Bohdan Wodiczko’s Programming Policies at Warsaw Philharmonic (1955-1958). Toward the Warsaw Autumn.

As the managing and artistic director of Warsaw Philharmonic in 1955-58, Bohdan Wodiczko introduced an innovative programming policy which re-oriented the Philharmonic’s repertoire toward 20th-century classics and focused on the links between new music and that of other historical periods. The aim was to create a vast sonosphere of a “musical inter-age” (S. Kisielewski after M. Wańkowicz) encompassing radically different styles and genres and significantly transforming the axiology of the musical art. Wodiczko’s novel programming, though largely concentrating on the already waning neo-Classicism, laid the foundations for the phenomenon of the Warsaw Autumn and was a harbinger of the political-cultural thaw that would come after October 1956. This paper examines Wodiczko’s programming revolution in its political context, as well as the critical reception of Warsaw Philharmonic concerts, with particular emphasis on the aesthetic disputes arising around those composers whose works provoked the greatest controversies: Igor Stravinsky and Carl Orff.