A new co-production from the Wende Museum and the USC Polish Music Center highlights the overlapping subject matters represented in the Archives of these two great institutions. The collaboration will launch on Saturday, September 19 with a performance by special guests from Poland, pianist Piotr Kowal and cellist Paweł Czarakcziew, both professors at Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków.

This concert’s rich program will explore music of different worlds—that of the Baroque via Bach, as played by Rostropovich at the Berlin Wall; that of pre-War Poland, in a work composed by Szymon Laks not long before he was condemned to Auschwitz; and that of the Cold War in central Europe, through the artistic resistance of Poland’s Joanna Bruzdowicz and Estonia’s Arvo Pärt—and how these works helped transform the times in which they existed.

The concert will be followed by a discussion with the artists and PMC Director and Curator Marek Zebrowski, led by Wende’s Chief Curator and Director of Programming Joes Segal. The afternoon will conclude with a reception in the breezy courtyard of the Wende Museum.

The program takes place at the Wende Museum’s Community Center. Seating is first come, first served.

Piano transport is supported in part by POLAM Federal Credit Union.