Lutoslawski: Symphony No. 2

To celebrate the 100th anniversary in 2013 of the birth of influential Polish composer, Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), Sony Classical is teaming up with the phenomenal forces of the LA Philharmonic and its Finnish Conductor Laureate, Esa-Pekka Salonen to present the Lutoslawski Symphonies Edition.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic was an orchestra with which Lutoslawski had a particularly close relationship.

Authoritative liner notes are by Lutoslawski scholar, Steven Stucky.

The Edition includes a brand-new recording of the First Symphony, recorded live in Dec 2012 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LAX together with their earlier recordings of Symphonies Two, Three and Four plus a new recording of his ‘Fanfare for Los Angeles Philharmonic’, written in 1993, a year before he passed away.

In concert, Salonen will honour the Lutosławski anniversary with concerts around the globe, including a season-long project with the Philharmonia Orchestra called Woven Words: "Music Begins Where Words End" (30th Jan, 7th March; 21st March – UK dates) as well as performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Of Lutoslawski’s Symphonies, Salonen noted: "[They] possess the beauty of a giant organism, like a tree, or maybe a forest. We are moved by the logic of the form and the inevitability of growth. We perceive the music in shapes and lines, overall characteristics of the musical texture, and contrasts between movement and static situations". He described the art of composing as “fishing for souls”.

This is the fourth volume in Chandos’ series devoted to the music of the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski.

Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, described by Gramophone as a ‘veritable dream team’ in a review for Vol. 1, are joined on this recording by the cellist and exclusive Chandos artist Paul Watkins.

Lutosławski drew his main thematic material for Little Suite (Mała suita) from folk melodies from the village of Machów in south-east Poland. As such he was following one of the paths recommended by the communist government for connecting to the ‘broad masses’ by creating what today might be called ‘people’s music’. In this work Lutosławski demonstrates his characteristic lightness of touch, excellent ear for orchestral timbre, and ability to transform his material into something highly individual.

The Second Symphony (1965 – 67) was Lutosławski’s first large-scale orchestral work since the Concerto for Orchestra (1950 – 54), and a lot had happened in Poland since the premiere of that work. The government had significantly eased its cultural restrictions for music, which meant that Polish composers were becoming increasingly exposed to new ideas from the West. Lutosławski, ever his own man, chartered a distinctive path through this thicket of new music, and by the mid-60s he had developed his own individual and expressive idiom. In the Second Symphony, he creates an atmosphere of tense anticipation in the opening stages, before drawing the listener into the ensuing, more purposefully developed music, which reaches a climactic explosion and resolution.

Paul Watkins is the soloist in the Cello Concerto, one of the most original works of recent times. While Lutosławski insisted that this highly dramatic work was a purely musical drama, Mstislav Rostropovich, its dedicatee, considered the music to be a mirror of his own battles with the authorities in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s and ’70s.

In Grave, for solo cello and strings, for the first time in his life (not counting folk-inspired pieces), Lutosławski based a work on the music of another composer: the first four notes of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. He takes Debussy’s motif and transforms it from intense musings into a free-flowing succession of robust and vigorous shapes.

Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994) was the pre-eminent member of a group of Polish composers that came to prominence after the Second World War and whose artistic advancement was given impetus by the death of Stalin in 1953.

The works in this set cover four decades of Lutoslawski's career and include most of his important orchestral works, starting with the early Symphonic Variations, his first and second Symphonies and the Concerto for Orchestra, perhaps his best-known work.

The Polish composer Lutoslawski is one of the towering figures of 20th century music. His Concerto for Orchestra can stand comparison to the famous example by Bartók, and Mi-parti from 1976 has become a modern classic.These recordings, directed by the composer in 1976/7 contain all the orchestral music he had written up to that point, and are essential listening for all that are interested in 20th century music.

‘It’s my guess that posterity will judge Witold Lutowslaski among the supreme twentieth century musical colourists. All in all, this must surely count as the introduction to Lutoslawski s symphonic world.’ Gramophone reviewing the original release