Classical Music

Richard Stoltzman's continuing exploration of the clarinet repertoire has yielded some uniquely enjoyable concerto recordings for RCA, of which the current issue is just the latest example. The disc opens with Lutoslawski's Dance Preludes, a brilliant and lively work of highly varied moods and styles ranging from somber chant to frenzied dancing. Stoltzman sounds as comfortable in each of these witty preludes as he would playing Mozart or Gershwin.


Nielsen's concerto always has been a formidable challenge for clarinetists, and, through its discursive one-movement form, for the listener as well. Happily, Stoltzman's pointed shaping of the musical material aids in the recognition of the various melodic lines, while his freewheeling virtuosity consistently commands attention. Still, Olle Schill's stunningly recorded daredevil performance on BIS remains the Nielsen concerto of choice.


Probably the most interesting item on the program is Kent Kennan's recasting of Prokofiev's Flute Sonata as a concerto for clarinet and orchestra. Kennan succeeds admirably in approximating a real Prokofiev orchestral sound and his arrangement sheds new light on the work's subtle beauties. Indeed the finale, with its judicious use of timpani, seems to improve upon the original. Stoltzman certainly sounds convinced, and you can appreciate in his performance that sense of satisfaction at discovering a new classic. Lawrence Leighton Smith and the Warsaw Philharmonic provide handsomely played and truly collaborative accompaniments. RCA's recording is rather flat in perspective, but allows all of Stoltzman's infectious playing to be clearly heard. A desirable disc, and not just for clarinet fans.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Lutoslawski: 20 Polish Christmas Carols / Lacrimosa / 5 Song

Classical Music

Classical Music

Witold Lutoslawski's few surviving apprentice works are suffused with the elegance of Ravel and the lush effusiveness of Szymanowski, and this is particularly true of the early Piano Sonata, heard here in Giorgio Koukl's new and corrected edition based on the original manuscript. Further premieres include the wistful 'A Kiss of Roxanne' and the technically complex 'Invention.' Including all of the folk-music tinted pedagogical miniatures, works for piano four hands and other occasional pieces, this is the most comprehensive edition of Lutoslawski's works for solo piano ever recorded. Virginia Rossetti began her piano studies with Massimiliano Ferrati, later attending the 'Antonio Buzzola' Conservatory in Adria where she graduated with honors. In May 2013 she obtained her Master of Performing Arts with distinction at the Hochschule fur Musik in Basle and in 2014 at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire of Brussels. Since 2011 she has been the pianist of the Lunaire Piano Trio. Giorgio Koukl is a pianist/harpsichordist and composer. He studied at the State Music School and Conservatory, and the Conservatories of Zurich and Milan.

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

This exceptional multi-album set offers Chandos’s complete Lutoslawski series, featuring a string of the composer’s masterpieces performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Edward Gardner in exemplary partnership, along with some of Chandos’ finest soloists, and captured in surround-sound. It includes all five albums as well as the original booklets, and is offered at a highly discounted price. The featured soloists on these albums include soprano Lucy Crowe, tenor Toby Spence, baritone Christopher Purves, clarinetist Michael Collins, violinist Tasmin Little, cellist Paul Watkins, and pianist Louis Lortie.

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Review excerpts of some of the previously released volumes included in this set:

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Lutoslawski: Orchestral Works Vol. 4

The BBC Symphony Orchestra plays this sometimes tricky music with great proficiency and understanding, and Gardner’s inspiring leadership, plus first class Chandos sound, enables us to hear every strand of the texture.

– Fanfare

Lutoslawski: Symphony No. 2; Grave; Cello Concerto; Mala Suite

This disc is a further triumph in a series that looks like it’s becoming the finest overview yet of the work of one of the late 20th-century’s most significant composers.

– Fanfare

Lutowslawski: Vocal Works / Crowe

With the best lineup of soloists around and the BBC Symphony Orchestra on top form, this was always going to be something a bit special, and it lives up to expectations.

– MusicWeb International

Unlike Witold Lutoslawski's Folk Melodies for piano(1945), which instantly became extremely popular, his Christmas carols were performed relatively rarely, despite the fact that the collection was published as soon as 1947. It was only in April 1980 that tenor Piotr Kusiewicz, freshly out of music school in Gdansk, introduced the carols onto the musical circuit. Starting in 1981, Kusiewicz and pianist Waldemar Malicki subsequently performed the work several dozen times in musical centers across Poland. The present CD is of a recording made in 1986 in the Radio Gdansk studio.

Lutoslawski: Concerto for Orchestra - Cello Concerto

This next release in the Dux series devoted to Witold Lutosławski focuses on four works with strings as their emphasis and composed over a more than thirty year span: Little Suite for chamber orchestra (1950), Funeral Music for string orchestra (1958), Chain 1 for chamber orchestra (1983) and Chain 2 for violin and orchestra (1985). The 44-member Orchestra of the Opera at the Castle in Szczecin, led by Jerzy Wołosiuk, has made many foreign tours with opera and operetta shows across Europe. Its recording of Moniuszko’s Paria was awarded the Orphée d’Or of France’s l’Académie du Disque Lyrique.

Lutoslawski: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 - Partita for Violin and

A recital of solo piano works, composed over a span of thirty years, from this hugely influential 20th century composer. His creative use of tradition, a masterly compositional technique and originality of musical language have placed him firmly within the ranks of the most outstanding composers of the twentieth century. Pianist Veronique Briel has developed a fine international career, performing with leading orchestras and prominent conductors across the globe.

This Dux Witold Lutosławski release is a comprehensive double-disc set of Songs and Carols arising almost exclusively out of the composer’s early years of the 1940s-50s. + The largest opus, Disc Two’s Twenty Polish Carols for voice and piano (1946), is also the earliest work on this compilation, which includes several song cycles and a few standalone pieces. + Fellow Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy, Warsaw graduates Anna Radziejewska (mezzo-soprano, Warsaw Chamber Opera soloist) and 20th – 21st c. music specialist Mariusz Rutkowski (pianist) are the set’s featured artists.