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“This is an excellent disc; fine music, well played and recorded, and all at the special Naxos price. The earliest composition, Livre (1968), was the first work completed by Lutospawski after the Second Symphony, and it shows him at his freshest and boldest, as if relieved to be free (if only temporarily) from the burden of one of music's weightiest traditions.
With its well-nigh surreal juxtapositions of strongly contrasted materials, and the unusual ferocity of its tone – the 'book' in question must have been of the blood and thunder variety – Livre reveals a Lutospawski quite different from the relatively benign, ironic master of the later works. Coming immediately after Livre, the Cello Concerto has an even wider expressive range: indeed, in the balance it achieves between lamenting melodic lines and mercurial scherzo-like writing, coupled with a tendency to home in on crucial pitch-centres, it sets out the basic elements of the composer's later style.
This performance owes a great deal to Antoni Wit's skilful shaping of the music's alternations between relatively free and precise notation, and this skill is even more evident in the remaining orchestral scores. Novelette, completed in 1979, is Lutospawski's response to his first American commission; it's far more cogent and concentrated than its title might lead you to expect. Chain-3 (1986) is one of the best later works, let down only by some rather perfunctory quasi-tonal harmony near the end. But this doesn't undermine the impression the disc as a whole conveys of some of the most characterful and individual music of the last 30 years.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Naxos's super-bargain price foray into the contemporary repertory is all the more commendable for managing to include Lutoslawski's finest late work, the Symphony No.4 (1992)...Antoni Wit's shaping of the symphony's satisfying substantial structure is well conceived.” Gramophone Magazine

“An excellent disc at bargain price.” BBC Music Magazine

“Juxtaposing Lutospawski's early Symphony No 1 with the late Chantefleurset Chantefables reinforces the fundamentally French associations of this composer's very personal musical voice; to contemplate how the symphony's exuberant embrace of a Roussel-like idiom was complemented, more than 40 years later, by the subtle Ravellian overtones of Chantefleurs et Chantefables is to recognise that the radical gestures of Jeuxvénetiens (1961) have worn less well than Lutospawski's more 'conservative' qualities.
Indeed, the wild piano cadenza in Jeux vénetiens now evokes the high jinks of Ibert's Divertissement rather than the liberated avant-garde ethos of more determinedly progressive musical minds.
The downbeat ending is far more memorable.
Olga Pasiecznik's singing is outstanding, especially in Chantefleurs, where she easily surpasses Dawn Upshaw in subtlety and Antoni Wit turns in strongly characterised, wellshaped accounts of all the scores. The playing is eloquent as well as energetic, and although, as with earlier Naxos volumes, the recordings are rather glassy and generalised, the music's range of colour and variety of texture is never in doubt. With such a well-filled disc, why did Naxos decide to include the first of the Three Postludes? The composer himself was clearly happy for the piece to appear on its own, but in a series with pretensions to completeness the full set is surely a must.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

"On balance, you'll get the best of all worlds with Wit's capable performance on this Naxos disc...The Polish brass players are a sonorous, well-blended team...these performances--especially at the Naxos price--simply can't be ignored." - Michael Jameson www.ClassicsToday.com December 2001

“The faster carols have the same sort of energy and modality that you find in Kodály… it's a lovely collection of pieces for dipping into, and they're affectionately performed and recorded.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 ****

“A series that is setting high standards in budget-price contemporary music....Wit conjures a fantastic range of tone colour from his well-drilled Polish orchestra ...the third symphony has never sounded more convincing.” Classic CD

“The disc is worth its price for the performance of the Robert Desnos song-cycle Chantefleurs et Chantefables alone, a sequence of bejewelled miniatures, gorgeously sung by Valdine Anderson, whose apparently childlike simplicity belies the craft and subtlety of their settings.” The Guardian, 28th October 2010 ****