Sans pianist, Royal Castle museum show still a surprising success
What do you do if your big bash of the season occurs the night of a paralyzing snowfall? You just get on with it.
That's what Andersen Consulting's Country Manager Sebastiao Albuquerque did, when two-thirds of the clients and VIP guests invited to a Royal Castle museum show, concert and dinner were snowed out.
It wasn't that obvious, at first, that the snow would be such a party spoiler. Lots of people showed up on time at around 5 p.m. on Nov. 23 for the small-group walk-through of the impressive, newly opened exhibition, "Romanticism: Painting in the Epoch of Frederick Chopin."
But when the guided tours were over and the champagne was flowing and flowing by 7:10 p.m. there was still no sign of pianist Janusz Olejniczak. Albuquerque said, in effect, "the pianist obviously has been caught out in the snow, but there's no problem with the food." And, with that, the several hundred guests trooped downstairs to a gourmet spread by the castle's Restauracja Zamkowa.
An hour and a half later, Albuquerque recognized the reality: There would be no concert. He thanked the director of the Royal Castle, Andrzej Rottermund; the castle curator, Agnieszka Morawinska; the president of the Polish Foundation of Culture, Janusz Brys, and the foundation's Grzegorz Kosior who prepared the elegant hardcover, multilingual exhibit catalog. Then Albuquerque thanked all the guests for braving the snow to join them.
And the pianist? He had returned on an overnight flight from the United States at 1 p.m., made some stops and was en route to the castle, but was marooned in the snow for hours, said Andersen Consulting's Marketing Director Maciej Markowski. One of his own friends reported four hours in a traffic jam. Cell phones were ringing during the champagne reception as others reported they were giving up and going home.
Actually, said British Commercial Counselor Stephen Pattison, considering the snow it was quite a good showing. Lots of bankers and financiers and business magnates to talk to, including some of the Andersen bigwigs such as William Spancer from Prague, director of emerging markets for Central Europe, Nigeria, the Middle East and India.
Pattison's boss, British Ambassador John M. MacGregor, was one of those engrossed in conversation with Wieslaw Rozlucki, head of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE).
A shame that Macgregor couldn't have persuaded London's Tate Gallery into meeting Morawinska's request for the loan of a Turner painting for the show. She said the absence of a Turner was a major gap in her efforts to show the sweep of 19th-century romanticism, which included many Polish painters. The Louvre also declined to loan any of its Gericault paintings. But many museums did loan their key paintings for the show, which continues until late February. The Musee des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux provided the evocative Delacroix painting, "Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi," which Morawinska used as the cover for the catalog. And the Louvre loaned a Delacroix of its own, a splendid pencil drawing of "Chopin as Dante."
Andersen Consulting's clients here include local and multinational companies, including those in telecommunications, banking and pension funds. Among them: Powszechny Bank Kredytowy (PBK) and its merger partner, Bank Austria Creditanstalt (CA IB); the EGO pension fund; the Gdynia Shipyard and Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (Era GSM).
The company's "strategic consulting" began bigtime early this decade as a stand-alone unit from the Arthur Andersen accounting and consultancy firm. They were early in Poland, hiring the first Poles in 1990 for what is now a 160-person office here. This was their first event at the Royal Castle, but the firm had been a sponsor of the Foundation for Culture's Year of Chopin, as well as of the Romanticism exhibit and catalog. Others sponsoring the Royal Castle exhibit included Opel, Powszechny Zaklad Powszechny (PZU), TVP2, Polskie Radio, Gazeta Wyborcza, Radio Classic and the Warsaw Voice.
