Stanisław Skrowaczewski - Bruckner and Skrowaczewski - Katowice, 09 05 2003

As I have already mentioned, Stanisław Skrowaczewski is Poland's great Brucknerian, a counterpart to such experts as Jochum or Böhm.
Skrowaczewski has recorded the complete Bruckner symphony cycle for Arte Nova with the Saarbrücken Radio Orchestra (now out of print, I believe, with the label part of Sony Classical).

This, part of a concert celebrating Skrowaczewski's 80th birthday, features the conductor's Concerto for Orchestra, with a clear reference to Bruckner in the second Adagio, bearing the subtitle "Anton Bruckners Himmelfahrt" (Bruckner's Heavenly Journey).
The second work is the conductor's sublime orchestration of the Adagio from Bruckner's String Quintet, a massive chamber work.
The second half of the concert featured Brahms' 4th symphony, which I did not record, but which is available on a CD devoted to the work of Skrowaczewski and issued by Polish Radio.

The set list:



Bruckner/Skrowaczewski
01 - Adagio from String Quintet (orch. by Stanisław Skrowaczewski)

Stanisław Skrowaczewski (b. 1923)
Concerto for Orchestra
02 - Adagio misterioso
03 - Adagio (Anton Bruckners Himmelfahrt)



National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Stanisław Skrowaczewski - conductor



Live FM broadcast.
Originally recorded to Maxell UD II CD chrome tape.

Trevor Pinnock conducts Mozart at the Salzburg Festspiele - 14 08 2011

This is excellent Sunday brunch fare - music for those light of heart and mind.

Trevor Pinnock led the Salzburg Festival Orchestra in a nice set of Mozart's well known and lesser known works, all performed in the composer's town of birth.

The set list:

Symphony no. 26 in E-flat KV 184

6 German Dances KV 571

* * *

Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major KV 299

Symphony no. 39 in E-flat KV 543

The soloists are Emmanuel Pahud (flute) and Marie-Pierre Langlament (harp).

Marc-Andre Hamelin, Charles Dutoit, Orch. Symphonique du Montreal - 07 1997, Montreal

Two grand works of music performed by the specialist in esoteric romantic and post-romantic piano repertoire, accompanied by one of the best-sounding orchestras on the North American continent.

The same recording is apparently available around the internets. I made this one as usual - from a Polish Radio broadcast.

Originally recorded to cassette tape.

The set list:

Medtner - Piano Concerto no. 2 in C minor, op. 50

Dvorak - Symphony no. 9 in E minor, op. 95 "From the New World"

Martha Argerich & Charles Dutoit - Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne - 27 01 2009

This was a concert held on the 50th anniversary of Argerich's and Dutoit's first performance together with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. The pieces performed were exactly the same.

The set list:

Balissat - Sinfonietta

Ravel - Piano Concerto in G major

* * *

Strauss - Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

Krzysztof Penderecki chamber music - 46th Warsaw Autumn Festival, 20 09 2003

The Maestro, enjoying some afternoon sweets and coffee

Here is another serving of music by the Silesian String Quartet in their second incarnation, with Szymon Krzeszowiec having replaced Marek Moś, playing along with some friends.

The concert was held during the Warsaw Autumn Contemporary Music Festival in 2003, which was also the year of Penderecki's 70th birthday.

The two string quartets (1960 and 1969) are the early fire and brimstone Penderecki we have come to know and love (or love to hate, depending on where your particular tastes lie). Single movement works of brevity, they explore the sound-making possibilities of the instruments individually and in combination.

They have been combined with two other works - the 2nd Sonata for violin and piano (1999), commissioned by Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Sextet for piano, violin, viola, cello, clarinet and French horn (2000). These two works represent the composer's late, neo-romantic style which has been evolving since the late 1970's, starting (more or less) with the 1st Violin Concerto.

These two works are fairly typical of the later period, with many early Penderecki diehards wanting to hang and mutilate (in random order) the Maestro for treason, abandoning of youthful ideals and, in so many words, for becoming an old, soft fart instead of the hardcore avantgardist of days of yore.

The explanation is simple. The man has a huge manor and estate in the south of Poland. He plants rare trees for a hobby. He's got a wife and a festival to run. You can't do that by writing buzzing sounds that a few academics will understand and fewer music lovers will want to buy. Only accessible works will generate enough cabbage to maintain the standard of living he's become used to.

So sit back and enjoy. This is still good music. It just sounds a little more like Brahms and Schubert.

You may hear echoes of the Piano Concerto in the Sextet.

All in all, lively performances by some of Poland's best musicians young and old. You may know Kaja Danczowska, an expert violinist of the middle generation, from her Deutsche Grammophon recordings with Krystian Zimerman. She also plays 1st violin in the group Zimerman assembled for his recordings of the Bacewicz Piano Quintets for DGG.


The set list:

1st String Quartet (1960)

2nd Sonata for violin and piano (1999)

2nd String Quartet (1969)

Sextet for piano, violin, viola, cello, clarinet and French horn (2000)

The String Quartets were played by the Silesian String Quartet:

Szymon Krzeszowiec - 1st violin

Arkadiusz Kubica - 2nd violin

Łukasz Syrnicki - viola

Piotr Janosik - cello

The Sonata was played by

Kaja Danczowska - violin

Sławomir Cierpik - piano

The Sextet was played by

Robert Marat - piano

Szymon Krzeszowiec - violin
Łukasz Syrnicki - viola

Piotr Janosik - cello

Artur Pachlewski - clarinet

Wiesław Grochowski - French horn

Jaap ter Linden plays Bach Cello Suites 3-5 - Int'l Summer Academy of Ancient Music, Wilanów, Poland - 27 07 1996

Mr ter Linden played the middle 3 of Bach's 6 suites for cello solo on a terribly hot summer evening in the Banquet Hall of the Palace in Wilanów.

The cello succumbs to temperature and emits strange noises now and then (akin to trams making a tight turn), but this by no means detracts from the music.

This was originally recorded to casette. I fell asleep at the wheel during the broadcast and subsequently missed the encore - Prelude from the 1st Cello Suite, so the concert is not totally complete. I had to live with this failure for for 16 years and now so will you :-)

The set list:
Cello Suite no. 4 in E-flat BWV 1010
Cello Suite no. 3 in C major BWV 1009
Cello Suite no. 5 in C minor BWV 1011

Hommage a Artur Rubinstein - Mikhail Pletnev plays the 3rd Rachmaninov Piano Concerto at the National Philharmonic 07 12 2002

This was a concert held on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the death of the great Artur Rubinstein. The performance brought the great Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev to Warsaw to play Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto.

Szymanowski's 2nd Symphony was the first "mature" symphony written by the composer. Premiered on 7 April 1911 in Warsaw under the eminent Polish conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg, it was not well received. It was appreciated much better abroad, with favourable reception and reviews in Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna.
This is typical Szymanowski - at once grandiose, passionate and lyrical.

What more can be said about one of the greatest piano concertos in the repertoire? Only that the conductor and soloist seem not to be able to agree on a number of things even as they are playing.
Nevertheless, a record of a mature Mikhail Pletnev and the work has not (to my knowledge) been recorded by him in the studio for any label.

The set list: 
Karol Szymanowski - Symphony no. 2 in B flat major, op. 19 
Sergei Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto no. 3 in D minor, op. 30

The National Philharmonic Orchestra
Antoni Wit - conductor
Mikhail Pletnev - piano

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Piano Concertos - Louis Lortie, The National Philharmonic, Antoni Wit - 04 03 2011

The French-Canadian Pianist Louis Lortie was gracious enough to visit Poland and play the complete set of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concertos. Yes, dear bloggers, Tchaikovsky wrote three piano concertos, not one!
Of course, the 2nd pales beside the first and the 3rd is just a one movement snippet, so perhaps it is not altogether wrong that only the B-flat major gets played, but nevertheless it is nice to hear these played back to back.
Unfortunately, having left the 1st concerto until after the intermission you can hear that Lortie is getting a bit tired, but still this is a nice record of the pianist's technical capacity and interpretative skills.
The orchestra and conductor at times seem somewhat clueless as to where the pianist is going, but heck, that's life.

The set list:

(CD1)
Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto no. 3 in E-flat major, op. posth. 75
Piano Concerto no. 2 in G major, op. 44

(CD2)
Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto no. 1 in B-flat minor, op. 23



The National Philharmonic Orchestra
Antoni Wit - Conductor

Martha Argerich & Friends at the Nat'l Philharmonic Concet Hall - Mozart, Liszt, Zarębski - 17 08 2011

Martha Argerich does not perform solo recitals any more. She always plays with somebody, choosing from a wide array of performers from all over the world.
This time around she presented a mixed bag of music.
In the first half of the concert she played together with Russian pianist Lilya Zilberstein, performing Mozart's Fantasy in D minor KV 608 (arranged for two pianos by Ferruccio Busoni), following up with Liszt's Concerto Pathetique (S. 258)
Two short encores followed - a Valse for 4 hands by Rachmaninov and Milhaud's Brasileira for two pianos from the suite "Scaramouche".

After the intermission, she was joined by an international cast of musicians (excellent Polish violinists Agata Szymczewska and Bartłomiej Nizioł, viola player Lyda Chen (Argerich's daughter) and Russian cellist Alexander Neustroev) to play Juliusz Zarębski's much underrated Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 34.
The Quintet was dedicated to Liszt and is a virtuoso piece of music, falling somewhere between Liszt nad Brahms - the virtuosity is Liszt's, but the melodies are Brahmsian.
Unfortunately, Zarębski did not have an opportunity to develop his career, having died of tuberculosis in 1885 at the age of 31.
Argerich actually premiered the work with other musicians at the Lugano Festival some months earlier.

I had to go to some lengths to remove bits of the overly talkative commentator from in between the music.
The encore was the Scherzo from the Quintet.

Mieczysław Karłowicz - National Philharmonic, Warsaw, 06 02 2009

The concert took place at the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw, Poland 3 days before the composer's 100th anniversary of his tragic death under an avalanche in Poland's Tatra Mountains.

The National Philharmonic Orchestra
Antoni Wit - conductor
Ilya Kaler - violin

Part I
Mieczysław Karłowicz (1876-1909)
Biała Gołąbka (Bianca da Molena) overture
Violin Concerto in A major, op. 8
encore
J.S. Bach - Gavotte en Rondeau from Partita in E major, BWV 1006

Part II
Mieczysław Karłowicz
Symphony in e minor, op. 7 "Rebirth"

Live broadcast, Polish Radio Programme 2, National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw, Poland, 6 February 2009, 19:00.