Simon Rattle, Berliner Philharmoniker at the National Philharmonic in Warsaw - Beethoven, Shostakovich - 26 09 2009

The greatest classical band in the world visited Poland and played two symphonies - one light, one heavy.
Good sound on the airwaves that night, no encores.

The set list:
Beethoven - Symphony no. 2 in D major, op. 36
Shostakovich - Symphony no. 4 in C minor, op. 43

Stanisław Skrowaczewski - Mozart, Webern, Bruckner - National Philharmonic, 27 02 1981

A symbolic concert, marking the maestro's return to Poland after a 20 year absence.

Bruckner's third symphony was issued on the state Polskie Nagrania label (SX 2093 - vinyl only, never re-issued on CD, to my knowledge), but the performance on the LP is culled from several performances of the work in the space of a few days.

The recording here is the complete performance from one of the concerts held at that time.

The set list:

Mozart - Symphony no. 39 in E-flat KV 543

Webern - Sechs Orchesterstucke op. 6

* * *

Bruckner - Symphony no. 3 in D minor

Enjoy.

Witold Lutosławski In Memoriam concert - S1 Studio of the Polish Radio - 07 02 1999

This concert took place on the occasion of Lutosławski's 5th death anniversary and consisted solely of the composer's works.

Two late works for voice and orchestra are interspersed with three short Postludes and concluded with a perennial favourite - the Concerto for Orchestra.

Overall a nice performance by one of Poland's best orchestras under the direction of their then boss Antoni Wit, before he undertook a position at the National Philharmonic. The soloists are Adam Kruszewski and Zofia Kilanowicz.

In contradiction to my usual manner, I deleted all applause except after the last work in order to fit the music on a single CD.

Maybe I regret this now, but there is no going back, as I delete the original source recording after I complete editing.

The set list:

Postlude I

Les Espaces du Sommeil

Postlude II

Chantefleurs et Chantefables

Postlude III

Concerto for Orchestra

Krzysztof Penderecki - The 75th Birthday Concert - National Philharmonic Concert Hall, Warsaw - 21 11 2008

The Maestro's 75th birthday brought about a large number of events throughout the year. This concert was pretty close to the actual date (23rd November).

The young and talented Łukasz Borowicz led the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra (not to be confused with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra Katowice) and an international host of soloists in a nice set of Penderecki's rather recent works.

I ripped this one from Programme 2's internet stream, converted the resultant file to WAV, processed and then squished it back to FLAC, so the sound quality is kind of grainy, but otherwise fairly clear.

I never went back to this method again, because later Programme 2's stream deteriorated into something quite unlistenable.

The set list:

• Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra (a version of the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra)
• Largo for Cello and Orchestra
• Agnus Dei for Eight Cellos (arr. by Boris Pergamenschikov)
• Concerto for Viola and Orchestra

The clarinet soloist was Michel Lethiec.

The cello soloist was Arto Noras.

The viola soloist was Tabea Zimmermann.

Agnus Dei was performed by the Warsaw Cellonet Group, consisting of Andrzej Bauer, Michał Bożykowski, Marcin Zdunik, Robert Dacko, Bartosz Koziak, Karol Marianowski, Mikołaj Pałosz and Rafał Kwiatkowski.

Piotr Anderszewski, Viktoria Mullova - somewhere in Europe, 1998(?)

This post is somewhat embarrasing in that I seem to have misplaced most of the information about it.

I don't remember when I recorded the broadcast.

I don't know when the concert date was - it must have been 1997 or 1998 because this was when the two artists toured together and recorded their albums of Brahms violin sonatas and 20th century sonatas.

I screwed up the indexing so the Stravinsky is made up of three indexes instead of a potential six. I hope this does not bother you too much.

And, last but not least, I made the whole recording unnaturally loud (so be careful when listening).

All this aside, a nice set of music for violin and piano, interspersed with a solo performance from each of the musicians.

The set list:

Beethoven - Sonata for violin and piano op. 24 (Spring)

Bach - Chaconne from Partita BWV 1004 (Mullova)

Mozart - Fantasia in C minor KV 475 (Anderszewski)

Stravinsky - Divertimento (from "The Fairy's Kiss")

encores:

Brahms - Hungarian Dance no. 7 in A major

Mendelssohn - Song without Words, Book 5, op. 62 no. 1 in G major

p.s. if you have any information about where and when exactly this concert might have taken place, please drop me a line in the comments.

Svyatoslav Richter at the S1 Concert Studio of the Polish Radio, Warsaw - 26 11 1991

To celebrate the opening of their state-of-the-art concert studio (and believe me - it is not only only an acoustic wonder, but also a genuine pleasure to listen to music in - I have spent many a wonderful evening pleasantly dozing to sounds produced on the stage), Polish Radio invited a number of world-famous artists to perform on the stage.

One of these was Svyatoslav Richter, who performed a program of Bach and Beethoven.

One may ask if the world needs yet another recording of Richter. My response - during that recital he played the Bach Sonata BWV 963 - a work rarely performed (to my knowledge) altogether and existing only on one or two unofficial Richter CDs.

So there you have it.
At this time, the studio only bore the "S1" designation, not yet having been named in memory of Witold Lutosławski, who died 3 years later.
 
Originally recorded to Maxell UD II chrome cassette, although I lost the actual date on which I made the recording.

The set list:

J.S. Bach

Sonata BWV 963

Toccata BWV 913

Toccata BWV 916

Fantasia BWV 906 (Richter did not play the incomplete fugue that accompanies the Fantasia)

Ludwig van Beethoven

Sonata op. 109

Sonata op. 110

Piotr Anderszewski, John Eliot Gardiner, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra - Munich, 14 11 2008

This is one half of a concert given by a rather unusual combination of artists. Even more unusual was the choice of repertoire (especially for Gardiner):

Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony op. 110a (an orchestration by Rudolf Barshai of Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet), followed by Bartok's 3rd Piano Concerto, and a short encore - Beethoven's Bagatelle in G major, op.126 no. 1.

Good old Programme 2 somehow fried the second half of the concert - Dvorak's 7th Symphony.

But, my main point of interest here is Anderszewski anyway, performing a work that he has not (so far) committed to record.

Piotr Anderszewski at the National Philharmonic in Warsaw - 24 02 2010

Anderszewski's solo recital performed in the midst of celebrations of Chopin's 200th birthday.

It is interesting to note that being his usual self, Anderszewski did not play a single note of Chopin at the recital.

When the encores rolled around, some zealous fan can be heard yelling "Chopin!", to which the pianist replies "I didn't hear that!".

The repertoire is very similar to the Rudolfinum recital, with some minor differences, but the performance is fascinating as always.

In his usual manner, Anderszewski repeated some of Schumann's  Sechs Stücke as one of his encores.

The set list:

Bach - Partita in E minor BWV 810

Robert Schumann - Sechs Stücke in kanonischer Form op.56

* * *

Robert Schumann – Gesänge der Frühe op. 133

Ludwig van Beethoven – Sonata As-dur op. 110

Encores:

Bela Bartok – 3 Hungarian Folksongs from the Csik District

Robert Schumann – from: Sechs Stücke in kanonischer Form op.56

Ludwig van Beethoven – Bagatelle op. 126 no. 1 in G major