The music of the English Virginalists (virginal is a smaller variety of harpsichord) dating back to the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries served as an inspiration for the French harpsichord style, which, after several years, returned to Great Britain. It was adopted in such a mature form by the most outstanding composer born in England. Henry Purcell, conscious of the music's sources, enriched it with subsequent references to native musical traditions and with his own original compositional technique. The extremely meticulous interpretations of eight harpsichord suites by Purcell, performed by Ewa Rzetecka-Niewiadomska, convincingly confirm the artistry and aesthetic value of these compositions, with plenty of charm and stylistic treats, which, due to extra-musical reasons, are on the margin of the mainstream of the history of music.

POLISH TENORS FOR REMEMBRANCE

The continuing popularity of Christmas carols in Poland, the on-going tradition of listening to and singing them in family circles and among friends, is a kind of phenomenon in present-day Europe. The present CD contains such works as Zygmunt Noskowski’s Carol and O gwiazdeczko with music by Kazimierz Lubomirski. Some of the recorded carols have fallen into oblivion. Others, such as O gwiazdo Betlejemska have undergone a revival and are sung by both choirs and church congregations. Polish Lyrical Songs for Christmas’ features soprano Barbara Zarnowiecka and pianist Szymon Kowalczyk.

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

Includes work(s) by Krzysztof Penderecki. Ensemble: Cracow Philharmonic. Conductor: Wojciech Czepiel.

KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI: Polish Chamber Choir Schola CantorumGedenensis/Jan Lukaszewski. KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI - COMPLETE CHORAL WORKS.

Penderecki: Clarinet Concerto - Flute Concerto - Agnus Dei

Strangely compelling.

You would expect Krzysztof Penderecki to draw the best out of his musicians in his own work, especially after an impressive track record in this field in the past. I listened to the re-release of his recordings for EMI from the 1970s, and these are still impressive even when compared with this new digital recording.

Taking the Capriccio, the earlier recording is a tad more compact at 11:38, but easily equals the new recording in terms of drama. The soloist is set closer with the new recording, so that the balance is less natural in terms of what you might experience in the concert hall, but in all other respects this new recording is an improvement. The detail in terms of instrumentation comes through far more clearly – percussion of course, but all of those other sliding and quivering exotic sounds from all quarters, like the bowed saw for instance, are revealed in all their glory. I’ll still listen to the earlier recording for its chilling atmosphere, but recommend the new one for sheer clarity.

De Natura Sonoris No.2 is an early 1970s chiller classic, continuing and developing some of the textures in Capriccio in a purely orchestral context. Again comparing the EMI recording, made when the piece was brand new, this new Dux version has more immediacy and clarity, but more importantly shows up some of the ways in which Penderecki’s view on the work has changed over the years. There are some dynamic differences in the balance here and there, and those dry, choking clusters in the strings in the beginning are taken more slowly and with less of a sense of murderous drama. Strangely, even though the new recording is a good two minutes shorter than the old one, the new version seems slower: listening to the cacophonous brass and strings beyond four minutes into the piece, there is a greater sense of drive and urgency in the old EMI version. Where Penderecki saves time in the new recording is by compressing the longer stretches of static atmosphere earlier in the work, which are less of a novelty these days. Either way, the old analogue tape coped badly with those fireman’s bells and the sheer weight of noise from the massed brass and percussion in this work, making this new recording a welcome alternative. The sliding brass beyond 5:00, with its conversational interruptions, is a definite goose-bump moment, and the final held note under that scraped percussion is like a small chorus of drowned angels.

Penderecki’s more recent style, in any case since the ultra-romanticism of the early 1980s, has in some way proved even more controversial than his earlier avant-gardism, and the Piano Concerto does sit rather strangely with its ghostly forebears on this disc. The work was written after a great deal of procrastination by the composer, who “refrained from writing a piano concerto for many years because I was afraid [of the] many excellent concertos written in the 20th century.” The final push came from a commission from New York, with Emanuel Ax and the Philadelphia Orchestra in mind as performers. Started in June 2001, the work was originally to have followed the Capriccio design, but after the terrorist attacks of September 2001 the light-hearted nature of such a title seemed inappropriate. The work took on a more serious character, and the non-religious title ‘resurrection’, which refers to mankind’s universal desire for renewal and re-birth after disaster and crisis.

The style of the work is linked to Penderecki’s 1996 seventh Symphony, The Seven Gates of Jerusalem, but also integrates the grand stylistic gestures of Mahler and some of the romanticism of the great piano composers such as Rachmaninov. At over 30 minutes in duration it certainly has a symphonic scale, and with no intermission between any of the sections the uninterrupted musical narrative is a ride of considerable intensity. If I have any problem with this work – and I do consider it a substantial masterpiece – it is the difficulty one has in establishing an individual character to either the source, the composer, or the intended message – the expressive aim. I don’t claim that all music should have immediate clarity in either of these aspects, but I doubt if I have any colleagues even in the musical fraternity who would be able to put their finger on what is going on here. I don’t mean this in a technical sense – the work is about as difficult to listen to as Shostakovich’s 1st Symphony; but in terms of where, what, why, huh?

The booklet notes may have something of an answer to give. ‘The piano part is treated in a very original way in as much as… it explores first and foremost the piano’s percussive qualities.’ Yes, but not ‘in contrast to the major works of the piano literature’ as far as the 20th century goes: composers since Bartók have been doing little else. In any case, there is plenty of running up and down the keyboard in fairly standard romantic style, so I don’t feel any great claims can be made for originality in the solo part. More telling is that ‘the sound idiom employed by the composer harks back to the great symphonic tradition of the turn on the 19th century’. This push-me-pull-you treatment results in something akin to Saint-Saëns and Busoni fighting under a duvet, with the eclectic spirit of John Adams and the hothouse mania of Scriabin acting as referees. One of the central elements in the piece is a chorale, whose introduction at 7:10 is sheer White-Christmas Hollywood. The whole thing quasi-concludes with a final massive statement of this main chorale ‘theme’ at 28:17, with recorded bells kicking in at 29:23 which are as corny as hell. The only thing we miss at this point is a few blasts from a cannon, and the spirit of Tchaikovsky might be appeased as well: the title ‘resurrection’ might as well stand for a ‘revival’ of this way of expressing triumph of the human spirit over destructive forces.

Despite all this the Piano Concerto is strangely compelling – one of those works you know you’ll be playing again, if only to remind yourself of the strange conundrums it proposes – was it really like that? Yes, it really is, and one has to stand in awe of the way in which Penderecki rather audaciously and uniquely creates a new work out of such a gallimaufry of antique recipes. I do however wonder quite what place it will ultimately take in the canon of 21st century musical art.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

PADEREWSKI Piano Concerto. Polish Fantasy • Kevin Kenner (pn); Marcin Na??cz-Niesio?owski, cond; Podlasie Op O • DUX 733 (55:40)


Well, I’ve certainly been immersed in Paderewski lately … at least, Paderewski at one or two removes, which is not the same thing as the real deal. First, there was the Homage to Paderewski set on Hyperion 67903, which I reviewed in Fanfare 35:4, and now this new recording of his concerto and Polish Fantasy. As I expected, the concerto is very much in the big, late-Romantic mold of Brahms, Rubinstein, and other composers, but it’s a solid piece built around native Polish rhythms and with an interesting and exciting development section in the first movement. (In fact, at one point a solo piano passage sounds a little bit like a Russian folk song.) Although it is said that the second theme is an evocation of Chopin, it is an original melody and not one borrowed from that composer. The slow movement is even more delicate than Chopin’s andantes , almost Debussyan in its sparse use of the piano in the beginning and actually built around a three-part tune. Eventually, this delicate melody becomes more energetic, but never so much that the initial impression is forgotten. The lively rondo finale, based on a krakowiak, is likewise contrasted with a stately chorale that eventually caps the piece.


I find the Polish Fantasy an even more interesting work, having a more melancholy cast and somewhat related to Liszt’s Hungarian fantasies. It can be divided into four sections, each with its own character, though they are bound together by a mazurka-like motif. It is very nearly a concerto in itself, running over 21 minutes. I suspect that the composer refrained from calling it one simply because the four sections are played without a break, and such works in his day were almost always relegated to the “fantasy” category.


Kevin Kenner, despite his American origins, proves himself to be fully up to the task of interpreting this Eastern European music. Like all modern pianists, he eschews the slightly out-of-synch coordination of hands favored by Paderewski and many other pianists of his generation, preferring to play in a clean, rhythmically consistent manner, but he certainly gets the feel of Polish music very well. Of course, having a Polish orchestra and conductor helps, and I am more than a little amused to see that the orchestra hails from Bia?ystok (known as the “Jerusalem of Poland” because of its heavy Jewish population and the birthplace of Dr. Albert Sabin, immortalized by Mel Brooks with the name of his principal character—Max Bialystock—in his zany comedy The Producers ). All concerned play beautifully on this CD, giving us about as convincing a reading of these works as can be imagined. One can find more visceral and exciting readings from Janina Fialkowska, supported by the great Antoni Wit, on Naxos 8554020, and by the late, great Earl Wild (the concerto on Elán 2266 with Arthur Fiedler and the London Symphony, the Fantasy on Ivory 72010 with conductor Massimo Freccia), but this recording meets the demands of the music with a more convincing nationalistic flavor than Wild and less clattery sound than we get from Fialkowska’s piano. Recommended without hesitation for both the unusual repertoire and its presentation.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

During his stay in Rome in 1903, Feliks Nowowiejski, at the height of his fame after receiving the prestigious Giacomo Meyerbeer award, set out to compose an oratorio based on the novel Quo vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz. However, he was not the first composer who thought about a musical version of this captivating story from the times of Emperor Nero. Five years before, another Polish composer Emil Mlynarski, began working on his opera Ligia, which, however, remained unfinished. Although to this day at least six opera reinterpretations of Quo Vadis have been staged, none of them came even close to the achievement of the 26-year-old Nowowiejski in terms of the scale of artistic success. The original version is presented on this release. The score, consisting of five parts, shows some influence of great tableaux evoking the style of Meyerbeer’s grand opera; it also contains Liszt-style leitmotifs, impressive quasi-Handel choral parts and a modernized neo-Bach counterpoint, which is possibly an influence of Max Reger.

GRAZYNA BACEWICZ: Bartlomiej Kominek, piano; Radom Chamber Orchestra/Maciej Zoltowski. GRAZYNA BACEWICZ - MUSIC FOR CHAMBER ORCHESTRA: Divertimento forstring orchestra (1965); Piano Quintet No. 1 (trans. for piano and string orchestra)(1952); Concerto for string orchestra (1948).

MONIUSZKO Latin Mass in D?. Funeral Mass in g. St. Peter’s Mass in B? • Henryk Wojnarowski, cond; Andrzej Bia?ko (org); Marta Boberska (sop); Agnieszka Rehlis (alt); Rafa? Bartmi?ski (ten); Jaros?aw Br?k (bs); Warsaw PCh • DUX 657 (76:42)


Stanis?aw Moniuszko (1819–1872) was born near Minsk (Polish territory at the time), grew up in Warsaw (then de facto Russian), and studied in Berlin (capital of the Prussian Province of Brandenburg). In part because of the (Polish) patriotic-nationalist sentiment ( à la Sibelius or Grieg) of his operas, he became the national Polish composer and remains so to this day. Only Karol Szymanowski and the “lost son” Frederic Chopin share a similar level of popularity. Moniuszko would make for an excellent introduction to a college primer on “Central European History in the 19th Century,” but the Polish record company Dux wisely focuses on his music instead.


Issued so far are songs of Moniuszko, his two string quartets, and two of his 10 operas. To that, Dux adds here three masses for organ and chorus: the Latin Mass in D? (1870), the Funeral Mass in G Minor (1871), and the Polish St. Peter’s Mass in B? (1871). The works, composed to “enrich, strengthen, console,” vacillate between Mozartean beauty and romanticized kitsch, but for most of their duration, the music stays on the sheerly beautiful, not shallow, side of things (and, I suppose, how to praise God, if not through beauty). The D? Kyrie and the Funeral Mass’s Offertorium are high points; how Moniuszko writes for two intertwining female voices—especially in the Benedictus of the St. Peter’s Mass—is wonderful to listen to. The Requiem eternam dabbles prettily: Romantic chill-out with a sacred veneer.


None of the soloists, native Polish singers, show real weaknesses (except, perhaps, the nasal tenor). The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir, directed by Henryk Wojnarowski, navigates ably through the simple scores. The Polish St. Peter’s Mass, which should be ideally suited for boys’ choir (with low voices), is as simple as the other two masses, though not as immediately appealing, apart from the aforementioned Benedictus. None of this is great music, but whether heard in church service or on CD, it is music that can be easily appreciated. If that doesn’t amount to making this a spectacular disc, it still makes it a beautiful one, most especially because of the Latin Mass. Easily recommended to those who like Romantic sacred music while being able to forgo bombast. The greatest effect it had on me—except for moments of extreme relaxation in rush-hour metro traffic—was a now awakened, very strong curiosity for his string quartets.


FANFARE: Jens F. Laurson

The Polish Chamber Choir '441 Hz' with director, Anna Wilczewska in one of the year's best collections spotlighting the works of modern choral masters. With a breadth of composers representing the world ranging from Eric Whitacre, Ola Gjello and Andrejz Panufnik and much more, the sublime choral tapestries woven by '441 Hz' adorn these compositions both secular and sacred with gripping power and great sweep

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.