The Great Organ of the Lichen Basilica

Wienawski: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, Fantaisie brillante

The instrumental concerto occupies a very prominent place in the music of Krzysztof Penderecki. This fact is related to the great life force exhibited by this genre in twentieth century and in contemporary music. It is stimulated by commissions from virtuosos and by audience expectations; also favourable is the composers’ flexibility in approaching the form, whose chief idea continues to be the juxtaposition of the solo instrument and the orchestra. The violin and viola works presented on this CD are not only interesting, concrete realizations of the concertare idea in Penderecki’s music, but also examples of this composer’s sonic language and style in the period of his creativity which Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski called a “time of dialogue with the regained past”.

This new release is another publication presenting the artistic output of Krzysztof Meyer, one of the most outstanding Polish contemporary composers. The three original songs on this album are instrumental music, in which various narratives are composed of different narratives and dramaturgies; from full musical erudition Hommage à Johannes Brahms , through virtuoso Concerto No. 2 for flute and orchestra to reflective Farewell Music , devoted to Witold Lutosławski. The orchestra's culminating piece is Mass for mixed choir, organ and orchestra - as much musical expression, full of intelligent references to the history of perhaps the most demanding genre in the history of European composition art.

Karolina Piatkowska-Nowicka and Bogna Czerwinska-Szymula, highly valued instrumentalists and chamber musicians, present three pieces sharing not only the instruments (violin and piano) for which they are written. The pieces presented on the release grow from a common root: their authors - Grazyna Bacewicz, Aleksander Tansman and Krzysztof Penderecki - belong to the most outstanding Polish composers of the 20th century. They also share the cyclical manner of shaping the piece, yet the approach towards this issue differs among the composers. The extremely varied in terms of emotion Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano by Bacewicz reveals neo-romantic features; neoclassical Faintaisie for Violin and Piano by Tansman astonishes with its care for sound colour, whereas monumental Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano by Penderecki intrigues with the musical language which, based on the twelve-note scale, treats it in a melodic and harmonic manner.

Martín Palmeri began to work on the Magnificat dedicated to mixed choir, soprano and mezzo-soprano solo, string orchestra, bandoneon, and piano in 2010. He was guided by an idea to create a piece, which would be stylistically and emotionally close to the Misa a Buenos Aires – Misatango, yet much more difficult for the performers, and more sophisticated as far as the rhythm and polyphony are concerned. The composition was ended in 2012 and its world premiere took place in Milan. The source of the text of the Magnificat is the Gospel of Luke (1:46-55). The evangelist consciously combines three pictures into a triptych: Annunciation, Visitation, and the Marian Magnificat. The Humble Servant is chosen for the Mother of the Son of God. She starts a journey to visit her relative, Elizabeth, who will soon become mother of John the Baptist. Elizabeth greets Mary and She answers her with words of a canticle praising God. While Palmeri was composing the Magnificat, he was drawing inspiration from the Argentinian tango nuevo popularized in the greatest extent by Astor Piazzolla, who modernized the traditional Argentinian tango and enriched it with elements of jazz and Argentinian folklore; however, the references to the tango in the Magnificat do not concern only the orchestral layer of the piece. Despite the fact that the basic carrier of the tango’s idiom are the bandoneon and the orchestra, its element also crosses the vocal layer of the piece, as it is also the solo voices and choir that abound in the tango rhythms. The bandoneon in Palmeri’s music changes its facets as a chameleon: once it rhythmically energizes the sound layer, the other time it limits itself to highlight the accents occurring on particularly important words, and sometimes it accompanies the solo voices duo, subtly surrounding their narration.

The music on this album demonstrates Sikorski’s unerring feeling for harmony and register; the “minimalism” of these pieces was natural, the repetitions never arbitrary. This is piano music, par excellence. The improvisation for prepared piano which follows is a humble tribute, elegiac, full of echoes and personal reminiscences of the man and his music. On my return to England in 1965 we lost touch...our paths never crossed again. But the memory remains. Strong and clear. They were good times. - JT

SONGS

Chopin: Complete Works for Piano & Orchestra, Vol. 2

This recording of various piano works by Rachmaninov, Scriabin, and Prokofiev, played by Konrad Skolarski, has received rave reviews all throughout Europe.

MISSA PULCHERRIMA MOTETS

SZYMANOWSKI Violin Concertos: No. 1; No. 2 • Alena Baeva (vn); Bogus?aw Dawidow, cond; Opole PSO • DUX 575 (49:31)


Alena Baeva is a sultrily attractive young woman—a matter the open-out pasteboard sleeve, with its four fetching full-page color photographs, makes inescapable. Through both works she maintains a guilelessly fluent, sweetly seductive croon in even the most raucous passages, though her cadenzas are reeled off—albeit in startling coruscations—as if they held no expressive secrets. In these works it is not enough to play beautifully. Baeva alternates moments of poetry with stretches of faceless proficiency. The Opole band is a cut above bush league, but one immediately discerns a lack of direction, slant, or interpretive thrust in these splashy readings. Dawidow simply keeps things moving at a relaxed pace, where Wit (with Ilya Kaler, Naxos 8.557981, Fanfare 31:1), say, wallows in Szymanowski’s sensuous scoring, or Kazimierz Kord (with Kaja Danczowska, Accord 011 314, Fanfare 24:3 ) makes the most of his ecstatic, hallucinatory shifts. Both bring immediate lift and animating focus where Dawidow beats time.


Superbly balanced, glowingly detailed, walloping sound—with the soloist brilliantly on top—may persuade you that these are better performances than they are. I look forward to hearing Baeva again—in these works, coached and led by a more practiced hand. Recommended as an introduction to a promising artist, and as one of the best sounding CDs of the year.

FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis

SONATAS AND PARTITAS

PIANO QUINTETS

THREE POLISH TENORS

The Beatles

OVERTURE TO THE BALLET THE CRE

This release offers up 75 minutes of the greatest film music of all time in original arrangements by Krzysztof Lenczowski, performed by Maksym Rzeminski and the Radom Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Dawid Runtz. Maksym Rzeminski graduated from the Primary and Secondary Music School in Kielce in the piano class of Professor Janina Wozniak. He continued his education at the Academy of Music in Krakow in the class of Marek Koziak. He was a multiple scholarship holder of programmes for highly gifted students. He debuted with a symphony orchestra at the age of ten, performing a piano concerto by WA Mozart. He is the winner of the first prize at that Polish Competition in Konin, second prize at the Polish Piano Competition in Olsztyn, second prize at the Polish Piano Competition in Skarzysko-Kamienna, and third prize at the International Chopin Competition in Germany.

In Krzysztof Pendercki's catalogue of works, the ones in which wind instruments play a dominant role actually do not constitute an impressive collection, however, they draw attention with their variety. The four compositions on this new release represent the concertare rule; on the one hand, they document the attempts of investigating the sound nature as well as technical and expressive possibilities of the particular instruments. On the other hand, they serve as a record of Pencerecki's change of style within the period of almost 50 years.

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REVIEW:

The Capriccio for oboe and 11 strings is a genuinely virtuoso piece, as much for the string players as for the soloists, but that provides no problems for the outstanding Sinfonia Iuventus, and Arkadiusz Krupa is a commanding soloist. The epic Horn Concerto, subtitled Winterreise though devoid of any quotations from Schubert, dates from 2008 and is naturally utterly different in style. Its opening, mysterious and portentous, may well constitute the most beautiful two minutes of music the composer has ever written.

– Gramophone

Zielenski: Opera Omnia, Vol. 2 - Offertoria Totius Anni

This new release is an exciting recital from award-winning pianist Lukasz Kwiatkowski that features compositions from J.S. Bach, Camille Saint-Saens, Fryderyk Chopin, and Leopold Godowski. Godowski's works are the cornerstone of the album. The American-Polish composer and pianist wrote more than 200 piano pieces. While many pianists are reluctant to play Godowsky's works due to significant difficulties in their learning process and performing them from memory, Lukasz Kwiatkowski rises to the occasion. Lukasz Kwiatkowski graduated with honors from the Henryk Wieniawski State Primary Music School and the Secondary Music School in Lodz, and later graduated with honors from the Grazyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Lodz. Currently, he is an assistant professor at the Department of Piano at his home University. In addition to teaching, he has a busy concert schedule, and has won numerous awards including at the Kiejstut Bacewuz International Inter-University Chamber Music Competition, the Concerto Trials Final in Cardiff, and the International Chamber Competition in Val Tidonne.

Agata Kielar-Dlugosz, recognized Polish flutist and winner of numerous music awards, presents a recital consisting of works by Polish composers whose work is rooted in various popular trends of the 20th century. These gems were created somewhat off the beaten track of the artistic activity of their creators, commonly associated with other forms and different instruments, which probably influenced the relatively low popularity of these works. With this release, Agata Kiela-Dlugosz and pianist Andrzej Jungiewicz decided to remind the music lovers in a very interesting interpretation. Agata Kielar-Dlugosz is a graduate of the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater in Munich. She also completed post-graduate studies at the Hochschule fur Musik in Weimar and Yale University in New Haven. She is a prizewinner of international flute competitions, and performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician and has given premieres of several flute concertos which were dedicated to her by composers such as Pawel Mykietyn, Piotr Moss, and Pavel Lukaszewski. She has served as Principal Flute with the Bayerisches Symphonieorchester Munchen, the Munchener Kammerorchester and Bach Collegium in Munich.

To say that Sikorski’s music is thought-inspiring is not enough. What is more important, it forces us to feel, react, vibrate. And in the case of the repertoire presented in this album, it introduces us to the very essence of the piano. Sikorski’s understanding of the instrument and its possibilities was remarkable. His sounds pierce through us. Only the composer, who fully existed within this sphere of sound, could so convincingly deal with the consequences of the sound’s harmony and repetition, its crescendo and decrescendo, its silence. Tension in Sikorski’s music results from the possibility and willingness to both reveal and conceal emotions with a single stroke of the pen. Passion expressed, passion suppressed, beauty, intensity, solitude, richness of sound and shortage are its essence. These works are beautifully presented by pianist Ezabolcs Esztenyi and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Zsolt Nagy.

Violin Concertos for Children, Vol. 2

• V Symphony (pronounced vi) is the second symphony in the catalogue of Maciej Zielinski’s work. • The title of Zielinski’s symphony is no accident. The composer evokes both the number 5 and the visual aspect of the Roman letter V. • Lukasz Borowicz conducts the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra.