A compelling survey of contemporary Polish choral writing. These sacred works range from inward, contemplative meditations to radiant, exultant hymns, their contemporary musical language finely balanced with the lucid, finely blended sonority of a chamber choir. With ten widely admired recordings to it's name and numerous festival distinctions, the Kielce-based choir Fermata has earned a reputation for interpretative insight, tonal refinement, and exemplary musicianship. For the listener, this is music experienced ex anima-from the soul-inviting a deeply felt and spiritually resonant encounter.

This album offers a compelling rediscovery of the still too rarely heard solo piano works of one of the most distinguished pianists of the early twentieth century. In these richly imaginative pieces, Friedman reveals himself as a composer of singular refinement and atmosphere, equally capable of evoking poignant nostalgia, sparkling wit, and dazzling virtuosity. His musical language draws with particular sensitivity on the inflections of Polish folklore-dance rhythms, modal contours, and folk-inspired lyricism-while resonating with the poetic worlds of Chopin and the early Szymanowski. Internationally acclaimed as both soloist and chamber musician, Anna Parkita brings to this repertoire an exceptional combination of brilliance, nuance, and expressive insight, illuminating music that unfolds with the colour, intimacy, and haunting beauty of a distinctly Slavic landscape.

This recording brings together an early trio fragment and later chamber compositions of full stylistic and technical maturity - although Andante e Rondo alla polacca was originally conceived for flute and orchestra. Founded in 2023, Inverto Ensemble is dedicated to historically informed performance. Flautist Marta Gawlas, keyboardist Aleksandra Zebrowska, and cellist Matylda Adamus are active on international stages and collaborate with leading European ensembles. Their interpretations are fresh, expressive, and finely nuanced - from the wistful lyricism of the cello dumka to the stately character of the polonaise and the elegance of the salon.

Poland's ascendant Orkiestra Camerata Stargard presents a luminous and deeply moving album of sacred orchestral and choral music by Polish-American composer Mark Nowakowski. The programme opens with Nowakowski's radiant setting of The Seven Last Words of Christ, unfolding with both intimacy and dramatic weight. It is followed by a searing meditation on suffering, O Mater Dolorosa!, featuring violinist Karolina Hyla-Wybraniec. The album concludes with O Beauty Uncreated, Nowakowski's setting of St. Faustyna's celebrated reflection, performed in collaboration with Slovakia's Chamber Choir Omnia. This release marks Nowakowski's third portrait disc. His debut, Blood, Forgotten, garnered strong reviews in Gramophone, while his second, Metanoia, reached #1 on Amazon's digital classical chart.

Continuity through change as the very essence of tradition. The first instalment in a series documenting the legacy and evolution of one of Poland's leading music centres. It brings together recordings by it's most senior artists - musicians who remain active both on the concert stage and in the pedagogical sphere - representing distinct interpretative approaches and teaching lineages. What distinguishes these Kraków masters is, above all, their finely judged sense of time and their deliberate refusal to pursue mere virtuoso display, choosing instead to seek beauty of tone and the harmony of shared sonorities - qualities further enriched by the artistry of their outstanding pianists.

This album brings together the world premiere recordings of works by the eminent ethnomusicologist, composer, and pianist. The solo piano pieces reflect his profound engagement with folk music, courtly traditions, and sacred song, distilled into a musical language of remarkable colour, sensitivity, and depth. Among the highlights of the programme is the late-Romantic Sonata for Violin and Piano - one of Kamienski's most significant and representative compositions - a work of striking dramatic power, emotional urgency, and dazzling instrumental writing. Szymon Telecki and Pawel Pawlik, both celebrated for their distinguished artistic careers, bring exceptional virtuosity, expressive breadth, and stylistic refinement to these performances, offering interpretations that fully reveal the artistic stature of these remarkable works.

Transcriptions for two harpsichords of works by Gdansk composers and Kapellmeisters, spanning the mature Renaissance through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The album's title evokes the vogue for monumental polychoral compositions that once enriched the daily life of Gdansk's patrician society. Through bold reconstructions and the virtuosic artistry of two harpsichordists affiliated with the Stanislaw Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdansk, the works of these ambitious masters of old Gdansk are given a new voice - radiant with a splendour worthy of the gilded interiors of Artus Court.

This recording offers a rare and compelling opportunity to hear Shostakovich's Violin Sonata alongside it's orchestral reimagining for violin and orchestra, both performed by the same soloist. In his arrangement, Krzysztof Meyer achieves an admirable equilibrium between individual creative insight and a profound stylistic affinity with his distinguished predecessor. Magdalena Rezler's interpretation is equally persuasive: her refined, unsentimental playing responds with striking sensitivity to the work's cool austerity and inward intensity. Devoid of overt pathos or programmatic gesture, the music nevertheless proves deeply affecting, captivating the listener through it's wealth of motifs and it's distinctive, unconventional design.

This album presents a selection of chamber works that offers a compelling cross-section of the composer's musical imagination, as well as the fluency with which he moves across a richly varied stylistic landscape. The outstanding performers respond with complete assurance to the intentions of one of the most frequently performed composers of his generation. Adrian Robak explores unconventional instrumental combinations and a wide spectrum of sonorities, while remaining in meaningful dialogue with the aesthetic currents of earlier decades. His music impresses and moves through the sincerity of it's expression-an artistic voice that has earned him growing recognition on concert stages in Poland and abroad.

Mikolaj Gorecki: Flute Concertos

A concert performance of Darius Milhaud's "intermedial" ballets, alongside the world premiere recording of the complete original version of Salade. This release brings together all that is most irresistible in the music of the great French master of modernism: jazz, the circus, reimaginings of early music, serenades from Sardinia, and the folkloric colours of Provence. A distinguished cast of young vocal soloists, together with a chamber ensemble of the Poznan Philharmonic, is led by Lukasz Borowicz, an eminent interpreter of unjustly neglected scores.

The programme of the latest recording by the distinguished choir 441 Hz brings together works by composers from a wide range of cultural traditions, from Scandinavia to the Philippines. Their shared expressive thread is a meditation on the phenomenon of light-it's symbolism, radiance, and transformative power. These composers write for mixed choir, enriched here by the subtle colours of violin, Tibetan singing bowls, handbells, and even water-tuned glasses. Yet for all it's imaginative scoring, the programme is far removed from the world of avant-garde experiment. Instead, it unfolds in a language of luminous harmonies, deeply affecting solo voices, and expansive musical forms, creating an atmosphere of serenity and inward reflection.

Four sonatas from the middle period of this exceptional yet undeservedly overlooked composer reveal a distinctive musical voice, where echoes of Rachmaninoff's and Grieg's mature Romanticism intertwine with the shimmering colours of Impressionism and the refined sensibility of the English tradition. Though these works make undeniable virtuoso demands, it is their melodic and harmonic imagination that commands the foreground: long-breathed phrases, subtle expressive nuance, and richly intriguing sonorities. The recording brings together distinguished instrumentalists associated with the Academy of Music in Kraków, whose interpretations are marked by brilliance, passion, and a palpable sense of discovery as they illuminate the beauty, individuality, and enduring artistic value of Bowen's music.

The compositions of Rev. Michal Roman Szulik-conductor, musicologist, and composer-stand as a testament to the musical life of the community gathered around the cathedral in Siedlce. Their defining quality lies in the composer's devoted preservation of the stylistic language of sacred music. Written for a cappella choir or with organ accompaniment, these settings of texts-ranging from medieval psalms and hymns to contemporary works-reveal a profound command of the history of liturgical vocal music, while also reflecting the composer's deep reverence for a tradition cultivated over many centuries.

This four-disc set brings together the complete Offertories of Palestrina, the supreme master of Renaissance sacred polyphony. Each disc is devoted to works for different seasons of the liturgical year and a range of solemn occasions. Conceived for the adornment of the liturgy at the foremost church of Rome, these compositions have retained their place at the heart of the Christian musical tradition, admired across the centuries for their devotional purpose and their incomparable artistic perfection. In this distinguished recording, Schola Cantorum Gedanensis-one of Poland's most esteemed vocal ensembles, with nearly half a century of artistic achievement-turns to this sublime repertoire with characteristic insight and poise. Laureate of six Fryderyk Awards and two Golden Orpheus distinctions, the choir, under the direction of Jan Lukaszewski, offers an interpretation of luminous clarity, tonal refinement, and contemplative depth, revealing anew the spiritual radiance of these timeless works.

A live concert recording of the one-act farce based on Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, captured during the 29th edition of the Easter Beethoven Festival in 2025. This release is based on the complete and authentic Milan manuscript, rather than the later versions that also circulated under different titles. The Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of it's chief conductor Lukasz Borowicz, joins forces with six outstanding soloists to deliver a performance of irresistible charm, virtuosic brilliance, and dynamic theatrical momentum. Thanks to it's vivid pacing and finely judged structure, the nearly 80 minutes of music pass in what feels like an instant, carrying the listener toward the work's unmistakably happy resolution to it's amorous entanglements.

The most beautiful song cycles of Polish vocal lyricism from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The distinguished baritone Mikolaj Zalasinski, endowed with a voice of Verdian richness and beauty, together with the acclaimed collaborative pianist Lukasz Debski, invites the listener into a world of melancholy, reflection, and poetic depth - a world that, despite the passage of time, remains strikingly immediate and profoundly moving. Here, late Romanticism gradually yields to emerging new harmonic and colouristic tendencies, while the musical fabric is woven from texts by William Shakespeare and leading poets of the Young Poland movement. The literary and musical refinement of these compositions, combined with interpretations of the highest calibre, form the defining virtues of this album.

This album presents a distinguished selection of chamber works for clarinet and piano, string trio, and reed trio in a variety of instrumental configurations. Composed over the span of several decades, these pieces reveal the most distinctive qualities of the composer's musical language: intense lyricism, fugal sophistication, propulsive rhythmic energy, daring chromaticism, and evocative allusions to jazz-inflected idioms and Polish folk tradition. Performed with exceptional artistry by some of Poland's finest chamber musicians, this recording offers compelling testimony to the richly deserved renaissance of Tansman's music. His works reward both listener and performer alike, combining expressive depth with brilliant virtuosity and the rare refinement of true chamber interplay.

The new album from Chopin Piano Duo - artists of international renown, deeply committed to exploring the repertoire for four hands and two pianos - brings back to light works by four composers once esteemed as pianists and influential figures in musical life, yet long overshadowed by the towering fame of Frederic Chopin and Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Their music reveals a clear affirmation of Chopin's genius, with echoes of his style and characteristic forms resonating throughout. Swierzynski's cycle of miniatures and a work by Stattler were edited and prepared for publication from manuscript sources by Chopin Piano Duo themselves, and are presented here in their world premiere recordings!

A film score is inextricably linked with the image, it is composed according to the wishes of the director; sometimes it becomes a separate sphere of art. The beauty of the intertwined, overlapped melodic lines spun from dreams and longings and the depth of the harmonic structures occasionally introduce the listener into an unreal, irrational world, a world of illusion, dreams... I couldn't resist them - Maksym Rzeminski

The Symphony No. 3, called the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, for solo soprano and orchestra, Op. 36 by Henryk Mikolaj Górecki (1976) is often mentioned in different contexts as one of the most original masterpieces of 20th-century music not only to come out of Poland, but from the world. This release presents the listener with a live recording of this extraordinary piece performed in the concert hall of the Poznan Philharmonic on 4 February, 1995. It is an outstanding artistic creation of Andrzej Boreyko, a conductor who was just about to launch his world career then, and Ewa Izykowska – one of the most interesting and versatile Polish singers.

CANONS

Sarnecka: Works for Piano Solo

The great Cervantes, he taught me the magic and great humanity that poetry and the music of our Golden Century harbor. In the middle of the 16th century appears in Spain the ''cross-strung harp'', as Juan de Bermudo confirms in his work, Declaration of Musical Instruments, year 1555. This appearance is due to the growing music chromatization and the progressive emancipation of the specific instrumental language. Therefore, the harp, diatonic so far, becomes a chromatic instrument in a very original way: adding an order of chromatic strings interwoven or intertwined with the diatonic ones. It turned out to be an extremely practical invention for the spanish Violeros and, apparently, not sued out of the Iberian Peninsula. The famous Tomos, witness the harp's musical intervention in these two fields, sacred and profane. One of the most prolific composers of the Tonos was Juan Hidalgo, a Royal Chapel's musician, Pedro Calderon de la Barca's right hand and, in turn, prominent harp player.

Beyond question, Karol Szymanowski wrote the greatest piano Mazurkas since Chopin's. They capture all the elemental passion of the traditional Mazurka rhythms in a pungent and pianistically idiomatic language that sounds fresher with each passing year. It's good to see these works turn up more frequently on CD, especially when they're played with Anna Kijonowska's stylistic perception and technical mastery. Like Martin Jones, she's not afraid to rough up rolled left-hand chords in order to give them more rhythmic kick. Some of her tempo choices are unusual, such as a more measured and inward take on Op. 50 No. 12, as opposed to Marc-André Hamelin's more volatile, skittish account. Yet if her touch doesn't quite match Hamelin's supple shadings, her rubatos often speak more organically (Op. 50 No. 18, for example). Unlike Hamelin and Jones, Kijonowska does not include Szymanowski's four Polish Dances and Valse Romantique. This highly distinctive release is a worthy addition to the Szymanowski discography.--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com