"Eurydice’s Braid" - concert in Lower Silesia - 30.08.2026

Attention: Modern-Day World Premieres After More Than 200 Years!

We warmly invite you to a special concert on 30 August, featuring works rediscovered in the Maltzan Collection from Milicz.

Eurydice’s Braid: Musical Mementos of the Maltzan Court Orchestra in Milicz

Krzysztof Firlus – viola da gamba

Baroque orchestra Cornu Copiae

Karolina Habało – violin, viola, director

Agata Habera – violin

Ewa Pilarska-Banaszak – viola, viola d’amore

Bernadetta Wieczerzyńska – cello

Maurycy Raczyński – harpsichord

Łukasz Madej – double bass

Sonia Wronkowska – lecture, musicological consultation

The Maltzan family residence in Milicz is the last known centre in the world where music was continuously performed on instruments from the family of viols — the viola da gamba and viola d’amore, whose origins can be traced back to the Renaissance — until the mid-19th century. Several decades after viols had become objects in cabinets of curiosities and museum-like palace rooms in Western Europe, they were still being played, new repertoire was being composed for them, and popular works were being arranged in the Silesian estate of Milicz.

The Maltzan Collection from Milicz has gained international recognition thanks to the surviving autographs and unique sources of works by Carl Friedrich Abel (1723–1787). These works were published in modern editions in 2016 and have since entered the repertoire of viola da gamba players. In addition to sonatas for viola da gamba, the collection preserves an exceptionally fascinating body of chamber and orchestral repertoire from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, featuring the viola da gamba and viola d’amore in prominent roles.

The concert’s title refers to the aria “Che farò senza Euridice?” from Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). A charming arrangement of this aria by Friedrich Guhr, scored for string quartet with viola d’amore, has survived in the Milicz collection.

Eurydice’s braid, immortalised in Polish poetry by Franciszek Dionizy Kniaźnin, is a carefully preserved memento that Orpheus kept after losing his beloved wife.

After the Second World War and the redrawing of borders, the Maltzan musical collection was transferred to the University Library in Poznań, where it is currently being conserved, catalogued, digitised, and made available to researchers and performers.

The surviving music from the Milicz court is a memento of the existence of an extraordinary centre of musical culture — one whose full splendour we will never be able to know.

Stowarzyszenie RAZEM - Łączy nas miejsce

Parafia Narodzenia Najświętszej Maryi Panny w Wierzchowicach

Powiat Milicki | Starostwo Powiatowe w Miliczu

Bank Spółdzielczy w Miliczu

Gmina Krośnice

Marszałek Województwa Dolnośląskiego