Biography (read more)
Władysław Marcjan Mikołaj Żeleński was born at Grodkowice on 6 July 1837 into a landowning family. When he was eight his father was killed and his mother critically injured in the rabacja, the Galician peasant uprising of 1846. He was drawn to chamber music from early on, writing two quartets and a trio while still at secondary school, none of which survive, and studied first in Prague and then in Paris. He was the father of the physician and writer Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, and taught among others the composer and pianist Jadwiga Sarnecka. He died in Kraków on 23 January 1921.
He was the leading representative of neo-Romanticism in Polish music, and worked across the range: four operas — Konrad Wallenrod, Goplana, Janek and Stara baśń — overtures and symphonic works including W Tatrach and the Suite of Polish Dances, a piano concerto in E flat, a Romance for cello and orchestra, and a substantial body of chamber music with two string quartets, a piano quartet, a piano trio and a violin sonata. For keyboard he left mazurkas, a Rêverie and twenty-five organ preludes. He wrote more than a hundred songs, of which “Na Anioł Pański”, “Słowiczku mój” and “Zaczarowana królewna” are the best known, and the Acte Préalable label has recorded most of his output across a series of discs.
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