This desirable re-release is from Neeme Järvi’s highly praised Prokofiev cycle recorded by Chandos in the 1980s. The symphonies from this series were all excellent, and the miscellaneous orchestral items that acted as fillers were also of high quality.

The first thing to strike one is the typical in-house sound that was a hallmark of Chandos from this period, and indeed still is in some venues. It doesn’t suit everyone, but the mixture of a lively, resonant acoustic with a rather bright, front-end balance does, I think, work well in this type of music. I did tame the treble a tad, but the climactic passages are really tremendous, viscerally exciting but with bags of detail.

The same thing could be said of the readings. Järvi tended in this series towards fast tempos, and for the most part this approach pays off. The Scythian Suite has a nervous edge that is thrilling. In places I miss the sheer weight of tone and savage splendour of Gergiev’s Kirov account on Philips, especially in the second movement, the famous ‘Enemy God and Dance of the Black Spirits’ , but he pays more attention to the tender moments than Gergiev, as in the lovely wind passages of movement 3, entitled ‘Night’ – around one minute in. All told, it’s a very convincing reading, with the Scottish National playing their socks off and only losing out to more famous rivals in exposed high string passages.

The ‘Steel Dance’ of 1927 is a bit of a rarity and well worth having. As with Scythian Suite, this was also originally a Diaghilev ballet commission that ended up as a concert suite, and being subtitled ‘A Ballet of Construction’, one can pretty well guess that it suited Prokofiev’s style from this period. The depiction of factory life and the mechanised age is brilliantly brought to life in orchestral language that balances brutality and atmosphere with consummate skill. Yes, there is an air of pompous propaganda in places, but it’s impossible not to be swept along by the rhythmic vitality and wit of it all, especially in Järvi’s finely gauged and superbly played account.

Alexander Nevsky is the main work here, and the one with most serious rivals. It’s a good rendition, very well played and sung with an edge of rawness from the chorus that is quite fitting. Linda Finnie’s contribution is first rate, and my only concern is that when set alongside the very finest accounts, of which my own favourite is Previn with LSO forces and Anna Reynolds on an EMI twofer, the last degree of excitement is missing. Others may disagree, and I have to admit to being swept away by Järvi’s spectacular rendition of Battle on the Ice, but then this works in just about every version I’ve heard. The Chandos recording really does help here, with a bite and vividness that is thrilling. There is definitely a bitter chill to Järvi’s Russian winter here, and anyone buying this disc is very unlikely to be disappointed. Indeed, with such intelligent couplings, a budget price tag and with well over 70 minutes, it stands out even in a crowded field.

-- Tony Haywood, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

Following the success of her last album, The Polish Violin, Jennifer Pike now turns to a programme of English music that represents an essential part of her musical make-up. It was the music of Elgar that first drew her to the violin, and The Lark Ascending has featured in her programming - in many versions – throughout her career. Here we have the original version for Violin and Piano from 1914, much less frequently played than the ‘standard’ orchestral version, but fascinating for the new light it shines on such a well-known piece. Writing it against the backdrop of the First World War, Vaughan Williams took both inspiration and the title from a poem by George Meredith. Although his first sketches for a Violin Sonata date from 1887, Elgar’s Violin Sonata is one of the four late masterpieces that Elgar composed in 1918 – 19, at Brinkwells in Sussex in his final creative flush. As with The Lark, this work was composed under the shadow of the Great War. Like Elgar, Vaughan Williams wrote his only Violin Sonata towards the end of his life. Representing a culmination of the development of his compositional style, he weaves fantasy and pastoralism into the strictures of sonata form. Jennifer Pike is joined for this album by one of her regular musical partners, the pianist Martin Roscoe.

Tempesta di Mare, Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, performs baroque music on baroque instruments with what the Philadelphia City Paper describes as ‘zest and virtuosity that transcends style and instrumentation’. Under its directors, Gwyn Roberts and Richard Stone, and concertmaster, Emlyn Ngai, the ensemble performs a repertoire ranging from staged opera with full orchestra to chamber music. The group performs without a conductor, as was the practice when this music was new. Tempesta di Mare has been recording exclusively for Chandos since 2004, to worldwide popular and critical acclaim. - Chandos

The third and concluding volume in our series of orchestral works by Bach contemporary Johann Friedrich Fasch includes more premiere recordings of orchestral works and his lute and recorder concertos. - Tempesta di Mare, Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra

Classical Music

"In league with the finely honed BBC Philharmonic, these are performances vibrant in colour, vital in rhythm and detail and viscerally exciting in impact." - The Telegraph, 2nd September 2010

HOLST The Mystic Trumpeter. First Choral Symphony 1 • Andrew Davis, cond; Susan Gritton (s); 1 BBC S Ch; BBC SO • CHANDOS 5127 (SACD: 69:20 Text and Translation)


I complain so often of the modern tendency towards over-reverberant sonics, particularly in Naxos and Chandos releases, that when the sound matches the mood of the music I am pleased to admit that it works. In this disc, titled Holst Orchestral Works Vol. 3, the fine conductor Andrew Davis leads inspired performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and soprano Susan Gritton in two of Holst’s most interesting and appealing works for that combination.


The Mystic Trumpeter (1904, revised 1912) is described in the booklet as being in Wagnerian musical language, but evolved. Based on a poem by Walt Whitman, “From Noon to Starry Night,” it includes musical premonitions of The Planets , particularly “Neptune the Mystic.” The musical evolution also owes something to Richard Strauss, who Holst played under as a trombonist, but here Holst’s continuing musical growth is clear and fascinating from first note to last. It also has the trait in common with Debussy that every time the music reaches a climax, it pulls back shortly after and recedes. This ability of his to “cap the geyser,” so to speak, was to come to fruition in the next three decades of his life.


The First Choral Symphony, as the notes indicate, has a weakness only in the text setting of the Finale; otherwise this, too, is an outstanding work, and one deserving of greater exposure. Here, too, the mature Holst is able to maintain a spellbinding atmosphere at a consistently soft volume level, only occasionally opening up the sound to create brief climaxes. The orchestral texture is more varied, even in the fast sections of the music where a certain sameness might have been expected. There’s a touch of Britten in the later sections of this work—a possible influence on the younger composer? I make no claim for this, only a suggestion; make of it what you will. In any case, this is an excellent disc of truly excellent music.


Susan Gritton contributes a brief statement in the booklet recalling how she rehearsed these works under the late Richard Hickox, only to have that esteemed conductor die suddenly before the recordings could be completed. Under such circumstances, I’m sure that this project was a bittersweet one for her, but as I say, Andrew Davis has done himself—and Holst—proud.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

On this disc Chandos bring together some of the highlights from Neeme Jarvi's five-volume Wagner series with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. As an added bonus, they included the Overture to Der fliegende Holle�nder, a piece not before released as part of their Wagner series.

Neeme Järvi returns to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for a dazzling album of suites from the ballets Sylvia, La Source, and Coppélia by Delibes. Born into a musical family, Delibes enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire aged twelve, studying under several professors including Adolphe Adam. He spent the 1850s and early 1860s composing light operettas and working as a church organist, before achieving public recognition for his music for the ballet La Source in 1866. His later ballets Coppélia and Sylvia were key works in the development of modern ballet, giving the music much greater importance than was previously the case. Typical of the period, the plots for these ballets are obscure, convoluted, and complex, but it’s certainly Delibes’s talent for lyrical melody and musical expression of a mood or feeling that elevates all three of these scores above their contemporaries – indeed Coppélia went on to become the most frequently performed ballet at the Paris Opéra. Delibes was at the forefront of creating orchestral suites from his ballet music (much to the envy of Tchaikovsky, among others), and thus were indeed envisaged to be performed without staging or dancers. On this album Neeme Järvi adds several additional movements to expand upon the suites which appeared in Delibes’s lifetime.

If, like me, you’re a little selective concerning which music by Bridge you really like, you couldn’t find a better advocate than Richard Hickox on this 6-CD set.

– Editor, MusicWeb International

This splendidly conceived, presented and executed Chandos series treats Bridge with authoritative style and sensitive musicianship. In this it matches Chandos banner series for Grainger, Schmidt, Enescu, Glazunov, Bax and Harty. Bridge’s music is getting to the stage where it will no longer need special pleading. The series appeared in an unhurried way – no gabble, no exploitative rush. Nothing wrong with that if the results are as good as this. Taking time can produce a better effect even if the loyal enthusiasts were chafing for each new release.

- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

SAINT-SAËNS Samson et Dalila: Bacchanale. Le Rouet d’Omphale. Phaëton. Danse macabre. La Jeunesse d’Hercule. Suite algérienne: Marche militaire française. La Princesse jaune: Overture. Une nuit à Lisbonne. Spartacus. Marche du couronnement • Neeme Järvi, cond; Royal Scottish Nat’l O • CHANDOS 5104 (SACD: 77:40)


Here in spectacular multichannel surround sound is a brand-new recording of all four Saint-Saëns tone poems plus a stewpot of shorter orchestral works, some of them popular favorites, others, less widely known.


Over the course of five years, between 1872 and 1877, Saint-Saëns composed four tone poems, three of them drawn from Greek mythology: Le Rouet d’Omphale, Phaëton , and La Jeunesse d’Hercule . The fourth, though third in order of composition, and most famous is Danse macabre , a romantic horror that trades Greek gods for gamboling ghouls.


Omphale’s Spinning Wheel is often said to be the very first French tone poem, though note author Roger Nichols points out that Franck beat Saint-Saëns to the punch by almost a quarter of a century with his symphonic poem Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne of 1848. According to Saint-Saëns’s own preface to the score, the subject of the story is feminine seduction and the triumphant struggle of weakness against strength. To atone for a murder Hercules is ordered by the goddess Hera to serve as a slave to the Lydian Queen, Omphale. Nichols spares the reader the more indelicate description of the emasculated and feminized Hercules kneeling and spinning at the Queen’s feet clad in women’s clothing. In light of Saint-Saëns’s fetish for hosting lavish parties dressed in drag, one has to wonder if the legend of Hercules and Omphale didn’t hold some special fascination for him.


Phaëton , Saint-Saëns’s second tone poem, flirts with the subject of father-son relationships and the sometimes tragic consequences that result when the boy grows old enough to challenge the paternal authority figure. Phaëton , son of Helios the sun god, seeks to prove his manhood by piloting the sun chariot across the heavens. So, in effect, he takes the family Ford out for a spin. But he’s not yet the man he thinks he is. Losing control of the chariot’s horses, he draws the sun too close to the earth. To prevent the solar express from crashing and wreaking further catastrophe, Zeus strikes it with a thunderbolt, incinerating the vehicle and killing Phaëton in the process. A sidebar to the story is that the chariot’s near-miss trajectory across the Sahara scorched the land and explains why the Ethiopians are black.


Next we have Saint-Saëns’s answer to Berlioz’s witches, Mussorgsky’s demons, and Liszt’s diableries, the Danse macabre . But leave it to Saint-Saëns to paint his portrait of the dancing dead, to paraphrase Ogden Nash’s verse, as skeletons in the museum hall gathering at midnight for a ball. The scordatura-tuned violin, xylophone, contorted Dies irae , and android-like rhythmic repetitions caused quite a stir, prompting Debussy, one of Saint-Saëns’s most outspoken critics, to declare years later that the piece gave him hope that Saint-Saëns was a very great composer after all.


The three foregoing tone poems are among Saint-Saëns’s more frequently heard and recorded works and, in fact, a number of recordings, some more recent than others, have included two of them in one combination or another on the same disc. Less often does one find all three, and only one other recording I’m familiar with—a composite Saint-Saëns collection assembled from one or more other releases featuring Charles Dutoit leading the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic orchestras—includes the composer’s fourth and final tone poem as well. Having stripped Hercules of his manhood in Omphale’s Spinning Wheel , Saint-Saëns rehabilitates him in La Jeunesse d’Hercule . Both dramatically and musically, the work is the weakest of the four, which no doubt explains its poor showing in the listings. The story, if it can be called that, involves no action but is rather a depiction of the young hero’s internal philosophical struggle in choosing between a life of pleasure-seeking and a life of virtue. He chooses the latter. It has been noted that the Lisztian tone poem model was a strong influence on Saint-Saëns’s score.


The remaining pieces that fill out the disc are, in some cases quite well known, like the Bacchanal from the composer’s opera Samson et Dalila and the Marche militaire française , which comes from the Suite algérienne . Other pieces are not well known at all but are hardly insubstantial. The Spartacus overture, for example, is a 13-minute score that was written in 1863 but remained unpublished until 1900. It’s a stand-alone grand concert overture that contains some of Saint-Saëns’s most dramatically urgent music.


On a trip to Portugal in 1880, Saint-Saëns dashed off a one-act comic opera with a title that would no doubt offend today’s politically correct sensibilities, La Princesse jaune , about a Japanese princess transplanted through opera magic to the Netherlands. The Lisbon audience apparently loved it, and back in Paris the Opéra-Comique gave four performances of it before the curtain came down on it for good. I note a single recording of the work listed by ArkivMusic, a 1996 live performance from Lugano. Heard here is the six-minute overture to the opera, which provides a taste of what Saint-Saëns must have thought Japanese music sounded like. Don’t expect Puccini.


During the same visit that produced La Princesse jaune , Saint-Saëns scribbled out the three-and-a-half-minute musical watercolor Une nuit à Lisbonne , which he dedicated to Portuguese King Luiz.


The story behind the Marche du couronnement put me in mind of Thomas Beecham’s plaint about British orchestras employing so many third-rate conductors when there were so many second-rate English ones to choose from. Which raises the question, why would the Brits choose a French composer, Saint-Saëns, to write a march for the coronation of Edward VII? Apparently, they didn’t. Saint-Saëns took it entirely upon himself to compose the piece, which, according to the program note, caused a flurry of diplomatic activity at the ambassadorial level between the two countries. For the march, Saint-Saëns borrowed a tune from his opera Henry VIII . If you shouldn’t expect Puccini in Saint-Saëns’s La Princesse jaune , don’t expect Elgar in his Coronation March.


This is mainly a fun disc, but a useful one as well in gathering together all four of Saint-Saëns’s tone poems, plus a generous selection of some of his less familiar orchestral works. It’s also distinguished by outstanding playing from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra brilliantly led by veteran conductor Neeme Järvi, and as an added bonus, it’s recorded in stunning multichannel sound. Enthusiastically recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Spellbinding performances of three concertos of languid beauty.

Those looking for grandiose concertos with mighty perorations and sizzling soloist virtuosity should look elsewhere. This is for committed Delians happy to indulge in another sort of less demonstrative beauty. This concerto music, lyrical and sultry, invites you to step into Delius’s garden of delights for an hour or so on an imaginary warm sultry afternoon; insects and butterflies flitting amongst the flowers nodding in the breeze, birds fluttering and singing, fountains and streams quietly animated - to doze and dream.

Delius’s Double Concerto was premiered on 21 February 1920 with May and Beatrice Harrison (its dedicatees) and the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra under the baton of Sir Henry Wood. Work had begun on the Concerto in 1915 when Delius was in England - the composer was temporarily exiled from his home in Grez-sur-Loing because of the Great War hostilities. During the composition of the Concerto, Delius had the support and advice of the Harrison sisters.

The classical repertory includes surprisingly few concertos for violin and cello. The Brahms work - too infrequently performed - springs to mind and indeed the very first bars of Delius’s lovely Concerto sound quite Brahmsian. Immediately after, however we are in unmistakeable Delius territory. Tasmin Little and Paul Watkins, so sympathetic to Delius’s idiom, blend beautifully in this lovely Concerto of restrained flamboyance, beguiling lyricism and a stateliness at once ageless and then distantly Elgarian. There is one heartfelt idea that recalls something of the American spiritual and Delius’s early Florida experiences.

Delius’s Violin Concerto, ‘For Albert Sammons’, followed quickly on the heels of the Double Concerto. It was written in 1916 but its premiere was also delayed by the War until 30 January 1919 with Adrian Boult conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Like the Double Concerto it is cast in one movement. Tasmin Little is a dedicated Delian and has undertaken some interesting research into his life especially the composer’s early days in Florida. She thus brings an especially committed and understanding ‘voice’ to the Violin Concerto. Her reading is heartfelt and how exquisitely she phrases that lovely tender main theme.

Delius regarded his Cello Concerto as his personal favourite. It was Beatrice Harrison who persuaded him to write it for her. It was to be the last work he was able to complete in his own hand before that devastating illness overtook him. Beatrice Harrison gave the British premiere in July 1923 and the Concerto was also heard in Vienna and New York in the early 1920s. Delius’s writing for the cello soloist was thought to be too ’difficult’ so much so that Herbert Withers, a renowned cellist of that time effected a few modifications to make it ‘more playable’. For this recording Paul Watkins sought, for the most part, to return to Delius’s writing. Watkins, writing in the album’s booklet notes says, “... the composer suggests very few phrase marks or bowings ....’Play it as you feel it, and I shall be content,’ was the composer’s advice to an early interpreter of the Cello Concerto. I have tried to honour the spirit of these encouraging words.’ This Concerto is very much in the spirit of the other two concertos on this CD and it is distinguished with yet another beguiling broad melody. It ends as Beatrice Harrison suggested in “... the after-glow of the sun sinking ... the stars emerging and fainting away as the moon rises.”

Sir Andrew Davis draws captivatingly poetic support from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Spellbinding performances of three concertos of languid beauty.

-- Ian Lace, MusicWeb International

" This brilliant new recording of Orff's Carmina Burana is a tragic memento of conductor Richard Hickox, who died in Novemeber at the age of sixty. This is a vibrant, dynamic performance of Orff's masterpiece recorded live in London's Barbican Centre. As usual with Chandos, engineering is first-rate, with perfect balances and wide dynamic range." -- Bob Benson, Classical CD Review

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Recorded live at the Barbican Centre in November 2007, Richard Hickox conducts Carl Orff's immensely popular dramatic cantata Carmina Burana with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and soloists, Barry Banks, Laura Claycomb and Christopher Maltman.

MusicOMH.com wrote of the performance, "The London Symphony Orchestra performed the work with all the commitment and exuberance that one expects from them... The three soloists were outstanding, singing with a unified dynamic power and depth of expression that is rare to find today...Christopher Maltman's baritone is large, and he dramatically projected every emotion and quirk in the text." Classical Source said "Hickox and his forces certainly conveyed an appropriate sense of the dramatic...Maltman had the sense of the music and histrionic demands down to a tee... Banks provided strong characterization in the high tenor writing... Claycomb conveyed the vulnerability of the soprano's music."

Orff is reputed to have declared around the time of Carmina's first performance, 'Everything I have written to date, and which you have printed, can be destroyed. With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin.' He had a strong interest in theatrical presentations and conceived the work as a pageant. The idea came to Orff in 1935 when he encountered an edition of medieval songs edited by the poet Johann Schmeller. The vivid and colourful songs were those sung by the goliards - hedonistic students and traveling monks who celebrated their riotous pursuits in bawdy and profane poetry. The 24 'cantiones profanae' chosen by Orff were translated and the composer set them to music for three vocal soloists, three choirs and a large orchestra featuring triple woodwind, two pianos and no fewer than five percussionists. The score's combination of gloriously infectious vulgarity interspersed with moments of genuine beauty has assured it an unquestionable position as one of the most popular of all twentieth century choral works.

Magnificent performances of three masterpieces from a master composer.

Edward Gardner’s disc of Britten orchestral works confirmed the impression of this disc: a talented, energetic young conductor with a real flair for contemporary music. Right from the beginning of the Concerto for Orchestra, his careful attention to accentuation and textural layering makes him an excellent exponent of these works, and the orchestra really plays for him. The Third Symphony, despite having been frequently recorded for such a difficult modern work, also sounds unusually vivid and purposeful in Gardner’s hands. He catches the music’s lyricism very movingly, particularly toward the end, and shapes the music’s large paragraphs with complete conviction. With very good sonics, this disc is completely recommendable, particularly if the couplings fill a niche in your collection.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The title “Chain”, given to three works Lutoslawski composed in the 1980s, suggests connectivity, events and textures leading into others, often overlapping. Chain 3 is a short orchestral piece first performed in San Francisco in 1986 with the composer conducting. It is thus the most recent work on this disc, and like many Lutoslawski works, contains passages featuring a strong aleatoric element. Listening to this performance alongside Antoni Wit’s reading with the Polish National Radio Orchestra in the invaluable Naxos Lutoslawski series, I find the although two performances are quite different it’s impossible to choose between them. Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra find more clarity of texture in the earlier pages of the work, where small instrumental groups are allowed to improvise around given musical cells. The actual sound of these passages tends to be more beautiful than the equivalent passages in the Polish performance too. Then in the conducted passages the virtuosity of the BBC players is breathtaking. The Polish players produce more dramatic climaxes, particularly at the two high points near the end of the piece, a sign, so it seems to me, that the pacing of the work is just that bit more convincing. This is no more than an impression, though, as the work is a highly complex one – and highly satisfying – within its short time span, and Gardner’s reading is deeply impressive and convincing, positively compelling the listener to return and explore the work anew.

As if to confound the critic – and the listener – comparing Gardner’s performance of the early Concerto for Orchestra with that conducted by Wit in the Naxos series, surprisingly dating from as long ago as 1996/7, I find in many places the opposite reaction. Here it is the Polish ensemble which produces the clearer, more analytical textures, and in a work in which orchestral colour is so important this might seem a real advantage. Yet once again the overall sound of the BBC Symphony Orchestra is so beautiful that one is seduced and convinced by it. Some of the work’s tendency to shock is blunted, but the very richness, a euphonious homogeneity of sound in this performance, leaves the listener in no doubt that the work is really beginning to find its place in the mainstream orchestral repertoire. In addition, Gardner and the BBC ensemble turn in climaxes of such enormous power that even the Polish players cannot match this time. I think Gardner manages better the diminuendo at the end of the short first movement, and the strings play the opening of the second movement scherzo with a lightness that more than justifies the insert notes reference to “almost Mendelssohnian playfulness”. This is one of the composer’s most popular works, and there have been several very fine recordings of it. The composer himself conducted a performance for EMI with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, a performance which has been available in a number of different guises over the years. It is stunning, though the recording is no longer up to the mark. Wit, with the same orchestra, is, as can be deduced, outstandingly fine, but I think this performance now leads the pack.

Lutoslawski also recorded in 1985 a magnificent version of the Symphony No. 3, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for Philips. He was a very fine conductor and his readings of his own works must be taken to be definitive in a very real sense. The symphony also features in Antoni Wit’s Naxos series, coupled with three other works, one of which is the gorgeous vocal work Les espaces du sommeil. I was won over to the symphony years ago when I first heard the composer’s version, and repeated listening for this review has only strengthened my admiration for the work. It is not a conventional symphony in any sense. In one extended movement, the first half seems to be an almost random selection of short, apparently unrelated musical events, often no more than gestures. The orchestral writing is ravishing, but it takes quite some time to come to terms with the music and to begin to see what the composer is driving at. A major climax – stunningly realised in this new performance – precedes what the Adrian Thomas, writing in the booklet, succinctly describes as the “onset of the main symphonic argument”. With only a little over a quarter of an hour to go one might think this dodgy timing on the composer’s part, but believe me, it really does work. The remainder of the symphony is increasingly dominated by lyrical string writing, though there is many an interruption, and the work as a whole might be seen as a struggle between the dramatic and the lyrical. Once the work is over one is convinced that the dramatic has won, but then, reflecting on the effect the work has on you, one is less and less sure. It is certainly a drama in the sense that one is gripped at the outset and pretty much compelled to follow where the music leads. I have to stress, though, that those looking for traditional symphonic growth and cogency will not find it here. You have to leave your symphonic prejudices at the door and just go with it. Most open minded listeners will, I think, find it a most compelling and satisfying experience.

This performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Edward Gardner is, I think, the finest I have heard. Wit is very fine indeed, once again, but comparing the two performances leaves me with the feeling that he is less successful than Gardner at integrating all the disparate elements of this bewildering piece into a coherent whole. Lutoslawski himself is wonderful, but brilliantly though the Berlin Philharmonic plays, they seem less comfortable with the idiom than the BBC players, who play with consummate skill and, apparently, total conviction. The individual contributions are remarkably fine – this is very much another concerto for orchestra, in fact – and ensemble work is simply stunning. Climaxes are overwhelming, and I have never heard the remarkable final pages realised as well as this. All the more remarkable, then, that all this music seems to have been set down in only two days!

The CD is well presented, with a splendid photograph of the composer on the inside cover and an excellent note by Adrian Thomas. And where this issue clearly wins over all the competition is in the quality of the sound. I have only heard this Super Audio CD in simple stereo, but it really is magnificent, rich and natural and delivering the often stupendous climaxes with awesome power. The disc is announced as the first volume of a series of Polish music. If the remaining volumes are as fine as this we are in for a treat.

-- William Hedley, MusicWeb International