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BY PETER J. RABINOWITZ
Fanfare
The Magazine for Serious Record Collectors
March/April 1999 . Volume 22, Number 4
There's a good chance that you've never heard of Ignacy Feliks Dobrzynski --
or that, if you have, you've merely read somewhere that he was a fellow student of
Chopin's in Jozef Elsner's composition classes at the Warsaw Conservatory or that,
as the New-Grove puts it, "his piano music shows clearly the influence" of his more
famous compatriot. In-fact, the influence probably went both ways, as is evident
from Dobrzynski's absorbing Piano-Concerto in Ab, written several years before
Chopin's similar, and much more familiar, Concerto in F Minor. You can now hear
that prescient work on an illuminating CD released by the-Polish label Selene
(9405.21). Less than a decade old, Selene has an understandable commitment to
Chopin, including some striking performances by Polish pianists who are not yet
well known in the United States; but their steadily growing catalog is also studded
with revelatory CDs, often including premiere recordings, of repertoire by other, less
familiar Polish composers: the complete piano music (two- and four-hand) by
Moniuszko; the robust violin sonata by Jozef Wieniawski (Henryk's younger
brother); the more-or-less complete piano music by Paderewski (a four disc set
performed by Karol Radziwonowicz and coproduced with Chant du-Monde; see
15:6); a substantial collection of piano music by the talented, but short-lived, Liszt-
pupil Juliusz Zerebski in performances by Jerzy Sterczynski that are even more
persuasive than-those on the complementary collection by Rachel Franklin (see
18:2); songs by Karlowicz and-Moniuszko...
Selene is being distributed by Bayside, but its presence in the United-States
is due to the efforts of the California-based Poland Import Export, a company -
created a few years back by Edmund Lewandowski. Unlike most people interviewed
in Fanfare, Lewandowski is not a musician. In fact, he holds a master's degree in
mechanical engineering with a specialty in optics and has worked at the Stanford
Linear Accelerator Center and in Silicon Valley (he's the owner of two technical
patents dealing with semiconductors). How he got into the business of importing
classical CDs is a fascinating story.
Born in a small city about 120 miles northwest of Warsaw, Lewandowski
lived in Warsaw for about a decade until he emigrated to Austria for political
reasons. "I had a choice: either to be in jail in then-communist Poland or to be free
outside, so I chose freedom. I escaped from Poland with my wife, Marie. After we
had been granted political asylum and had lived in a refugee camp in Austria for six
months, we decided that we would like to emigrate somewhere else. There were
different opportunities, and one of them was the United States. We picked the
United States because everyone wants to go to the United States, and if we have a
chance, why not take it?"
At first, the choice did not look like the right one: "When we came to the
United States, we came to Detroit, a neighborhood that was really strange to us."
The culture shock was so great that they nearly went back to Austria. But before
returning, they decided to "see what different states look like and how different
places look like in the United States. We saved a little bit of money and we bought
tickets for Greyhound." His wife's sister lives in the Bay area, so that's where they
headed. They found San Francisco congenial, so "we started our life here." While
Lewandowski was working at Stanford, his wife passed the exams for foreign
medical graduates, and, after a brief residency in Ohio, they returned to San
Francisco where she set up a practice as a family physician.
At this point, with his wife providing financial stability for the family,
Lewandowski asked himself the tough question: "After a while, I was kind of
thinking, what am I accomplishing in my life? What am I doing? I came to the
conclusion that I am one of many. My job as a mechanical engineer can be done by
somebody else. I wanted to do something unique. I wanted to do something I could
be proud of, something that probably nobody else would have a chance to do."
Fortunately, he had the enthusiastic support of his wife, so he was free to consider
activities that didn't necessarily bring in any income. "That's how I started to think
about Poland Import Export. I originally thought it would be a business that would
promote anything Polish, as far as products go, in the United States. That was the
main concept when I created the company. I was starting to look for a product. I
like popular music a lot, so when I went to Poland to search for things, I bought a
number of CDs and I brought them to the United States. Many people said to me,
'You bought them, but we would like to have such music also.' So I said, 'Well,
why don't I import it?' Once I got into music CDs, I never really expanded to any
other area. "My philosophy is that if I get one person interested in a given CD, I
basically bring more than one, hoping that there will be others interested in this
particular title. That way, I am building up stock of CDs. I have more than a
thousand titles of popular music." But Lewandowski's primary concern now is
"pioneering the spread of Polish classical music in the United States." Indeed,
although he sells popular music by mail order, he is "hoping to get out of this
particular avenue because it slows me down as far as marketing classical music. I
really would like to make a difference as far as Polish classical music availability
and knowledge of Polish music in the United States."
Key to his project has been Selene, a label he first heard about when he was
at a major "national fair in Poland of different musical labels, an equivalent of
MIDEM in Western Europe. I searched for the company, where it is and who created
it, and who worked there and things like that. I discovered that the Selene company
is run by two musicians. Everything is done the way another label wouldn't do it.
They are not after money, they are after documenting music by Polish composers
and performers. I thought, 'Well, this music is not known in the United States at
all.' Besides Chopin and maybe some CDs of Penderecki, Szymanowski, and
Gorecki, there was really nothing to speak of in terms of Polish music in American
record stores. Also, I discovered that Poland had very good artists who performed
other music than Polish composers." So he decided to get exclusive rights to import
Selene CDs to the United States. "Ever since, I have been trying to spread the word
about Selene in the United States."
Why has Polish culture - in particular, Polish music - been so poorly
represented in the United States? Lewandowski cites three main reasons, all
stemming from Polish history. "First, Poland did not exist as a country from 1795
until 1918. For 123 years, it was illegal to claim to be Polish. Polish people had to
obey, depending on where they lived, German, Russian, or Austrian rulers." Second,
more recently, while Poland was behind the Iron Curtain, trade with the United
States was constrained. Third, during the communist period, "the only label in
Poland was Polskie Nagrania, which was a state label. They pretty much did
whatever they wanted, and everything was directed from the Politburo, from the
Party headquarters: what they put out, what they didn't. Many of the works were
not really promoted. In addition, under the communists, people really didn't have
incentive to work hard, because they had jobs no matter what, because it was one
of the principles of the system, and whether people worked hard or worked lousy,
they were rewarded the same. So why bother?"
Things are different now: "The people now have their own private
enterprises, they are stretching themselves, and the results are showing."
Lewandowski figures that there are currently somewhere around 50 labels in
Poland. Some of them are the size of Selene, some are much bigger. And although
Polskie Nagrania still exists (in fact, Poland Import Export imports many of its CDs
as well), it has been considerably reduced in scale: "It lost all its huge buildings in
Warsaw. They moved to another part of Warsaw where they were forced into
maybe 10 or 12 rooms. They had several huge buildings before, they had recording
studios, they had all the processing equipment that requires a lot of people. And
right now because of all those dynamic, small labels [not to mention competition
from the Polish branches of Sony, EMI, and Polygram] there is big competition for
Polskie Nagrania. That's why Polskie Nagrania as a state business was not really
able to stay alive the way they used to be." What exactly does Poland Import
Export do? "I bring the CDs from Poland. I negotiate the prices and everything, and I
arrange by phone and faxes with people in Poland how to ship it and exactly what
titles and whatever, and they ship it here. I pay for the CDs, I pay for shipping,
which is really costly because everything comes by air. It arrives in San Francisco,
then I have to process it, because Selene does not have a bar code. I have to give it
to a local company which does the bar coding and shrink wrap; and after this
processing, the CDs are ready for the distributor, Bayside."
On the whole, Lewandowski tries not to sell Selene CDs to individuals. But
because the company is listed in Schwann Opus, and because he has just set up a
Web site (http://members.aol.com/seleneusa), many people do get in touch with
him. "I explain to them that I can sell directly, but because my company is not set
up to sell that way, I really have to charge a lot more for a CD than a store would. I
think that's the only fair thing to do. Because if I sell directly, I will handle lots of
orders myself, and I don't want to develop this company into a 10-person
operation. I like it as it is"-which is, for the most part, a one-person business.
Lewandowski is particularly excited about two new projects from Selene.
First is a world premiere disc of "unknown yet beautiful" music by Karol Lipinski (
1790-1861 ), music that has been rarely performed because it poses such difficulty
for interpreters. Second is Selene's new historical series, "The Great Polish Chopin
Tradition." So far, this includes a disc of recordings by Alexander Michalowski
(some recorded as early as 1905), as well as four CDs of performances by Raoul
Koczalski, each filled out with new recordings of Koczalski's own compositions by
such modern performers as Andrzey Tatarski and Jerzy Sterczynski. (Selene has
also published a substantial book about Koczalski, although until they find a
translator it's available in Polish only.) "Koczalski was a student of Mikuli, and
Mikuli's teacher was Chopin himself. Mikuli was known for being very persistent in
executing Chopin's compositions, and passed down to Koczalski this exact way of
interpreting Chopin. Koczalski was really adamant about executing the music the
way Chopin was playing it."
All in all, the availability of Selene in the United States shows that this
mechanical engineer has, in fact, succeeded in his desire to make a difference, to
do something unique. But Lewandowski insists on sharing the credit. "I want to
reiterate," he insisted at the end of the interview, "that I am grateful to my wife,
Marie, who is making all of this possible." Given the high quality of the Selene discs
that I've heard so far, we all have reason to share his gratitude.
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