The graduate of professor Bolesław Woytowicz’s composition class at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice (diploma in 1955) contrary to his friends of his graduating class: Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Wojciech Kilar or a bit older Witold Szalonek, he never flirted with musical avant-garde – the same he was saved from the difficult return journey ‘towards himself’. A Romantic by nature but with a strong desire of classical order Świder remained faithful to the idiom of musical Neoclassicism with romantic-lyric shade, however which was sometimes the starting point for some outstanding excursions and frequently took a surprising shape. Jolanta Szulakowska-Kulawik in her monography of composer’s artistic output described Świder’s music pointedly as ‘music in waiting for Post modernism’. Just like that: not ‘Postmodern music’ but ‘music in waiting for Post-modernism’. Only today in times of ‘post modernity’ – having the perspective of such penurious ‘achievements’ of the avant-garde Modernist art – we can properly perceive the taste of music created in harmony with ‘being’. This is the outstanding hommage: another generation of Silesian musicians – among them graduates of the already mentioned ‘jolly good fellows’ – presents the collection of chamber music pieces of Józef Świder.

Stanisław Kosz