V 42: MUSICA CLAROMONTANA

The work of Gabriel Fauré, one of the most significant composers for the development of the French music at the turn of the 20th century, is not easily classified under a specific artistic trend. On the one hand, the pieces he wrote in the early stages of his career are quite closely linked to the major minor system, on the other hand, the artist had already been using a number of original harmonic means, aesthetically announcing the musical Impressionism. Krzysztof Grzeszczak was born on 17 September 1965 in Maków Mazowiecki. In 1987–1989, he studied organ under Feliks Raczkowski and harmony and counterpoint under Franciszek Wesolowski. In 1993, he graduated from theological studies in Warsaw at the Academy of Catholic Theology (currently the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University). James Whitbourn was born in 1963 in Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent, Great Britain. Initially, he pursued his education at The Skinners’ School, but after receiving a scholarship he moved to Magdalen College in Oxford, where he graduated. Whitbourn quickly became popular in his country thanks to the cooperation with the BBC channel, for which he prepared a number of television programmes. The present album contains three, completely stylistically different, rarely performed masses of the aforementioned composers, which can be particularly attractive for lovers of rarities of sacred music.

Renaud-Gabriel Pion is a successful composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improvisational musician. He performs on bass clarinet, Turkish clarinet, saxophone, bass flute, English horn, electronic woodwind instruments, and piano. He is based in Paris and Berlin. Of this project, Pion writes: “This music made sense to open windows on the city, the charm is immediately established. New York Sketches questions the permeability of the process of composition and recording the sound of the external environment- the opposite of the usual confinement in an airtight place.” (Translated fromwww.renaudgabrielpion.org) An extensive booklet is included with full color photographs of the most inspirational places in New York to Renaud-Gabirl Pion.

POLISH SONGS

The NFM Wrocław Chamber Orchestra LEOPOLDINUM brings together high-calibre musicians and has earned substantial critical and popular acclaim with its appearances at such venues as the Philharmonie and Schauspielhaus in Berlin, the Tivolis Koncertsal in Copenhagen, the Teatro Victoria Eugenia in San Sebastian as well as numerous prestigious events.

Chopin: Piano Works

Eugene Ysaÿe was considered to be one of the world's best violinists and was mentioned in one breath alongside such celebrities as Paganini, Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski. In the 1920's was when Ysaÿe wrote his best-known violin masterworks, the echoes of his fascination with impressionism and symbolism. "I allowed free improvisation to reign. Each sonata constitutes a kind of little poeme where I abandoned the violin to it's fantasies. I wanted to associate musical interest with grand qualities of true virtuosity". - Ysaÿe

This is already our third encounter with the great Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin – an encounter, in fact, that is as unusual as his music, which has delighted people around the world for over one hundred and fifty years. In Fryderyk’s day, not everybody was able to listen to his works. To hear one of his concerts they would have had to travel to where he lived – in his early years that meant going to Warsaw, and later even further, i.e. to Paris. Today, all we have to do is listen to one of his albums and imagine that the genius composer is playing especially for us.

"•Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki's (c. 1666-1734) Missa Rorate is a composition destined for vocal performance by soloists and four-part choir. • The work’s score, lacking all the vocal elements necessary for a High Mass, compelled the composer to furnish some original parts. Completorium is the last hour of the day, said before resting. • The Completorium is festive in nature, i.e. sung to close holiday celebrations. • The soloist and choir are accompanied by an instrumental ensemble, adding much splendor."

MUSIC IN OLD WROCLAW

Szczycinski: Missa de Angelis

Carl Reinecke, a German composer, conductor, pianist and pedagogue was one of the most influentual, many-sided and respected individuals in the musical life of the 19th century. This release contains a set of Reinecke's compositions for clarinet, horn and piano. The works featured here come from different periods of Reinecke's career and enable us to follow the development in his compositional style.

Johann Joachim Quantz, in his handbook for transverse flute written in 1752, wrote of the composer Georg Philipp Telemann: “I wish to especially recommend Telemann’s trios written in the French style, many of which he had already fashioned thirty or more years ago.” Georg Philipp Telemann not only gained the admiration of Quantz, but his pieces are still frequently performed and recorded today. For this album, his Concerto di camera in G minor, Double Concertos in A minor and E minor, and Suite in A minor have been recorded. Performing these timeless works are three outstanding period instrumentalists, Bolette Roed, Reiko Ichise, and Alexis Kossenko.

STACHOWSKI - STRING QUARTETS

Julius Zarebski gained recognition with his masterpiece the quintet for piano and strings that he completed in 1885. He had just enough time to finish it in Brussels before he died when he was 32 years old. Born four years after Chopin died, Julius Zarebski was trained in Vienna where he studied the work of Mozart, Beethoven, and especially Brahms. His writing reflects the influences of these composers, but even more so the influence of his idol- Liszt. Under the anecdotal, benign appearance of his brief piano works, one of the most singular geniuses of Romanticism weaves a sumptuous work, revolutionary in its own way more by discourse than by harmony. Behind these virtuosic pieces, Zarebski invents a new pianistic language that would herald in the age of Szymanowski. This release contains his complete extant works.

Whoever studies to be a pianist or guitarist has struggled at one point with a musical score by Anton Diabelli. Still well-known today as a composer of short teaching pieces, he was famous in his time for religious music. Maybe most importantly, he was one of the great publishers of his time, and contributed to the renown of Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. Published in 1823 as Opus 120, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations are the highlight of his piano works. These variations are paired with Suite for Piano by South Korean composer and pianist Jeajoon Ryu. Won-Sook Hur is one of the most well-known pianists in Korea. Critics have said her playing sounds like “smooth waves.” After completing her degree from the College of Music at The Seoul National University, Korea, she went on to receive a degree from the Universitat fur Musik und darstellende Kunst in Wien, Austria. During her studies in Vienna she won several prizes, including first prize in the Valsesia International Piano Competition. Since 2014 she has released albums exclusively for DUX, which have included works by Rachmaninoff, Frank, Lee (world premiere recording), Ravel, Beethoven, and Ryu (world premiere recording).

TELEMANN: CANTATAS: NO. 18 A

The origins of Sanctus Adalbertus Op. 71by Henryk Miko?aj Górecki and the way in which the work was brought to the public are very special. It was written in 1997 to commemorate the millennium of the martyr’s death of Saint Adalbert. It was to have been premiered that year during Pope John Paul II’s pilgrimage to Poland. These plans did not materialize, however, due to the composer’s illness. The autograph score of the oratorio was discovered in the Górecki archives by his son Miko?aj. On November 4, 2015, five years after the composer’s death, Sanctus Adalbertus had its world premiere at the ICE Congress Centre in Kraków, during a gala concert to mark the 70th anniversary of PWM Polish Music Publishers. The composition is often referred to as ‘the big Adalbert’, following ‘the small Adalbert’, the cantata Salve sidus Polonorum Op. 72 (2000), whose material is based on the third movement of Sanctus Adalbertus. In writing Sanctus Adalbertus, Górecki used the Book of Psalms and his own texts, in Polish, Latin and Czech. As the outstanding expert on Górecki Adrian Thomas, observed, the oratorio’s musical material contains “references both to Edward Elgar’s late--Romantic style and to the relic of Polish early music, the medieval chant ‘Bogurodzica’ (Mother of God).” According to Thomas, Sanctus Adalbertus is a natural successor to Beatus vir (1979), Górecki’s psalm for baritone, choir and orchestra. Both are scored for almost identical forces, with a soprano part added to Sanctus Adalbertus. Beatus vir was written in praise of St Stanislaus (Stanis?aw in Polish), the Bishop of Kraków, who died a martyr’s death. The two compositions were part of Górecki’s plan of a cycle of works on Polish saints, which is said to have included also an oratorio devoted to Saint Maksymilian Maria Kolbe, a martyr of Auschwitz.

Tears, that visible attribute of sadness, can, paradoxically, be a form of purification, a dam against despair. Sadness caused by an individual or collective experience of evil, transformed into a Christian hope for the fate altering, sometimes evokes creative thought, allows to enclose the experience within a form of artistic message. For Christians, the deepest, traumatic, experience of evil is Christ’s crucifixion. Perceived as a drama of the whole humanity, redeemed for future salvation and victory of good, it has found a special form in works of art created throughout centuries: paintings, musical pieces, poetry. Passion and Stabat Mater are canonical musical forms related to the drama of Golgotha. The latter introduces Christ’s co-suffering Mother into the scope of His drama. Numerous composers wrote music to the 13th-century sequence, the authorship of which is attributed to the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi. They were creating their own visions of a mother’s suffering, in which, over time, people began to perceive the drama of all mothers who weep their children. Przez ?zy (Tearfully) – such is the title of an album including pieces which are important not only due to their artistic merits. The content of each work touches upon matters fundamental for every human being, but also for the fate of a nation plagued by defeats, yet unceasingly rising from each one. That struggle often finds company in art and the beauty it contains, which in turn, to quote Norwid, is the shape of love.

The Double Concerto for Viola and Cello was written in 2012 to mark the bicentenary of the Musikverein in Vienna. It is a work with a clearly defined, neo-romantic architecture. Even though the composer employs profuse semi-tones as a form-shaping element, the music also abounds in consonances that soften the many tensions therein. The narration’s starting point is determined by the opening cantabile for the two solo instruments, which is of a romantic character. As the music proceeds, the two architectural planes start to be mutually interwoven, with a free dialogue between them lasting until the end of the piece. It is worth drawing the listener’s attention to the highly inventive solo cadenzas that are introduced by the composer in order to differentiate the mood of the work’s various sections. The version for accordion and orchestra which is featured in the present recording casts a fresh light on the composition. All the contrasts that are responsible for the structural fragmentation unexpectedly gain even sharper contours. Moreover, all the solo interludes, in view of the distinctly different character of the accordion, make the polemics between the neo-romantic and playful aesthetics even more exciting. Concerto per flauto ed orchestra da camera was written in 1992. Commissioned by L’Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, it was dedicated to flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal. The work falls into two extensive movements: Andante and Allegro con brio. Lyrical fragments of a somewhat impressionistic provenance predominate in the first movement. In contrast to the Double Concerto for Viola and Cello, this work is notable for its highly autonomous solo part, which on the one hand constitutes an intriguing counterpoint with the orchestral interludes, while on the other being very much to the forefront. Brief but strongly chromaticised melodic motifs are an important element that shapes the architecture of the first movement.

The opera Faniska, which premiered at the K�rntnertor Theatre in Vienna in 1806, is said to have been enthusiastically received by both Haydn and Beethoven. The libretto is available in German and Italian, and is based on the melodrama Les Mines de Pologne by the Nancy-born French playwright Ren� Charles Guilbert de Pix�r�court. The action takes place in Poland, from where the first recording of the opera also comes. Zamoski, the Baron of Sandomir, orders his henchman Oranski to kidnap Faniska, the wife of the Baron of Rava, Rasinski. Faniska is taken to Zamoski's castle. Various attempts to free her fail. After being imprisoned with her husband, the couple finally manage to escape with Rasno's help. Rasinski's soldiers attack the castle, Zamoski is killed, Oranski is captured and put on trial. Faniska is sometimes called an op�ra comique, but more often (and more accurately) an opera in three acts or even a 'grand heroic opera'. Like Lodo�ska, Faniska is a typical example of the 'rescue opera' genre. Cherubini invested all his melodic talent in this work. Compared to Lodo�ska his talent has clearly gained in quality. Natalia Rubis sings the technically difficult title role very sensitively and with a beautifully led but somewhat tight voice. Krystian Adam remains all too pale as her husband Rasinski. In the role of Rasno Piotr Kalna's singing is rather strained. The supporting roles are more or less well cast. With only one really good voice, that of bass-baritone Robert Gierlach as Zamoski, the vocal side is somewhat weak. On the other hand, Lukasz Borowicz is all the more impressive as the conductor. He puts a lot of lightness and transparency into the orchestral part, which he controls admirably, enlivening it with many details. Because Cherubini's score is so imaginative and so closely connected to the drama, this counts for a lot.

The present album is another in a series of albums featuring works by Andrzej Dziadekfor large instrumental and vocal-instrumental forces. Like the previous release in the series, it demonstrates a wide range of the composer's achievements in these genres. The album includes Poem for orchestra (1987), Concerto for violin and orchestra (1992), and Symphony No. 2 'Te Deum' (2000-2002). Arranged in chronological order, they give a cross-section of the com-poser's attainments achievements over a period of fifteen years. This is how the composer describes his music: "The style of my compositions is the consequence of my faith in the power of expression in music's fundamental elements: melody, rhythm, harmony. This is not to say that the impact of the music should be easy." Dziadek treats musical tradition as his source and has respect for it's refinement and identity. An ironic mix of styles and playing games with listeners are alien to him. In his distanced, intimate utterance, the composer builds a dialogue with long-gone conventions, evoking their various aspects with reverence.

Composer, musicologist, graphic artist and professor Bugoslaw Schaeffer has more than 550 musical works to his credit, across 23 different musical genres, and his 44 plays have been translated into 17 languages. His works have been performed to great acclaim at home and abroad. Born 6th June 1929 in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), he died 1st July 2019 in Salzburg. The two works on this release were produced in Polish Radio Experimental Studio, and the featured artists include pianists Kuba Sokolowski and Piotr Zabrodzki, with mastering by Piotr Zabrodzki.

A hot-tempered troublemaker with a violent temperment and an arrogant personality, Louis Marchand was a virtuoso harpsichordist and organist to King Louis XIV. On the present release, Ewa Mrowca presents his Suite en re mineur, Suite en sol mineur, and La Venitienne. Ewa MROWCA was born in Kraków, Poland. She started studying the harpsichord at the age of 12. She graduated with honors from the Music Academy in Kraków, where she studied with Elżbieta Stefańska. She also completed her studies under Nicholas Parle at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, and with Jörg-Andreas Bötticher at the Schola Canto-rum Basiliensis in Basel. She performs as a soloist and with early music ensembles including Altberg Ensemble, Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense, Capella dell’Ospedale della Pietà Venezia, and Il Giardino d’Amore. In addition to Poland, she has performed in France, Germany, Spain, China, Japan and the United States.

On the present release Duo Wolanska/Gajda presents transcriptions for Piano and Accordion. DUO WOLAŃSKA/GAJDA is an unusual chamber music ensemble. The combination of piano and accordion opens unlimited performance possibilities. Two solo, independent instruments collide with each other on a sonoristic level, thus creating a new quality of instrumental dialogue. Established in 2014, the ensemble is formed by pianist Julia Wolańska-Gajda and accordionist Michał Gajda. On a regular basis, the artists give concerts in Poland and abroad (New York, Virginia, Arkansas, Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Austria, Germany, or the Netherlands). They have already performed in the most prestigious concert halls in the world: New York’s Carnegie Hall, Berliner Philharmonie, Mozarteum Saal in Salzburg, Musikverein in Vienna, Kioi Hall in Tokyo, or Guri Art Hall in Seoul. Duo Wolańska/Gajda has won a number of coveted awards and accolades. They are prizewinners of, among others, the Gold Medal in the 4th Manhattan International Music Competition (2019), 1st prize in the 1st Vienna International Music Competition (2019), 1st prize in the Salzburg Grand Prize Virtuoso Inter-national Music Competition (2018), 1st prize in the 54th Internationaler Akkordeonwettbewerb Klingenthal (2017), ‘Top Winner’ 1st prize in the 25th Ibla Grand Prize World Music Competition in Ragusa (2016), or 1st prize in the Val Tidone International Music Competitions (2015).