A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month for July 2022!

From Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra: “We are pleased to announce the release of another album, which we had the opportunity to co-create. This long awaited album was released by DUX and features two piano concertos by the outstanding Polish post-Romantic Zygmunt Stojowski, a student and friend of Ignacy Jan Paderewski. It is our great pleasure to be able to remind listeners once again of such a valuable repertoire. We are certain that this new album will bring them much joy and satisfaction! However, this is not the first encounter with Stojowki’s music for the Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra. In 2017, alongside pianist Jonathan Plowright and under the direction of Łukasz Borowicz, it recorded the impressive “Symphonic Rhapsody” for piano and orchestra (Warner Classics). The piano concertos included on the album were composed over a fairly long time interval (1891 and 1913). These compositions cleverly demonstrate the evolution of the composer’s style, as well as his loyalty to the late-Romantic idiom.”

Reviews

Zygmunt Stojowski was an out and out romanticist in a world that began to shy away from that style in the mid twentieth century...later in life he was to be the first Polish composer to have an entire concert devoted to his music by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Cast in three movements the Concerto [for Piano no. 1] is a wonderfully constructed work, bristling with difficulties but with some beautiful melodies and moments of high drama. The opening is enigmatic, just a low unharmonised melody in the cellos and double basses before the orchestra gradually joins in, first a horn then the oboe while tension mounts; the drama and pace is driven by an insistent timpani motif that repeats as the tempo increases. The soloist's entry is as dramatic as one could wish with two keyboard-spanning arpeggios before things relax down for the opening theme played by the soloist.

A review in the Musical Times in 1893 remarked that except in the hands of a great pianist it would stand but a poor chance. Thankfully the pianist in this performance, Marek Szlezer, is more than up to the challenge of the entire concerto[.]

The second Concerto, subtitled Prologue, scherzo and variations is just as appealing...it is Witold Wilczek who is the admirable soloist for the second Concerto. The orchestral contributions are as strong and the Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra respond with enthusiasm and verve under the skilful baton of Marek Wroniszewski. [The] Romance of the first piano concerto is conducted by Zofia Guz[,] the orchestra's assistant conductor...she acquits herself well[.]

These two concertos are supreme examples of romantic pianism at its best and with such a wonderful fusion of high quality writing for both orchestra and soloist, great melodic invention and thrilling virtuosity they deserve to be much better known. A great disc.

--MusicWeb International (Rob Challinor)

The music of Michal Spisak was much more recognizable and available to a wide audience during the composer’s lifetime than nowadays. This album contains three compositions of this artist: the Piano Suite (a piece with a transparent texture in which Spisak clearly refers to the Baroque tradition), Sonata for violin and piano (for a change, very rich, diverse texture, full of violin dyad passages, varied in terms of harmony and sound color) and Concerto for two pianos (very spectacular work, extremely diverse, as far as the sound is concerned; highly demanding for the pianists). The aforementioned pieces are a cross-section of the compositional techniques typical of Michal Spisak’s musical language; they also introduce a whole range of neoclassical features confirming the composer’s stylistic affiliation. The music of Michal Spisak broadens the horizons of the musical imagination of both the performer and the recipient-listener, and this album attempts to show its phenomenon, consisting in expressing naturalness and straightforwardness using an extremely wide range of various compositional techniques.

This album of twentieth century clarinet music by Polish composers features works by composers such as Penderecki, Kisielewski, Lutoslawski, and more. The songs range from traditional works such as Serocki’s “Dance for Clarinet and Piano,” to works with more extended techniques such as Dobrowolski’s “Music for magnetic tape and solo bass clarinet.” Mariusz Barszcz studied at the State Music School under Piotr Niecko and at the Music Academy in Lodz with Ryszard Ryczel. He has won several international competitions including First Prize and Grand Prix at the National Clarinet Festival in Piotrkow Trybunalski. Pianist Piotr Saciuk joins Barszcz for this release. Saciuk is a faculty member at the Music Academy in Lodz, and performs regularly both in Poland and across Europe, often accompanying his father, bass singer Andrzej Saciuki.

The history of writing music for the piano is linked to the creation, in 1711, of the prototype of the present day piano and to its evolution from the pianoforte- an instrument suited for salon music-making- to the modern concert grand. The tradition of home music-making dates back therefore to the middle of the 18th century, with piano-playing for four hands very soon becoming its all important element. This gave rise to the development of a repertoire that lent itself to arrangement and performances in such a chamber environment. Compositions of this type had already been penned by Johann Christian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. By the end of the 18th century, compositions for piano four hands had achieved extraordinary popularity. However, only a small amount of the output by Polish composers was published. Thanks to the interest of present-day Polish publishers these forgotten pieces, several of which are presented here, can now be enjoyed by performers and enthusiasts alike.

“From song to symphony, from the Bim-Bom theatre to radio orchestral recordings, from theatre music to performances at the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music. Indeed, it was a career ‘on its own note,’ as the subtitle of Edward Pallasz’s (1936–2019) memoirs says. Surprisingly, the memoirs are devoid of regret that the creator of the Symphony ‘1976’ was not allowed to complete his studies in composition, despite having studying music at lower levels. The road to a genuine success was complicated, winding and full of adventures and discoveries; moreover, the composer’s style that emerged on that journey was free from temporary trends or ideological obligations.” The present album includes a number of works that perfectly illustrate the ease with which Edward Pallasz employed various types of compositional techniques related to the choral music.

Aleksandra Kuls was born in 1991. Her successes include First Prize at the Jozsef Szigeti International Violin and Viola Competition in Budapest and two special awards at the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznan in 2011. She graduated from the Zenon Brzewski Secondary Music School in Warsaw, where she studied with Magdalena Szczepanowska. For this release, Aleksandra has chosen works from J. S. Bach, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sergei Prokofiev, and Eugene Ysaye. These pieces offer a broad overview of solo violin output, from Bach’s early Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004, to Penderecki’s La Follia which was premiered as recently as 2013.