When preparing my arrangements of Joachim Stutschewsky’s works, I aimed, first and foremost, to convey the emotions that this music stirs up in me. It is not a mere transposition of the musical text to the double bass register or a faithful reproduction of the cello originals. I was very much intent on obtaining unique sounds colours and their shades. My transcriptions are thus a subjective attempt at telling an extremely intimate story in a new, different manner.

A passion for music transcription is another thing that I share with Stutschewsky. As in the case of that cello master, my first experiences in this field come from the time of my studies in the legendary Prof. Tadeusz Górny’s double bass class at Wrocław’s Karol Lipiński Academy of Music. Extending the instrument’s repertoire through arrangements was the subject of my diploma thesis, which concerns transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 5 No. 2, and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata in G Minor.

My next project in this field was the album Karłowicz. Songs, on which, together with Justyna Skoczek and Bartosz Porczyk, we recorded my original transcriptions of Mieczysław Karłowicz’s complete surviving songs. The present programme is another step in the project of presenting and promoting, also to the wide audience, the unique sound of the double bass as a solo instrument in its own right.
Paweł Jabłczyński (transl. by Anna Marks)