Polish pianist, claviolinist, composer, and instrument builder Sławomir Zubrzycki shares his new album ‘Viola Organista: Monologues & Dialogues’, a landmark recording that brings to life one of the most enigmatic inventions in the history of music: the viola organista, a long-forgotten bowed keyboard instrument originally sketched by Leonardo da Vinci.
Produced by Nils Frahm at LEITER’s Funkhaus studio in Berlin, the album will be released on CD and digital platforms on October 24, 2025. ‘Viola Organista: Monologues & Dialogues’ spans an ambitious cross-section of music from the 17th to 18th centuries, selected by Zubrzycki and Frahm to explore the full expressive and technical range of the viola organista. The album is an audacious act of cultural memory, resurrecting not just an instrument, but a mindset: one in which invention, art, and emotion are bound together in harmonious mechanics.
Questions and Answers
3 Facts
1. If we have a choice between reading old and new books, we should choose the old ones. Not because they are necessarily better, but because they meticulously preserve truths that our era has neglected.
2. Cicero maintained that whoever has a library and a garden has everything. I also hold this view.
3. I’ve always lived in the city. I prefer the forest…
Questions
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
It’s undoubtedly the instrument I’ve been playing for 12 years – the viola organista. As a pianist, I could play the music of the French Baroque master Marin Marais or the Italian Renaissance masters. However, it wouldn’t sound convincing. When I heard about the idea of a string piano, previously called the viola organista by its true inventor, Leonardo da Vinci, I thought it was absolutely fantastic and inspiring. Interestingly, I first learned of the existence of a keyboard and string instrument built in Poland in the 19th century, called the clavioline. However, I quickly came across sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, who was a pioneer of this type of instrument. That’s when I decided to build such an instrument to hear what it sounded like.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
My father intended to become a tenor and studied singing, but the war thwarted his plans. Nevertheless, he always returned to singing, so classical music was a constant presence in my home. There was also a large Bösendorfer piano, which my older sister played, and it was under these circumstances that I began learning to play at the age of five. Later, naturally, I went to music school, and thus the fascinating world of music opened up to me, a world I remain immersed in to this day.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time? (yes we know it is difficult).
1. Five Beethoven Piano Concertos /Zimerman/Rattle/London Symphony
2. Les Voix Humaines – Jordi Savall
3. Chants de l’Eglise de Rome Ensamble Organum Marcel Peres
4. J.S.Bach / St. Matthew Passion / P. McCreesh
5. G.Mahler The Complete Symphonies – Simon Rattle Berliner Philharmoniker and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Since the early 2000s, I have been to Berlin more than a dozen times for different concerts as a pianist. At that time, I was involved in performing avant-garde music, and as a result, an interesting collaboration developed with the Berlin-based artistic group Phase7. Among my more surprising artistic projects, I must mention a performance with singer Olga Szwajgier and Phase7 in the inner courtyard of the Bundeskanzleramt at the invitation of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. I also assisted Olga Szwajgier in the premiere of a contemporary multimedia opera during the Year of Einstein in a compressed-air balloon installed in the square next to the university, where entry and exit were possible through airtight airlocks to prevent decompression. All this, along with surround sound and spherical video projection, demonstrated the possibilities of modern techniques. In recent years, I participated in a project to record an album by harpist Margret Koel, preceded by a concert in Berlin, this time with the viola organista. A year and a half ago I came to Berlin with two violas organista to Nils Frahm’s fantastic recording studio in the legendary Funkhaus building.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
My favorite place is the entire historic center of Krakow, which invites me to wander around, including Wawel Royal Castle. This is probably where my interest in history stems from. Krakow is a beautiful city, and I enjoy spending time here, although lately… I’ve been walking in the forest more often.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
I would build the first instrument I would start playing.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listened to?
It was Sir Edward Elgar’s “The Kingdom” performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Richard Hickox
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
I’ve always enjoyed collaborating with artists who inspired me or even forced me to enter areas of music I hadn’t intended to explore before.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
I must consider my premiere recital on the viola organista in 2013 to be my best and most important concert. The hour-long recital in Krakow was covered by media on all continents. This was due to the instrument invented by Leonardo da Vinci, of which I built my own version and on which I performed the aforementioned recital. Consequently, to this day, I have received numerous invitations to recitals and chamber concerts throughout almost all of Europe and Turkey. I believe that recital and the enormous media interest resulted in a significantly greater recognition of da Vinci’s instrument.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
I deal with the music of the past, so technology can only serve as a means of communication between the music I play, myself, and the listener. In the field of instrument construction, technology is indeed necessary, but it can also be technology from ancient times. Of course, it’s difficult to reject many contemporary tools, but the most important thing is to find the right balance between history and the present.
11. Please tell us more about the development of your new album “Monologues & Dialogues”?
The album opens with a piece by the German composer Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) entitled “Modo Hypodorico”. And not without reason, because Kircher is one of the creators who managed to build a viola organista. Kircher built his instrument in Rome in 1650 and called it machinamento.
The following pieces, performed on the solo viola organista, lead us through a realm of musical emotion, filled with the contemplative, melancholic music of John Dowland and Marin Marais. This monologue begins to lift our spirits with the introduction of Podbielski’s “Prelude” and Handel’s youthful “Carillon,” which foreshadow the dialogue with the harpsichord in Johan Christian Bach’s Sonata, full of brilliance and joy, before exploding into the album’s closing piece, the Harpsichord Concerto in Johann Sebastian Bach’s sunny key of A major. This is a dialogue I engage in in the recording with harpsichordist Lilianna Stawarz, but it is also a dialogue between two viola organistas: the solo part features the 2021 instrument with circular bows, while the chamber and orchestral parts feature the 2023 viola equipped with a strip bow. A musical and structural dialogue between the two viola organistas. This is all the more important because both of these constructions were sketched by Leonardo da Vinci, who probably did not foresee what kind of music they would be used for.
