalk, Karl Blench, and Erberk Eryilmaz.
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NEW YORK-BASED TENOR Matthew Polenzani, who makes his Houston Grand Opera debut Friday, Jan. 27, singing the title role in Jules Massenet’s three-hankie opera Werther, sounds remarkably pleasant for someone speaking by phone from a car while stuck in Houston’s notorious rush-hour traffic.
“I’m still… kind of sitting still,” laughs Polenzani, who then graciously proceeds to unpack the definition of a “lyric tenor,” and the not-so-happy ending of Werther — which is as shocking for modern-day audiences as it was when the opera premiered in Vienna in 1892.
Based on Goethe’s epistolary Sturm und Drang-era novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, the opera tells the story of Werther, a poet in his 20s prone to moodiness and melodrama, and his doomed love for the beautiful (and much younger) Charlotte, who feels the same for Werther, but due to a promise she made to her dying mother, is betrothed to another man. Ironically, Charlotte’s fidelity is what Werther finds so admirable and attractive. Suffice it to say, over the course of four acts, things go from bad to worse, leading to the opera’s famous final scene where (spoiler alert) Werther tragically decides to take his own life.
Much has been written about the dynamic beauty of Polenzani’s voice, which cuts through the orchestra, yet lies comfortably somewhere between a light (or “spinto”) sound and the thunderous timbre required in the music of Wagner. “I absolutely think of myself as a lyric tenor,” says Polenzani, whose voice is particularly suited for the complex role of Werther. Polenzani is also known for the sheer variety of repertoire he has sung over the course of his 28-year career; doing so has stimulated his intellectual curiosity, allowed him to explore different vocal textures, and kept his voice from getting “stuck in a repertory rut.” In Werther, Polenzani uses the full spectrum of those colors and textures to express feelings his character’s feelings of wonder, happiness, sadness, anger, and desperation. “I can be very metallic and hard-edged, and I can also be soft-grained and long-lined,” says Polenzani, echoing the poetic language the young Werther might have used himself.
While the opera’s tragic story of requited love captured the imagination of its 19th-century audiences, Polenzani believes Werther’s final, desperate act has a different resonance in our time, when there is more awareness of and less stigma attached to mental illness. “I have experienced tremendous loss in my life,” says Polenzani, “and I understand the idea where looking ahead of you is blackness, and there’s not even a pinpoint of light that you might be able to hang your tiniest hope on.” Perhaps for Polenzani and his audiences, the music keeps Werther from being too grim and hopeless to enjoy.
“Massenet’s music pays me back the whole night,” says Polenzani with sincere gratitude in his voice. “It rewards my soul.”
If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across the United States.
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