This album contains three works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, two of which can be considered among the most popular in the history of music. The version of the Sinfonia concertante in E-flat Major KV 364/320d with the participation of the cello, presented on the album as the first item, sheds new light on this outstanding showcase of the Classical era, which makes it possible to look at the numerous melodic and contrapuntal relationships of the soloists from a new, refreshed perspective. The Duo in G Major for violin and viola KV 423, in which the parts of both instrumentalists can be considered almost equal, is entirely characterized by considerable rhythmic freedom, influencing expression and rhythm in the outer parts and the fluency of narration in the middle one. The album is completed by the Symphony in A Major KV 201/186a, considered one of the most mature works of young Mozart. The piece impresses with its unique formal clarity and textural and polyphonic richness; it is also one of the most outstanding manifestations of genius in relation to the entire oeuvre of the composer. The unique cast and unconventional interpretations of Karolina Nowotczynska, Marcin Zdunik and the Elblag Chamber Orchestra conducted by Marek Mos allow us to rediscover the most important works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The German-Swiss Pianist Carl Wolf plays a great romantic program of piano masterworks including the Schubert sonata D 959 as well as the wonderful Nocturnes op. 27 by Chopin, his second Scherzo in b minor and the miraculous Prelude and Fugue in E minor by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Recorded in a beautiful Swiss monastery with fabulous acoustics Carl Wolf presents a worthwhile interpretation of pieces written in the 1830’s by composers, who didn‘t live to be 40 years old. Born in 1976 in Cologne, pianist Carl Wolf is characterized by his extreme musical versatility. Since finishing his studies in Cologne (Roswitha Gediga) and Basel (Krystian Zimerman), where he graduated with a soloist and a teaching diploma, he has been engaged both as a solo pianist and as a lecturer at the University of Music Basel FHNW, Zurich and the Conservatory of Winterthur. In addition to his performances as a soloist at piano recitals and with different orchestras, in Germany and abroad, he is a sought-after chamber musician and accompanist, and works closely with the cello professors Thomas Demenga, Danjulo Ishizaka and Rafael Rosenfeld. Furthermore, he works with various choirs, in particular with the Cantabile Choir Pratteln (cantabile.ch) and the Münsterkantorei Basel. Carl Wolf’s incredibly quick grasp and his impressive ability to side-reading give him a high degree of flexibility and allow him to steadily grow his musical repertoire in all areas.

Pierwsze dowództwo (The First Command) would not have been possible without Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow Line. The text of the literary work was the starting point for the composer and a direct inspiration to write music. However, the composition is not maintained in the style of film or illustrative music. It is an almost fifty-minute suite divided into ten sections with a consistently built narrative, constituting an independent musical composition. The ensemble for which the suite was written was proposed by the Polish Society for Contemporary Music, which commissioned the piece in 2017 as part of the celebration of the year of Joseph Conrad. The present album contains a complete recording of the aforementioned Adam Porebski’s Suite, which is an original combination of purely classical, film, and electroacoustic music.

Pawel Lukowiec was born on 20 December 1973 in Jaroslawiec. He studied composition under the direction of Jan Antoni Wichrowski at the Karol Lipinski Academy of Music in Wroclaw. The artist has won a number of awards and honorable mentions, e.g.: a special prize for the composition Les Images for soprano, flute, accordion and percussion (1997). Following in the footsteps of many eminent composers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Schumann or Lutoslawski, Pawel Lukowiec wrote Children’s Miniatures for piano. These three little pieces open an album entirely devoted to the artist’s activities. On the present album, we can admire Impressions, Passimofon, selected songs and, above all, two extensive compositions, Anamorphosis 1 and 2, which are an original synthesis of various techniques based on both the major-minor system and typical sonoristic solutions.

The five wind quintets recorded on this album clearly refer to the neoclassical style, which is directly related to the genre preferences and musical language of each of the presented Polish artists active in the 20th and early 21st centuries. THE CRACOW GOLDEN QUINTET is a chamber ensemble composed of professional musicians who, thanks to their passion for music and precision, perfectly render the beauty of the sound of a wind quintet. The ensemble was established in 2015 in Cracow. It consists of graduates of Polish academies of music – soloists, members of symphony orchestras and various chamber ensembles: Natalia JARZĄBEK (flute), Damian ŚWIST (oboe), Tomasz SOWA (clarinet), Małgorzata WYGODA (bas-soon), and Konrad GOŁDA (horn).The ensemble specializes in performing and promot-ing Polish music. Its repertoire, conceived and prepared to participate in the Stanisław Moniuszko International Competition of Polish Music in Rzeszów, features com-positions by, among others, Grażyna Bacewicz, Wojciech Kilar, or Michał Spisak. The ensemble’s portfolio is being constantly expanded, especially with pieces that are rarely performed on the stages of concert halls, but extremely valuable in the context of the Polish national heritage.

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.

Krzysztof Meyer's interest in the piano stemmed from a fairly obvious source: he has been playing the instrument since his childhood, and then well enough to perform in public as a pianist. No wonder that the first performer of the Preludes was the composer. First, he recorded them in the studio of the West Berlin RIAS radio (it was released on a longplay soon after), and on 17 May 1979 he performed the whole at the festival in Stalowa Wola - the one where the next generation of composers was in the process of parting ways with the "Polish school" and declared their return to tradition, often Romantic. However, Meyer's preludes are not neo-post-Romantic music. Quite the contrary. Their harmony is rather austere, closer to the tradition of young Prokofiev and Bart�k. Approach to the piano - in the spirit of Stravinsky, who saw it as a percussion instrument rather than one predestined to sing cantilenas. We invite you to listen to the album of an excellent interpreter of Krzysztof Meyer's music - Marek Szlezer. It will be a great opportunity to confront the original specifics of Meyer's style with much more widespread cycles of piano preludes.

Witold Maliszewski was a prolific Polish composer who is remembered not only for his compositional oeuvre, but also his contribution to education- he was a founder of Odessa Conservatory and a professor at Warsaw Conservatory. Students of Maliszewski include Witold Lutoslawski, Mykola Vililnsky, Shimon Shteynberg, and Boleslaw Woytowicz. His style was largely shaped by Russian musical traditions. His symphonies are non-programmatic, and only the Fourth Symphony in D major contains any trace of traditional Polish music. The present release is a showcase of his symphonic works, performed by the Opole Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Przemyslaw Neumann.

We learn village music straight from the source, from folk masters. We are fascinated by timbral-emotional phenomenon, beyond description, words, notes. We see parallels between the flow of a folk party and the pulse of a club night, between meaty fiddles and glitch electronica. “The band succeeds in conveying this sense to the listener. The electronics helps stippling traditional rhythms, the variantivity of folk music is transmitted through scratching or light glitching – Niewte seamlessly merges the old with the new.” (Katarzyna Ryzel, “Ruch Muzyczny”) This allows for creating personal, up-to-date music, yet still drawn from archaic Polish idiom. Utilitarian and refined, dancing and deep, local and global, from grandpas to kids.

Born in Lódz in 1984, Maciej Staszewski is a versatile artist who consciously combines his compositional interests with the career of an instrumentalist. He studied at the Grazyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in the classes of Prof. Jerzy Nalepka (classical guitar) and Prof. Jerzy Bauer (composition). He has performed many times at renowned music festivals, including: at the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music and at ISCM World Music Days. The title of the album comes from the latest piece by Maciej Staszewski – a miniature written in mid-2018 titled On the Trail. The ambiguity of this wording offers a possibility of multiple interpretations. An important motif connecting pieces from different years is inspiration with Polish mountains, as well as the rough lyricism of the melody, fondness for the quartal and secundal consonances, and complex rhythmic tissue, rich in irregular rhythms, variable accents, syncopations, and polymetric means.

2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the premiere of the silent film The Kid directed by Charlie Chaplin. On this occasion, the Ludwik Sarski Orchestra has released a unique album - a tribute to Chaplin's oeuvre inspired by that film. The artists were simultaneously watching the film and recording their parts while working in the studio, as a result of which the music contained on the album smoothly follows the image. The album The Kid is a suite with film music, in the style of early jazz, jazz waltzes, ragtimes, and very emotional pieces; it faithfully reflects the nature of the scenes contained in the film and perfectly conveys the atmosphere of silent cinema. The Ludwik Sarski Orchestra is an artistic collective founded by two multi-instrumentalists and composers: Damian Szymczak and Piotr Tomala. The artists combine such styles as early jazz, ragtime, tango, swing, or klezmer. The ensemble successfully performs in Poland and abroad. The activities of the Ludwik Sarski Orchestra include chamber concerts and live performances of their original music to silent films by Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Roman Polański, Aleksander Hertz, and others.

This album includes three symphonic poems by one of the greatest Polish symphonic musicians, pianist Konrad Binienda, performed by pianist Konrad Binienda and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Grzegorz Nowak. In addition, the album features Allegro de concert, Op. 46 by Fryderyk Chopin in Konrad Binienda’s original arrangement. Mieczyslaw Karlowicz is currently most often associated with songs and symphonic poems. Although the musical language of the Polish artist, who died an untimely death, can undoubtedly be considered universal (evidenced by his solo piano compositions, plenty of ingenious harmonic solutions, yet rarely performed now), it was on the basis of the symphony that he mastered his compositional technique. As the pianist himself points out, his version of the Allegro de Concert, unlike many others, is based solely on the principles of the Chopin orchestration. The recording was made during a concert of the Orchestra in the concert hall of the Lodz Philharmonic.

A Norwegian proverb says that those who wander discover new paths. Can you achieve it through music? All you need is your imagination and desire to enter the musical world of Andrzej Karalow. Andrzej Karalow is a pianist, composer, and improviser born in 1991. Since 2010, he has studied at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music under the supervision of Prof. Bronislawa Kawalla and Prof. Stanislaw Moryto. He is a laureate of both piano and composition competitions in Poland and abroad. In the 2018– 2019 artistic season, he collaborated with the London Philharmonic Orchestra during LPO. This album is a sample of compositional skills of Andrzej Karalow, one of the most versatile artists of the young generation.

British composer Michael Head (1900–1976) initially studied piano with Jean Adair, a student of famous Clara Schumann, and vocal performance with Fritz Marston. It was only in 1919 that he began studying composition in the class of Prof. Frederick Corder after he had been admitted to the Royal Academy of Music in London as a Sir Michael Costa scholarship holder. After completing his education, Head lectured at that university for many years. Peter Hope, born in 1930, is another representative of the British school of composers on the present album, also known under the pseudonym William Gardner. He gained fame as an outstanding arranger (he worked with the BBC Concert Orchestra on a number of occasions and orchestrated pieces by composers linked to the American film industry, e.g. John Williams, James Horner, or Laurence Rosenthal). Despite the fact that he has dealt mainly with arrangements and transcriptions throughout his career, his compositional output can be considered impressive. André Previn (1929–2019), an American artist, is mainly associated as a world-famous conductor, pianist, and promoter of outstanding violinist Anne--Sophie Mutter. In this context, his compositional out-put seems to be unjustly forgotten. An international composer, Daniel Baldwin’s music has been performed around the globe in Canada, Italy, Germany, Japan, China, Belgium, and Australia, just to name a few. His music is published exclusively by Imagine Music Publishing, through which he is the editor of a band/orchestra/choir series titled "The Pathways Series".

Emanuel Kania was born on 26 March 1827 in Uszyce near Kluczbork. He died on 16 March 1887 in Warsaw. He was a pianist, composer and music critic. It was most probably his father that gave him his first piano lessons. In 1841, he was admitted to the St. Matthias Junior High School in Wroclaw, where he studied piano with Karl Schnabel and organ with Franz Joseph Wolf. In the composer’s vocal works, in addition to solo songs with piano accompaniment, one can find many vocal pieces, mainly for a 4-part mixed choir. The songs were published in the Warsaw music press during the composer’s lifetime, mainly in Gazeta Muzyczna i Teatralna, Echo Muzyczne i Teatralne... However, a number of Kania’s songs remain in incomplete manuscripts, and most of them are kept in the collections of the Jagiellonian Library. This album, featuring selected songs by Emanuel Kania, is the world premiere recording of this forgotten oeuvre.