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Mieczysław Fogg - Symphony (Alstone), ca 1947

3,260 views · Published 30 April 2010 · 3:18 · Indexed 27 October 2026

Channel: 240252 · 2010 · Music

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Mieczysław Fogg & Orkiestra pod dyr. W. Kabalewskiego -  Symphony (Alstone /J.Gillowa) Slow-fox, Fogg-Record, ca 1947 (Poland)

NOTE: In 1947, two years after the 2nd World War was ended Mieczysław Fogg  - who was one of most popular pre-war singers in Poland - opened in his flat in Koszykowa Street in Warsaw a small record-production of his own, under the label Fogg-Records.  During 4 years of its existence - in 1951 Fogg Records  was closed, due to the hardening of anti-private business deal in Stalinist Poland -  his firm managed to issue 200 records with the songs (mostly Mieczysław Fogg's renditions), dance music played by little dance orchestra directed by W. Kabalewski and Polish folklore features. Recording studio was arranged - as Fogg describes it in his memoirs  - in one of the apartment rooms, where thick velvet and felt courtains were hanging all around and the 5- or 6-piece band could hardly find space for the instruments. 

The recording device was a Telefunken-set,  given to Fogg during the 2nd World War by his friend Iwo Wesby -  prewar dance band leader and, in years 1937-39, a musical director in Syrena-Electro record manufacture in Warsaw. During the war, Iwo Wesby was in the nazi  Ghetto of Warsaw, until he fled on the "aryan side"  just before Ghetto's annihilation by Germans, in 1943.  He found shelter at Mieczysław Fogg's flat, where he was hiding until he managed to flee again - this time, to Austria, in a disguise of a Polish volunteer worker. In 1950s he emigrated from Vienna to USA. Before leaving Poland, Iwo Wesby left his Telefunken recording-apparatus to Mieczysław Fogg, together with his letter of donation and thankfullness for help he received from his old friend.  

Shellac for the production was of a very low quality, for it came from the buy up of old records all over the country. It's how many new renditions of Mieczysław Fogg and Kabalewski were issued  but also, a huge number of Polish historical recordings was lost forever: broken and melted for re-processing.

In the slideshow are the photographs of  the capital of Poland in the first years after 2nd World War. Such moonlike paysages of  ruined Warsaw can be seen also in a famous Roman Polański's movie "The Pianist".

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