There's a good chance that you've never heard of Ignacy Feliks Dobrzynski -- 
or that, if you have, you've merely read somewhere that he was a fellow student of 
Chopin's in Jozef Elsner's composition classes at the Warsaw Conservatory or that, 
as the New-Grove puts it, "his piano music shows clearly the influence" of his more 
famous compatriot. In-fact, the influence probably went both ways, as is evident 
from Dobrzynski's absorbing Piano-Concerto in Ab, written several years before 
Chopin's similar, and much more familiar, Concerto in F Minor. You can now hear 
that prescient work on an illuminating CD released by the-Polish label Selene 
(9405.21). Less than a decade old, Selene has an understandable commitment to 
Chopin, including some striking performances by Polish pianists who are not yet 
well known in the United States; but their steadily growing catalog is also studded 
with revelatory CDs, often including premiere recordings, of repertoire by other, less 
familiar Polish composers: the complete piano music (two- and four-hand) by 
Moniuszko; the robust violin sonata by Jozef Wieniawski (Henryk's younger 
brother); the more-or-less complete piano music by Paderewski (a four disc set 
performed by Karol Radziwonowicz and coproduced with Chant du-Monde; see 
15:6); a substantial collection of piano music by the talented, but short-lived, Liszt-
pupil Juliusz Zerebski in performances by Jerzy Sterczynski that are even more 
persuasive than-those on the complementary collection by Rachel Franklin (see 
18:2); songs by Karlowicz and-Moniuszko. . . . 

	Selene is being distributed by Bayside, but its presence in the United-States 
is due to the efforts of the California-based Poland Import Export, a company - 
created a few years back by Edmund Lewandowski. Unlike most people interviewed 
in Fanfare, Lewandowski is not a musician. In fact, he holds a master's degree in 
mechanical engineering with a specialty in optics and has worked at the Stanford 
Linear Accelerator Center and in Silicon Valley (he's the owner of two technical 
patents dealing with semiconductors). How he got into the business of importing 
classical CDs is a fascinating story.

	Born in a small city about 120 miles northwest of Warsaw, Lewandowski 
lived in Warsaw for about a decade until he emigrated to Austria for political 
reasons. "I had a choice: either to be in jail in then-communist Poland or to be free 
outside, so I chose freedom. I escaped from Poland with my wife, Marie. After we 
had been granted political asylum and had lived in a refugee camp in Austria for six 
months, we decided that we would like to emigrate somewhere else. There were 
different opportunities, and one of them was the United States. We picked the 
United States because everyone wants to go to the United States, and if we have a 
chance, why not take it?"

	At first, the choice did not look like the right one: "When we came to the 
United States, we came to Detroit, a neighborhood that was really strange to us." 
The culture shock was so great that they nearly went back to Austria. But before 
returning, they decided to "see what different states look like and how different 
places look like in the United States. We saved a little bit of money and we bought 
tickets for Greyhound." His wife's sister lives in the Bay area, so that's where they 
headed. They found San Francisco congenial, so "we started our life here." While 
Lewandowski was working at Stanford, his wife passed the exams for foreign 
medical graduates, and, after a brief residency in Ohio, they returned to San 
Francisco where she set up a practice as a family physician.

	At this point, with his wife providing financial stability for the family, 
Lewandowski asked himself the tough question: "After a while, I was kind of 
thinking, what am I accomplishing in my life? What am I doing? I came to the 
conclusion that I am one of many. My job as a mechanical engineer can be done by 
somebody else. I wanted to do something unique. I wanted to do something I could 
be proud of, something that probably nobody else would have a chance to do." 
Fortunately, he had the enthusiastic support of his wife, so he was free to consider 
activities that didn't necessarily bring in any income. "That's how I started to think 
about Poland Import Export. I originally thought it would be a business that would 
promote anything Polish, as far as products go, in the United States. That was the 
main concept when I created the company. I was starting to look for a product. I 
like popular music a lot, so when I went to Poland to search for things, I bought a 
number of CDs and I brought them to the United States. Many people said to me, 
'You bought them, but we would like to have such music also.' So I said, 'Well, 
why don't I import it?' Once I got into music CDs, I never really expanded to any 
other area. "My philosophy is that if I get one person interested in a given CD, I 
basically bring more than one, hoping that there will be others interested in this 
particular title. That way, I am building up stock of CDs. I have more than a 
thousand titles of popular music." But Lewandowski's primary concern now is 
"pioneering the spread of Polish classical music in the United States." Indeed, 
although he sells popular music by mail order, he is "hoping to get out of this 
particular avenue because it slows me down as far as marketing classical music. I 
really would like to make a difference as far as Polish classical music availability 
and knowledge of Polish music in the United States."

	Key to his project has been Selene, a label he first heard about when he was 
at a major "national fair in Poland of different musical labels, an equivalent of 
MIDEM in Western Europe. I searched for the company, where it is and who created 
it, and who worked there and things like that. I discovered that the Selene company 
is run by two musicians. Everything is done the way another label wouldn't do it. 
They are not after money, they are after documenting music by Polish composers 
and performers. I thought, 'Well, this music is not known in the United States at 
all.' Besides Chopin and maybe some CDs of Penderecki, Szymanowski, and 
Gorecki, there was really nothing to speak of in terms of Polish music in American 
record stores. Also, I discovered that Poland had very good artists who performed 
other music than Polish composers." So he decided to get exclusive rights to import 
Selene CDs to the United States. "Ever since, I have been trying to spread the word 
about Selene in the United States."

	Why has Polish culture - in particular, Polish music - been so poorly 
represented in the United States? Lewandowski cites three main reasons, all 
stemming from Polish history. "First, Poland did not exist as a country from 1795 
until 1918.  For 123 years, it was illegal to claim to be Polish. Polish people had to 
obey, depending on where they lived, German, Russian, or Austrian rulers." Second, 
more recently, while Poland was behind the Iron Curtain, trade with the United 
States was constrained. Third, during the communist period, "the only label in 
Poland was Polskie Nagrania, which was a state label. They pretty much did 
whatever they wanted, and everything was directed from the Politburo, from the 
Party headquarters: what they put out, what they didn't. Many of the works were 
not really promoted. In addition, under the communists, people really didn't have 
incentive to work hard, because they had jobs no matter what, because it was one 
of the principles of the system, and whether people worked hard or worked lousy, 
they were rewarded the same. So why bother?"

	Things are different now: "The people now have their own private 
enterprises, they are stretching themselves, and the results are showing." 
Lewandowski figures that there are currently somewhere around 50 labels in 
Poland. Some of them are the size of Selene, some are much bigger. And although 
Polskie Nagrania still exists (in fact, Poland Import Export imports many of its CDs 
as well), it has been considerably reduced in scale: "It lost all its huge buildings in 
Warsaw. They moved to another part of Warsaw where they were forced into 
maybe 10 or 12 rooms. They had several huge buildings before, they had recording 
studios, they had all the processing equipment that requires a lot of people. And 
right now because of all those dynamic, small labels  [not to mention competition 
from the Polish branches of Sony, EMI, and Polygram]  there is big competition for 
Polskie Nagrania. That's why Polskie Nagrania as a state business was not really 
able to stay alive the way they used to be." What exactly does Poland Import 
Export do? "I bring the CDs from Poland. I negotiate the prices and everything, and I 
arrange by phone and faxes with people in Poland how to ship it and exactly what 
titles and whatever, and they ship it here. I pay for the CDs, I pay for shipping, 
which is really costly because everything comes by air. It arrives in San Francisco, 
then I have to process it, because Selene does not have a bar code. I have to give it 
to a local company which does the bar coding and shrink wrap; and after this 
processing, the CDs are ready for the distributor, Bayside."

	On the whole, Lewandowski tries not to sell Selene CDs to individuals. But 
because the company is listed in Schwann Opus, and because he has just set up a 
Web site (http://members.aol.com/seleneusa), many people do get in touch with 
him. "I explain to them that I can sell directly, but because my company is not set 
up to sell that way, I really have to charge a lot more for a CD than a store would. I 
think that's the only fair thing to do. Because if I sell directly, I will handle lots of 
orders myself, and I don't want to develop this company into a 10-person 
operation. I like it as it is"-which is, for the most part, a one-person business.

	Lewandowski is particularly excited about two new projects from Selene. 
First is a world premiere disc of "unknown yet beautiful" music by Karol Lipinski ( 
1790-1861 ), music that has been rarely performed because it poses such difficulty 
for interpreters. Second is Selene's new historical series, "The Great Polish Chopin 
Tradition." So far, this includes a disc of recordings by Alexander Michalowski 
(some recorded as early as 1905), as well as four CDs of performances by Raoul 
Koczalski, each filled out with new recordings of Koczalski's own compositions by 
such modern performers as Andrzey Tatarski and Jerzy Sterczynski. (Selene has 
also published a substantial book about Koczalski, although until they find a 
translator it's available in Polish only.) "Koczalski was a student of Mikuli, and 
Mikuli's teacher was Chopin himself. Mikuli was known for being very persistent in 
executing Chopin's compositions, and passed down to Koczalski this exact way of 
interpreting Chopin. Koczalski was really adamant about executing the music the 
way Chopin was playing it."

	All in all, the availability of Selene in the United States shows that this 
mechanical engineer has, in fact, succeeded in his desire to make a difference, to 
do something unique. But Lewandowski insists on sharing the credit. "I want to 
reiterate," he insisted at the end of the interview, "that I am grateful to my wife, 
Marie, who is making all of this possible." Given the high quality of the Selene discs
that I've heard so far, we all have reason to share his gratitude.