The concert hall of the State Music School in Jastrzębie-Zdrój, an empty auditorium, eight microphones set up around a single instrument. That was the scene of the recording session that Zuzanna Sosnowska completed in July – three days of work on Mieczysław Weinberg’s 24 Preludes and Sofia Gubaidulina’s 10 Preludes. Sound engineer Justyna Popiel was at the console. “This year’s biggest artistic challenge – done,” the artist wrote after the final take. You can see her report from the session on Instagram.
Fundacja Via Sonoria is proud that Zuzanna Sosnowska is carrying out this project with us. A graduate of the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar, the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Konzertexamen programme at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, she is a prizewinner at international competitions and has held scholarships from the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation and the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. She performs on three continents, has taught cello at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln since 2022 and at the Leopold Mozart College of Music in Augsburg since 2025. Her latest album, “Im Volkston” (Genuin, 2025), received enthusiastic reviews in Germany, Poland, Luxembourg and Spain.
Why Weinberg
Mieczysław Weinberg (Wajnberg) was born in Warsaw in 1919. In September 1939 he fled the war eastwards and spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union – in the shadow of his friend Dmitri Shostakovich – yet to the end he spoke perfect Polish and remembered pre-war Warsaw, as the Mieczysław Wajnberg Institute writes. He wrote the 24 Preludes for solo cello, Op. 100, in the late 1960s and dedicated them to Mstislav Rostropovich, who never performed them; the cycle was not premiered until the mid-1990s. No Polish performer had previously recorded the complete cycle. Our album will be the first complete recording by a Polish performer – a lasting document of a work that belongs to Poland’s musical heritage yet was absent from it for decades. The programme is completed by Sofia Gubaidulina’s 10 Preludes, a symbolic tribute to the composer, who died in 2025.
The album will be released by the CD Accord label – on CD and on streaming services. We will announce the release on our website and social media.
Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund – a state special-purpose fund – under the ‘Muzyczny ślad’ (Musical Trace) programme run by the National Institute of Music and Dance.
Photos: Zuzanna Sosnowska’s archive. Full photo report from the session: Gallery.
