All recordingsPrices shown exclude VAT. (UK tax is not payable for deliveries to United States.)
See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Lutosławski: Orchestral Works 3
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. “Gardner's control of [the Second], not least its eventual disintegration, is highly compelling...the Cello Concerto receives a superbly concentrated performance here from the soloists Paul Watkins...[Grave] forms a fitting counterbalance to everything else on this disc.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2013 **** “a broad view of Lutoslawki's creative profile, which the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner fleshes out with playing that is as polished as it is animated and alert to the individuality of Lutoslawski's musical vocabulary and mode of expression. Gardner keeps the overall structural span of the Symphony in view...while giving close attention to the localised instrumental combinations and conflicts that lend the music its vibrant personality.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2012 “The performances continue the highly favourable impression of this series to date, with Gardner securing playing of real immediacy and finesse from a BBC Symphony Orchestra that sounds as fully engaged in the lighter aspects of the composer's music as in its more searching utterances.” International Record Review, December 2012 “With my ideas about the Cello Concerto completely transfixed by Paul Watkins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra...I feel pretty secure in being able to put forward this Chandos version against and above all others.” MusicWeb International, January 2013 “The characteristic formal diptych of the symphony is superbly enacted.” Sunday Times, 25th November 2012 “This is a wonderful disc, brilliantly delivered by Edward Gardner’s BBC Symphony forces. Few orchestras play this repertoire so well.” The Arts Desk, 8th December 2012 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Christian Poltéra plays Dutilleux & Lutoslawski
“…Christian Poltéra inevitably courts comparison with the 1975 EMI disc of Rostropovich, for whom both works were written. …in technique there's nothing to choose between them. …the most notable point of difference is the more leisurely reading here of 'Miroirs', the fourth movement of the Dutilleux piece. For me this works wonderfully, and after it Rostropovich's version comes to sound slightly impatient (even though both recordings take the movement slower than the metronome mark).” BBC Music Magazine, February 2010 **** “Unity in the Dutilleux comes from a subtle eliding between animation and suspense...something Poltéra realises in full measure...In the Lutoslawski, interplay between an initially impassive soloist and an increasingly agitated orchestra unifies one of his most lucid formal designs” Gramophone Magazine, April 2010 “Poltéra, a soloist of consummate artistry, will more than satisfy the discerning listener. The BIS recording has characteristic presence and definition” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition “...there's something refreshingly straightforward and robust about the approach that Poltéra and van Steen adopt. They trust the solidity of the work's construction, and vividly bring out its internal drama as a result...the energy and ebullience about [Poltera's] playing in both works is very engaging.” The Guardian, 28th January 2010 **** | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |  |
Diapason d'Or, Choc du Monde de la Musique, Prix de l'Académie du disque français, Victoires de la Musique classique & Edison Stichting Awards | | | Usually despatched in 4 - 5 working days. |
|
|
| |  | The Essential Lutoslawskia compilation of over 40 years of the composer's career including some of his most significant works
| | (Sorry, download not available in your country) | |
|
|
| |  | Cello Concertos
“riveting” by American Record Guide | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |  |
“The utterly sympathetic performance of the Elgar displays both elasticity and plentiful re-creative fantasy. A notable achievement in every way.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | Usually despatched in 4 - 5 working days. |
|
|
| |  | Lutoslawski at the Guildhall - Volume 1Live Recordings of the music of Witold Lutoslawski
Louise Hopkins (cello) Guildhall Symphony Orchestra, Witold Lutoslawski, Wojciech Michniewski | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
|
|
| |  |
“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 | | | (also available to download from $6.00) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |  | Lutoslawski: Cello Concerto & Concerto For Orchestra
“In the Concerto for Orchestra, Wit surpasses his earlier recording in both precision and energy, with the opening packing a real punch. The filigree murmurings of the second movement are delivered with tight control of rhythm and phrasing, and the long finale is perfectly paced to an inevitable climax.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2005 “Antoni Wit has recorded these works before, as part of his Naxos series with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. I've not heard that version of the Concerto…Orchestra but this one is certainly excellent, making the most of the expansive inevitability of the work's design while highlighting its dramatic twists and turns. In the Cello Concerto...Rafal Kwiatkowski...excels in passages requiring a sense of vulnerability, and the marvellous moment when the soloist merges with the orchestral strings in a long, lamenting line is a high-point.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2006 | | | Usually despatched in 4 - 5 working days. |
|
|
| |
|
