Andre Tchaikowsky Website

Moj Diabel Stroz
(My Guardian Devil) (2011)

BBC Radio 3 Broadcast "A Study in Contrast" from July 10, 1992, narrated by pianist David Owen Norris (courtesy of the BBC): study_in_contrast.mp3

Polish Radio External Service "Focus - Rediscovering Czajkowski" from February 15, 2008, by Michal Kubicki: redisdcovering_czajkowski.mp3

Mark Rylance as Hamlet
Click here for the complete story of André Skull Bequest

Moj Diabel Stroz
(My Guardian Devil) (1988)

Moj Diabel Stroz
(My Guardian Devil) (1996)

Dowody Na Istnienie
(Proofs of Existence) (1996)

The Woman from Hamburg and other True Stories (2006)

Hanna Krall
(photo: Czeslaw Czaplinski)

XII Koncert Europejski
Olsztyn, Poland (2006)
Program Notes (in Polish)

Festival of Theatrical Music
Andrzej Czajkowski Essay (2008)
(in English) (in Polish)

Hi-Fi Magazine Article (2008)
Click here for pdf file (in Polish)
Click here for Hi-Fi Website

(read Interview)

David A. Ferré and
Anita Halina Janowska
Warsaw, Poland (2007)

Anita Halina Janowska (2010)

www.polskamuza.eu article (November, 2010) by Malgorzata Czech for a concert in tribute to
André Tchaikowsky - Page 1
(in Polish)

www.polskamuza.eu review (November, 2010) by Malgorzata Czech for a concert in tribute to
André Tchaikowsky - Page 2
(in Polish)

www.polskamuza.eu interview (November, 2010) by Malgorzata Czech for a concert in tribute to
André Tchaikowsky - Page 3
(in Polish)

Miscellaneous
This page lists various miscellaneous items related to the life of André Tchaikowsky, including radio programs, concerts dedicated to André's compositions, magazine articles, books, the skull story and so forth. Each item is listed below and in the left panel.

If you know nothing about André Tchaikowsky, a good place to start is the BBC radio program, "A Study in Contrast" from July 10, 1992, narrated by pianist David Owen Norris (courtesy BBC): study_in_contrast.mp3

Moj Diabel Stroz (My Guardian Devil) (2011)
An updated and enhanced 3rd edition of Moj Diabel Stroz hit the Polish bookstores in early July, 2011 (see information on previous 1988 and 1996 editions below). Published by W.A.B. as part of the Fortuna i Fatum (Fortune and Fate) series of books that features vivid portraits of interesting characters with diaries, letters, and memories of those who knew them. This book (in Polish) may be purchased from W.A.B. (Click Here), or other online books sellers such as Empik (Click Here). (An English version is in preparation for September 2011 publication.)

Remigiusz Grzela (Polish novelist, poet and playwright): "These letters between Andrzej Czajkowski and Anita Halina Janowska are a case without precedent. I have never read of such correspondences. He, an artist suffering in long periods of depression, who is homosexual and a child of the ghetto, while she, trained in criminology and psychology of crime, is a dreamer escaping from realism. They exchanged letters for more than 20 years, which are full of love, sometimes hatred, worship, pain, strife, humiliation, contempt, and masochism. What a read!"

Anna Bojarska (Polish author): "I read this book in one breath, with the highest admiration, and I would implore people, for heaven's sake, do the same!"

Roswitha Matwin-Buschmann (German author and translator): "This exchange of letters is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. This is an authentic document of history 'written by life' that has become - after selections by Halina with the consent of Andrzej - literature, because the sensitivity, incorruptible intelligence, capacity for critical reflection on himself, and then the intellectual horizons and undeniable literary talent of both authors. You can read this book entrusted to us in two dimensions: as an intimate confession and as a human gripping psychological novel."

Wislawa Szymborska (Polish author, recipient of the 1996 Nobel prize for literature): "You have made me enormously happy with this book. So little is known about Andrzej Czajkowski, that this correspondence provides an invaluable source of information on him, as a musician and as a person... Besides that, it is a genuine love story, about the difficult, complicated, but constantly revived relations between two remarkable people."

Concert dedicated to Andrzej Czajkowski compositions (2010)
From October 27, 2010, held at the Sala Kameralna, Warsaw, Poland. This concert honored the 75th anniversary of Andrzej's birth in 1935. Click any program page for a larger view.

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Festival of Theatrical Music (2008)
From the Warsaw, Poland Festival concert of May 19, 2008, featuring an all-Czajkowski program, with performers:

Urszula Kryger - Mezzo Soprano
Krzysztof Zbijowski - Clarinet
Marcin Suszycki - Violin
Karol Marianowski - Cello
Maciej Grzybowski - Piano

... and compositions:

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (Grzybowski and Zbijowski)
The Inventions (Grzybowski)
Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare (Grzybowski and Kryger)
Trio Notturno ( (Grzybowski, Suszycki, and Marianowski)

...and an essay on Andrzej Czajkowski written by pianist Maciej Grzybowski available as PDF file in English or in Polish. Click here for PDF about Maciej Grzybowski.

Hi-Fi i Muzyka Magazine (2008)
The September 2008 issue of the Polish magazine, Hi-Fi i Muzyka, featuring an excellent article about Andrzej Czajkowski, written by Hanna Milewska. Click Here to read this article as a PDF file (in Polish).

Polish Radio Broadcast (2008)
Polish Radio External Service "Focus - Rediscovering Czajkowski" from Feb. 15, 2008, narrated by Michal Kubicki (courtesy Polish Radio): rediscovering_czajkowski.mp3

This includes a performance of Invention No. 9 from the André Tchaikowsky composition, the "Inventions," as played by Maciej Grzybowski.

Geniusz Zapomniany? (Genius forgotten?) (2006)
From the XII Koncert Europejski in Olsztyn, Poland, Sala Koncertowa Filharmonii Warminsko-Mazurskiej, a concert on March 24, 2006, featuring the compositions of Andrzej Czajkowski. Performers are:

Urszula Kryger - Mezzo Soprano
Krzysztof Zbijowski - Clarinet
Marcin Suszycki - Violin
Karol Marianowski - Cello
Maciej Grzybowski - Piano

... and compositions:

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (Grzybowski and Zbijowski)
The Inventions (Grzybowski)
Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare (Grzybowski and Kryger)
Trio Notturno ( (Grzybowski, Suszycki, and Marianowski)

Click here for PDF program notes (in Polish). Click here for PDF about Maciej Grzybowski.

The Woman from Hamburg and other True Stories (2006)
The English version of author Hanna Krall's book Dowody Na Istnienie (Proofs of Existence) is The Woman from Hamburg and other True Stories. As in the Polish version, the "Hamlet" story tells of Andrzej Czajkowski (André Tchaikowsky), his struggle, his survival, and his skull donation. (In English)

Of this book, Publishers Weekly writes:

The grim and the surreal portentously collide in Krall's 12 genre-bending pieces, all shadowed by the brutal facts of the Holocaust. In "Hamlet," Andrzej Czajkowski, a Polish piano impresario and composer who survived WWII as a child hiding in wardrobes, bequeaths his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company. ...These investigations are stitched with information culled from diverse sources: interviews, an encyclopedia, state archives, diary entries, photographs and letters. Krall's prose is compressed, unadorned and journalistic. Braiding history with imagination, she produces necessary accounts that incisively unveil and interrogate the ruptured historical legacy of Jews after WWII.

Of the "Hamlet" story, the New York Times writer Elena Lappin reports:

''Hamlet,'' the story of Andrzej Czajkowski, a Polish-born gay Jewish pianist who donates his skull to the theater, is the most fascinating, problematic and personally revealing story in Krall's collection. Although they never actually met, Czajkowski and Krall were contemporaries. She addresses him as ''you'' throughout, telling him, a little judgmentally, the story of his life as she sees it: grandparents, parents, his early childhood in the Warsaw ghetto. Czajkowski was smuggled out to the Aryan side with his grandmother, while his mother chose to stay with her lover in the ghetto and later was murdered in Treblinka. The boy grows up with an inner rage against his mother.

This book is available from several online sources including Amazon.com.

Moj Diabel Stroz (My Guardian Devil) (1996 2nd Edition) (1988 1st Ed.)
After leaving Poland for good in 1956, André began a life-long correspondence with his good friend, Anita Halina Janowska who put together a book of letters titled Moj Diabel Stroz (My Guardian Devil). These amusing letters transverse wide-ranging feelings and sensibilities, and can alternately be silly, serious, even devastating. First published in 1988 under Anita Halina Janowska's pen name, Halina Sander, a newer printing in 1996 shows the author's real name. Click Here for Moj Diabel Stroz (in Polish) as a PDF file.

The Polish Book Institute (Instytut Ksiazki) is a national institution established by the Polish Ministry of Culture and exists to popularize the best Polish books and their authors. They provided the following review (in English) for Moj Diabel Stroz:

This exchange of letters is one of the most fascinating books I have read. Its subject is two people, a man and a woman, whose correspondence lasts for over a quarter century. Anita Halina Janowska (Halina Sander), who was born in 1933, a pianist, doctor of sociology, and writer, and Andrzej Czajkowski (André Tchaikowsky), born 1935, an eminent pianist and composer, meet each other, at ages seventeen and nineteen respectively, at the conservatory in Warsaw, and they at once feel a strong mutual attraction.

Although they take their first steps on the same path together, Andrzej's international career lures him forever to a life abroad. Their love, friendship, and devotion to each other would be tended from then on in separation and at a distance, and undergo on either side the most varied transformations - from total emotional dependence through self-mythologization, to the disappointment of mutual expectations and their "final break," the finality of which - a minor detail compared to their life-long involvement -l lasted only four years... This authentic document, this history "written by life," has become - through Halina's edition and selection, with the consent of Andrzej - a work of literature.

The expressiveness, uncompromising intelligence, capacity for critical self-reflection, and the intellectual horizons and undisputable literary talent of both authors allow us to read the book on two levels: as an intimate, human confession confided in us alone, and as a compelling psychological novel. I am sure that a history like this one - whose real-life protagonists have had the strength and courage to live by their own intuitions, to live through their own feelings (in sharp distinction from the ubiquitous drabness of more common outlooks on life), and further, to articulate those feelings intelligently and with humor (even if the final outcome should end tragically) - will appeal to a wide audience. The book's publication became an "event" thanks to the addition of a CD-rom of music and performances by Andrzej Czajkowski.

Roswitha Matwin Buschmann

Wislawa Szymborska, the 1996 recipient of the Nobel prize for literature, wrote to Anita Halina Janowska (Halina Sander) after the book was published: "You have made me enormously happy with this book. So little is known about Andrzej Czajkowski, that this correspondence provides an invaluable source of information on him, as a musician and as a person... Besides that, it is a genuine love story, about the difficult, complicated, but constantly revived relations between two remarkable people."

Andrzej Czajkowski is the protagonist of a long and moving story by Hanna Krall from her book "Proofs of Existence" (published in Germany by Verlag Neue Kritik, Frankfurt). Polish edition by Wydawnictwo SIEDMIOROG Anita Halina Janowska (Halina Sander) The Letters of Andrzej Czajkowski and Halina Sander ...moj diabel stróz "... my guardian demon" [A brief sample:]

Brussels, 12.10.56
Halinka, my darling, why haven't you written to me for so long? (...) I love you like I've never loved you before, I cry like a baby, I don't so much think about you as sense you. The only memories I'm not afraid of digging up are our mutual ones. The only hope which doesn't seem nonsensical is OURS. (...)
Halinka, I'm so sad here - how good that you're in this world.
Your Andrzej

[Radiogram from Brussels] 21.10.56
We'll call our son Gaspard what do you think? Write soon.
Kisses, Andrzej

[Telegram from Warsaw] 21.10.56
I want him to be called Daniel.
Kisses, Halinka

Warsaw, 26.10.56
To the presumed father of our putative children!
Thanks for the touching radiogram, but where did you get GASPARD from? Are you aiming, creatively speaking, to complete with Ravel himself? I'd prefer Daniel because there's a prophet, and a writer, and a defender of the oppressed, and on top of that a Biblical figure, so the heritage is right!
It's hard to believe that Daniel will leap out of your head like Pallas Athene from that of Zeus, so you'll have to come back, darling. One swallow doesn't make a summer (...).

New York, 8.11.57
My poor little Funnyface,
I came back to New York the day before yesterday and found your three letters. (...). Halinka, it's quite simple: you can't leave Marek now. (...). So, do marry Marek, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't come to Paris in the summer. On the contrary, it could be a dream honeymoon for you. (...). As Sacha Guitry puts it: "If you want to punish your wife's seducer, the greatest revenge would be to let him keep her." (...). I have an urge to hug you both and to give you my blessing - I am very moved: to think that I came within a whisker of ruining your life. (...). Your old Andrzej.
PS I was at Horovitz's. He's old, sick and sad. His wife's eyes follow him, and they're filled with love. They have not said a word to each other in four years. I'd really like to die young.
A.

Translated by Jacek Laskowski

Dowody Na Istnienie (Proofs of Existence) (1996)
Books by Polish author Hanna Krall, such as Dowody Na Istnienie (Proofs of Existence), center on the lives and fates of ordinary people, with the Holocaust often as a backdrop. The chapter "Hamlet" concerns André Tchaikowsky (Andrzej Czajkowski), his struggle, his survival, and his skull donation. (In Polish)

BBC Radio Broadcast (1992)
BBC Radio 3 Broadcast "A Study in Contrast" from July 10, 1992, narrated by pianist David Owen Norris (courtesy BBC): study_in_contrast.mp3

de Musica Interview (1986)
Click Here for a PDF file (in Polish and English) of an interview with David Ferré (author of the André Tchaikowsky biography and webmaster for this website) and Anita Halina Janowska (author of My Guardian Devil). This interview took place in September 1986 and also appears in the 2nd and 3rd editions of My Guardian Devil.

Complete Skull Story (ongoing)
When André left his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), there was a worldwide commotion. Click Here for the complete story.