Rebecca Murphy, Cathal Masterson
Harty Room, Queen's University Belfast - 27th March 2026
The experience of the immigrant and the asylum seeker is one that we are all acutely aware of in the present day and the question of how to deal with further global upheavals caused by war, climate change, growing economic inequalities, rampant capitalism and depletion of the earth's resources is becoming more pressing every day. Everyone thinks they understand the implications and the challenges it presents, but for those who have to experience displacement on a personal and individual level, it can be harder to explain how much of an impact this has on their lives. Anselm McDonnell's song cycle Kraina - inspired by an idea by soprano Rebecca Murphy to consider the circumstances of the large Polish immigrant population in Northern Ireland - considers it in terms of a wider question of identity: how it ties to a notion of home and the impact that the loss of such a fundamental need can have in a broader, more universal context.
Presented as part of the Imagine! Festival of Ideas & Politics in Belfast, the programme built around Kraina extends that idea by bringing in other similar songs that deal with the same subject and further enrich it, showing that the idea of home, land, borders, emigration and displacement really is an experience that has been shared not only by many Polish immigrants - it is no recent EU "freedom of movement" issue - but it has also been an experience for the diaspora of many Irish people over a period of many decades and centuries. The programme therefore draws on songs by Chopin and takes us through to Szymanowski, with some new Irish language songs by Jonathan Nangle and the shared Polish-Northern Ireland experience of Anselm McDonnell's Kraina at the heart of the programme.
Language is key to expressing the diverse issues and sentiments experienced, so the idea of it being presented in song as well as music is fundamental, as well as itself presenting something of a hinterland or border where the words and music come together. Appropriately, the selection of songs in the programme are sung in Polish, Irish and English, but music itself is an abstract form of language that uses unconventional methods of communication to put its message across, which can make it challenging to put ideas and purposes across for those unfamiliar with the language, so to speak. As well as a diversity of spoken languages, superbly enunciated and enacted by Rebecca Murphy with Cathal Masterson accompanying on the piano, the performers also had just as wide a musical language to get across.
Although not a stated aim of the programming, the side-by-side selections of Chopin, Nangel, McDonnell and Szymanowski instigated a cumulative process that not only developed the theme over the years and across musical borders, but was testament to the richness of the idea of diversity, giving the audience some unfamiliar spoken and musical languages to grapple with and consider. Alongside the beauty of the songs in their own right - despite the challenges of the spoken and musical languages (we at least had printed translations of the words) - the performance of the Rebecca Murphy with Cathal Masterson was utterly beguiling, truly inviting you to engage in the experience, bringing a genuine operatic quality to the evening in terms of breadth of the subject, personal interpretation and overall impact.
Three of Chopin's 'Polish Songs' set the scene, Smutna rzeka (Sad River), Precz z moich oczu (Out of my Sight) and Wojak (The Warrior), surely the most welcoming of introductions to the theme, each enchanting in their own way, even if the very opening words of Smutna rzeka hint at troubles ahead. ('O river from the country of strangers/Why is your course so cloudy?'). Jonathan Nangle's three songs Snáth followed and brought about a subtle change in the mood. Like Anselm McDonnell, Jonathan Nangle is a contemporary Irish composer perhaps better known for more modern electro-acoustic and video multimedia work, but the three songs composed for Snáth (Yarn) were composed in the classic lieder style part of an initiative to set Irish language texts/poems to music. They very much head into darker places - literally in the opening lines of An Croí (The Heart) which translate as "everblack blackest black then down", Snáth evoking Ariadne with a ball of yarn to "guide you through the labyrinth, tunnels of all your dark places", Chugat (Towards You) warning "don't wait for me too long". They are all beautiful concentrated little pieces where the intensity of the sentiments was vividly expressed in the precise piano accompaniment of Cathal Masterson and impressive range of Rebecca Murphy's sweet lyrical soprano.
Anselm McDonnell's Kraina song cycle consists of four pieces, which are indeed - as Rebecca Murphy described in her introduction - each like a mini-opera in their own right. They were certainly delivered that way with a beautiful expressivity where the soprano absorbed the sentiments evoked in the magical hinterland between the words and the music and 'translated' them to the audience in a performance that scarcely needed a glance at the translations to understand what was being said. That was not necessary of course for Kraina II - The House on the Interface from 'Belfast. 99 ścian pokoju' by Aleksandra Łojek as the lyrics for this song were translated for the piece by the author herself. The song directly confronts the reality of moving into a troubled area of Belfast divided by a 'peace wall', but in a way, Łojek's experience (I think she said that in the post-performance discussion that she has moved home 37 times!) reflects the dilemma expressed in the beautiful Kraina I - Jeżeli porcelana ("didn’t anyone tell you that you’ll never in the world feel at home here?"), McDonnell's treated piano arrangement providing a jagged evocation of the poem's imagery of shattered porcelain ground under the tracks of a tank.
There is room for a little optimism in Kraina III - Kraina, but the prospect of new pleasures to be found in a new place are tempered by feelings of nostalgia for the deeper roots of the homeland ("Why does my heart forever still bewail/Far-distant lands, more distant days of old?"). It's telling that the text of this piece from 'Pielgrzym' by Adam Mickiewicz was written in 1826, showing that the experiences of the Polish diaspora stretch back centuries and face many of the same challenges today. Not least questions of language and communication as the setting of Peter Skrzynecki 1978 text for Kraina IV - The Polish Immigrant where "tooth-grinding consonants that must be phonetically rehearsed". Rounding out the programme, the choice of three of Szymanowski's 'Songs of a fairytale princess' was just perfect, from the perspective of choosing a significant 20th century Polish composer to contrast with the opening Chopin pieces, for the remarkable variety that it brought to the programme, but also for how it seemed to long for that magical place of escape to an ideal world.
External links: Imagine! Belfast
