Szymanowski: Masques (3), Op. 34

“Anderszewski out-classes his rivals in his Szymanowski recital” BBC Music Magazine, Proms Issue 2005

“Here Anderszewski turns his attention away from well-tried classics of the repertoire to Szymanowski and to 'an aura of extreme fin de siècle opulence' (John Ogdon). Szymanowski's neurotically questing imagination was fired by his travels in Africa and the Mediterranean; and leaving earlier influences of Chopin (the Op 1 Preludes) and a lengthy dalliance with Reger and Richard Strauss (the Second Piano Sonata) far behind, he turned to impressionism, to Debussy and the glittering, mosaic-like structures he inherited from Scriabin.
Yet despite such influences his music achieves a unique fragrance and character and both Masques and Métopes shed a new and scintillating light on the myths of ancient Greece. Such music calls for a pianist of unlimited, superfine virtuosity and a complete temperamental affinity for such exoticism, and in Anderszewski it has surely found its ideal champion. Under his astonishing mind and fingers the chains of trills at the climax of 'Schéhérazade' take on an incandescence that transcends their Scriabinesque origins and Anderszewski's razor-sharp clarity and stylistic assurance make you hang on every one of the composer's teeming notes.
Here and in Métopes every hyper-nervous fluctuation of mood is judged to an uncanny perfection and in the Third Sonata, where Szymanowski returns from his richly programmatic sources to a more objective if no less intricate utterance, every aspect of the music's refined and energetic life is held in a blazing light from which it is impossible to escape. Visceral and superhuman, all these performances have been superbly recorded.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Here is one of those legendary concerts that will have pianophiles slavering at the mouth: a great artist at the height of his powers in a programme that has, as far as I know, not been available before… In the Prokofiev, premiered by Richter himself in 1943, all the anger and despair of the composer is realised with playing of an uninhibited, raw emotion that has rarely been so vividly caught on disc.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2010

“Roland Pöntinen's generously filled and beautifully engineered recital features three of Szymanowski's most exotic and harmonically daring middle-period works together with a handful of Mazurkas that were composed near the end of his life. The Swedish pianist gives very persuasive accounts of these later more emotionally restrained pieces projecting their melodic lines with great sensitivity without disrupting their natural dance-like flow.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2009 ****

“The Polish-born American singer Ewa Podles is something of a cult figure, a true contralto of a quality rare nowadays. …she makes 'None but the lonely heart' remarkably touching and unhackneyed, and is a fearsomely defiant gypsy in 'Zemfira's song' - no wonder the audience erupts. Altogether, a healthy reminder that power and passion still have their part in memorable Lieder performances.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2009 ****

“What comes over loud and clear is Podles's astonishing, bronze-toned lower registers and her remarkable, if slightly grand manner, and powers of declamation. The centrepiece is an unnerving performance of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, though the tracks you will want to return to are songs by Rachmaninov in orientalist mode, which she delivers in ways that are simply overpowering.” The Guardian, 13th March 2009 ****