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.

Composed in 2013, Requiem for the Living by Dan Forrest was commissioned by the Hickory North Carolina Choral Society to commemorate the 35th anniversary of its artistic activity. The premiere of the piece met with approval of music critic John W. Lambert, who drew attention to, among others, the numerous ingenious rhythmic solutions used in the composition. While writing Requiem, Forrest also made some innovations including the verbal layer. In addition to Latin texts, traditional for the funeral mass, the composer introduces mass quotes, usually not appearing in the traditional requiem, as well as short fragments from books of the Old Testament (e.g. from the Book of Job). This album covers a complete performance of the aforementioned composition, which is one of the first Polish studio performances of the American artist’s music.

Nowadays Krzysztof Meyer is considered one of the greatest Polish composers. Initially, he pursued an education as a pianist, but his subsequent contacts with Krzysztof Penderecki and Stanislaw Wiechowicz contributed to the fact that Meyer quickly revealed his compositional talent to the global audience. The artist has succumbed to many musical fascinations, which is why his works often combine the influences of various composing techniques. This album is another project signed by DUX, familiarizing music lovers with the colorful work of Meyer. The album contains two vocal and instrumental compositions: Songs of the Lonely Dreamer and the Symphony No. 8 Sinfonia da requiem inspired by crimes against the Jewish nation. Both pieces, concerning diametrically distant themes, perfectly illustrate the composer’s ability to flexibly adapt the musical language and applied composing techniques to overtones and themes of vocal and instrumental works.

Krzysztof Penderecki’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 2 (1982) was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic and dedicated to that orchestra and Mstislav Rostropovich. It belongs to the compose-r’s most original and developed concertos, one in which Penderecki’s quasi-romantic ideas are blended with highly dissonant, sonoristic episodes that significantly enrich the work’s highly complex architecture. Even though the composition falls into eight distinct segments, Penderecki manages to achieve what seems to be impossible given the intricacies of the score – to create the impression of narrative cohesion. The work’s formal design is based on repetitions and dissonances. A strongly chromaticised motif, which reappears in brief episodes during the piece in various configurations, is the starting point for the formal development. As the work unfolds, it is almost impossible to pinpoint precisely the factor which determines its narrative development, in view of the numerous aesthetic collages and the incessant changes in expression and harmony. Moreover, Penderecki unexpectedly embarks on ingenious experiments aimed at the maximum use of the orchestra’s potential. Penderecki’s Sonata for cello and orchestra is an example of the composer’s strictly avant garde and sonoristic thinking of the mid-1960s. Written in 1964, the work had its world premiere in the same year at the Donaueschinger Musiktage, with Siegfried Palm, a cellist who specialized in contemporary music, as the soloist. The work consists of two parts which have much common in terms of expression but are texturally diverse. The overall mood is one of anxiety and inevitability. The smoothly-flowing, quiet narration of the first movement is based on long motifs in the strings. In the second movement, the mosaic of ideas undergoes a far-reaching change, with the percussion group joining the soloist in the foreground as a counterpoint to the cello.

Henryk Mikolaj G�recki (1933-2010) thought two sentences in his search for the answer to the question what music is to be closest to capturing the root of the problem - the words of Zbigniew Herbert: "art is a transmission of important spiritual experiences" and the thought of Pope John XXIII: "it is a common thing, but the way is uncommon." The impact of both definitions on the composer's oeuvre is particularly evident in the songs he had been writing since his first compositional attempts (falling in the mid-1950s) until 1996. Although G�recki's songs do not belong to the composer's dominant expressive genres, he would return to them on a regular basis, considering them an important way of articulating the deepest, most personal, intimate experiences. This album, thanks to excellent soloists highly appreciated around the world, not only allows us to commune with the art of the outstanding Polish composer, but is also a great opportunity to hear the most representative Polish vocalists of several generations.

Marcelo Nisinman is an Argentine composer and bandoneon virtuoso, and an acclaimed soloist, invited by orchestras and festival organizers around the world. He pursues his musical passion in the rhythm of tango with the Baltic Neopolis Orchestra, a Szczecin chamber orchestra. The material had to include pieces by Piazzolla and the classics of Argentine music. Classical rhythms, original works, and musical traditions of the port Buenos Aires in an innovative arrangement. Although they are accompanied by an orchestra from a completely different port, as Nisinman himself claims: depth, attention to details, and brilliance with which the Baltic Neopolis Orchestra played. This music is delightful and confirms the thesis that art knows no boundaries.

In the Polish film "Nie Zostawiaj Mnie" ("Leave Me Not") 18-year-old Sid differs from his peers who engage in easy and safe plans for the future on the edge of adulthood. He chooses his own path and doesn't intend to live up to the expectations of his parents or teachers. Expelled from a few schools already, he gets his last chance to take his A-levels. At the new high school he meets people who influence him greatly. The dramatic fate of this group of angry young men forces Sid to fight not only for friendship but also for the love of his life. This release features the soundtrack from this coming-of-age classic.

Born in Debica on November 23, 1933, Krzysztof Penderecki studied composition with Artur Malawski and Stanislaw Wiechowicz at the State Higher School of Music in Krakow (1954-58). In 1959 three of his works won him the top prizes at the Young Composers’ Competition of the Polish Composers’ Union. A year later, he captured the attention of Western critics with Anaklasis, performed at the Donaueschingen Festival. Penderecki’s international position was consolidated in the 1960s thanks to such pieces as Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, the St. Luke Passion, and Dies irae. This release in the Polish Sinfonia luventus Orchestra's Penderecki series features his Concerto doppio per violin, viola, e orchestra (2012), his Concerto per pianoforte ed orchestra Resurrection (2001-2002 rev. 2007), and his Concertino per tromba e orchestra (2015).

Sir Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846-1916) was considered one of the most brilliant artists of his era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in many European countries. The popularity and respect Tosti enjoyed not only in the musical community can be demonstrated by the fact that in 1909, as the third artist in the history of music, he was honored with the title of the Commander of the Royal Victorian Order along with the right to use the title “sir” before his name. Nowadays, Tosti’s works are enjoying a well-deserved revival, also in Poland. All thanks to excellent bass-baritone Stanislaw Daniel Kotlinski who together with pianist Marco Balderi decided to record both the most popular and less known compositions of Sir Francesco Paolo Tosti.

“Music touching the sphere of the sacred, interpreted as an intimate confession of the composer’s faith, can also be the result of the creator’s facing the quest for answers to eternal questions about mystery and sense of being, the first cause (or maybe even the First Cause) of existence." Born in 1988, Szymon Godziemba-Trytek can boast of considerable achievements in composing, especially in the field of choral music. The new album of the Polish Radio Choir, led by Lithuanian conductor Vaclovas Augustinas, is dedicated to sacred music, particularly close to Szymon Godziemba-Trytek. The album is an interesting exemplification of many innovative measures that the composer introduces both in terms of integrating and modernizing numerous compositional techniques, as well as the selection of sacred texts, adequate to the message of individual pieces.

'Kust' is the name of one of the spring rituals from Ukrainian and Belarusian Polesie. The word itself simply means 'bush', on the Green Sunday (Trijca) represented by a young girl dressed in branches. Our music focuses on those rites and rituals: those that are no longer practiced, those that are being slowly forgotten and finally those that are still practiced today. Our musical roots are complex and varied. Marta Derejzyk, Joanna Gancarczyk, Rafal Kolacki, Joanna Skowronska, Tadeusz Skowronski and Mikolaj Zielinski. You may have heard us in traditional, industrial, folk, psychedelic-rock, hardcore and even techno line-ups. We collect traditional songs ourselves, during field research, in Lower Silesia, in Leczyca, but also in Ukrainian and Belarusian Polesie. We also perform archive queries. We record not only songs, but also the acoustic environment of rituals and even of individual places.

In the works of Stanislaw Moniuszko, next to operas and songs, an important place is occupied by religious music, which he wrote all his life. Nowadays, we know less than 90 of his sacred pieces. This work is very diverse; it consists of such forms as masses, individual mass sections, hymns, psalms, cantatas, litanies, motets, religious songs and their arrangements for organ. The composer would write them from an internal need, he was driven by strong faith and by the consequent imperative to serve God and fellow human beings. The 200th anniversary of the birth of Stanislaw Moniuszko is a great opportunity to familiarize listeners with this somewhat less-known area of the compositional activity of this Polish Romantic.

Can lively rural violin melodies be played on a 'fat' contrabass clarinet? Sure, they can. You only have to be Michal G�rczynski, who has performed on four continents playing Warsaw-Autumnal avant-garde (Kwartludium), experimental improvisations, but also Polish early music (Bastarda) and Jewish (Ircha), Gambian (duo with Buba Kuyateh) or Indonesian themes (the Bidadari project). He has been interested in Polish folk music for a long time. After all, as a composer he has written, among others, Rondo a la krakowiak for screaming pianist and bass clarinet (sic!). He also experimented with 'triple' rhythms in the Slavic-African Polonka. But it was only last year that he dared to take on the challenge of playing authentic folk melodies - with great success - as part of the Radical Polish Songbook project. Over time, free improvisations turned into well-thought-out multi-layered forms, and the magic of the recording studio allowed Michal to turn the bass clarinet into a folk band and even a wind orchestra.

EMOTIONS is a collection of miniatures by outstanding Polish and foreign composers. This unique project of an album with works by Polish composers (including world premiere recordings) for flute and organ is a novelty on the music recording market. It consists of works by, e.g. Zygmunt Noskowski, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Karol Szymanowski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Pawel Lukaszewski, Lukasz Wos, Wojciech Kilar, Michal Lorenc, Gabriel Faur�, Eug�ne Bozza, or Felix Mendelssohn. We hope that this musical showcase, consisting of miniatures created in various eras and styles, will be an interesting suggestion for every music lover.

MODERN LULLABIES is an original album created on the initiative of an outstanding flautist, Agata Kielar-Dlugosz. She invited renowned harpist Carlos Pe�a Montoya to participate in the project. The album contains premiere recordings of works by outstanding Polish and foreign composers for a rare combination of instruments, a duo of flute and harp. The presented collection of miniatures includes lullabies only, i.e. pieces derived directly from the utilitarian tradition of folk song, which over time, permanently and quite seriously, became part of world music. The most famous and well-established compositions in the history of music in the form of a lullaby include Johannes Brahms's Wiegenlied, Op. 49 No. 4 for voice and piano, Fryderyk Chopin's Berceuse in D-flat Major, Op. 57 for piano, or Gabriel Faur�'s Berceuse for violin with piano accompaniment.