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Warsaw Philharmonic celebrates the 100th anniversary of Polish independence with performances of great local composers – Lutoslawski, Szymanowski and Szabelski – and Debussy’s La Mer for good measure.

Given the spate of visually distracting, if not irksome productions which seem to blight the opera world these days, there is something to be said for concert performances.

Ivo Pogorelić’s return to Warsaw thirty-five years after his triumphant failure in the 1980 International Chopin Piano Competition should have been an occasion for great expectations. Sadly it was more like Hard Times.

Although nominally a Polish Festival celebrating the music of Frédéric Chopin, there was lots of Tchaikovsky on offer at this year’s event. Leading the foreign charge was the Russian National Orchestra under the direction of their mercurial maestro Mikhail Pletnev.