Denis Matsuev / Kammerorchester Wien-Berlin SHOSTAKOVICH - SCHNITTKE - LUTOSLAWSKI

                                    SHOSTAKOVICH - SCHNITTKE - LUTOSLAWSKI

Marta Gebska / Grzegorz Skrobiński PER MUSICAM AD ASTRA

This is the debut album of a Polish violinist – Marta Gebska. The young artist is a laureate of extremely numerous competition prizes, and considering her young age, she presents a very mature personality. Her interpretations testify to a unique performance craftsmanship combined with excellent violin technique and signal the emergence of a genuine talent on the Polish music stage. The multitude of artistic means of expression used, the variety of colors, the variability of the character of the sound and its beauty is a matter of the soloist’s rich imagination, enhanced by the values of the great French instrument Gustave Vuillaumme 1923. Listening to her recordings, one can experience not only artistic satisfaction, but also the joy resulting from the harmonious development of Polish violin music, to which both Marta’s masters and outstanding violinists, Roman Lasocki and her father Andrzej Gebski, contributed.

Johannes Moser / Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Thomas Søndergård LUTOSLAWSKI - DUTILLEUX Cello Concertos

This album features cello concertos by Witold Lutosławski and Henri Dutilleux performed by the multiple prize-winning German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conducted by Thomas Søndergård. These works, premiered in 1970, are two of the biggest gems of the twentieth century, the golden age of the cello. While equally virtuosic and engaging, both pieces showcase different aspects of the musical landscape of the late twentieth century. Lutosławski’s concerto explores the possibilities of chance composition in the form of a duel between the solo cello and a ferocious orchestral accompaniment, in which the individual ultimately prevails. In comparison, soloist and ensemble work together more smoothly in Henri Dutilleux’ “Tout un monde lontain”. In this “cello concerto”, the composer invokes a mystical “world from afar”, inspired by Baudelaire quotes and full of allusions to French musical greats such as Debussy and Messiaen, while simultaneously sounding unmistakably Dutilleuxian.

12 Ensemble RESURRECTION

The 12 ensemble continue their remarkable rise on the international classical music scene with their stunning debut album Resurrection. Featuring a new work from the acclaimed composer & guitarist of band The National Bryce Dessner, a commission from boundary-pushing UK composer Kate Whitley and works by Lutoslawski and Woolrich, the record is a powerful collection of four works for strings that reflect the ensemble’s spirit of bringing new energy and exploration to established sounds and ideas. 

Always performing without a conductor, the ensemble have developed a reputation across Europe as one of the UK’s leading string orchestras. This debut recording highlights the group’s commitment to intimate music-making that lives and breathes, performed with dazzling energy and an astonishing sound, all based on the principle of putting the music in charge.

Giorgio Koukl / Virginia Rossetti LUTOSŁAWSKI Complete Piano Music

Witold Lutosławski’s few surviving apprentice works are suffused with the elegance of Ravel and the lush effusiveness of Szymanowski, and this is particularly true of the early Piano Sonata, heard here in Giorgio Koukl’s new and corrected edition based on the original manuscript. Further premières include the wistful A Kiss of Roxanne and the technically complex Invention. Including all of the folk-music tinted pedagogical miniatures, works for piano four hands and other occasional pieces, this is the most comprehensive edition of Lutosławski’s works for solo piano ever recorded.

Wang Tao / Akimi Fukuhara SPIN

He is the first musician in China to receive a master's degree in clarinet from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, a top music school in the country. 

Wang has released 12 albums that are being used as teaching material at the conservatory. He also won the best instrumental-album award at the Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan. 

As the husband of former Olympic gymnastics champion Liu Xuan, he is used to being pursued by the media. 

But last year, when he sent producers some 40 music samples from his new record company, Universal Music, the feedback he got caught him off guard. 

While the young musician had expected positive reactions, he was told the samples were "interesting" or "disastrous". 

"It's something I have never experienced before," says Wang, 37, who was considered gifted since his childhood. "I didn't feel depressed. Instead, I was excited because I knew that it's time for me to change."

Corinna Simon LUTOSLAWSKI Complete Piano Works

Witold Lutoslawski was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. His well-known Variations on a Theme by Paganini for two pianos are in the repertoire of almost every respectable piano duo. Unfortunately, apart from the short piece An Overheard Tune, featured here, Lutoslawski left no other work for two pianists to posterity. During the Second World War, Lutoslawski played many of his own compositions in cafés, in duo with Andrzej Panufnik, in order to make a living. In July 1944 he had to flee from Warsaw, his home town, just a few days before the Uprising, and was only able to save a small number of his scores from extinction. He didn’t return to Warsaw until April of the following year. Among all the solo piano works Lutoslawski must have composed up to the end of World War II, only the Sonata (1934) and the Two Etudes (1940/41) are still preserved today. Lutoslawski was an excellent pianist, but after the war he only wrote a very small number of pieces for the instrument. They all pertain to his early post-war period, before he turned to twelve-tone pitch organisation and aleatory technique. What most impresses and thrills me in Lutoslawski’s piano output is his immense degree of creativity while heeding every detail with painstaking attention; his wonderful way of associating traditional forms with innovative, bold sonorities and structures, while managing to preserve a great degree of independence that makes this music sound effortless and lively. (Corinna Simon)

Roman Mints / Evgenia Chudinovich TRANSFORMATIONS 20th Century Works for Violin & Piano

This album brings together some of the best music for violin & piano written in the last century. Alongside with the such well-known masters Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Gubaidulina and Schnitttke we can hear works of their younger collegues Elena Langer and Artem Vassiliev. Both performes demonstrate their virtuosity in interpretating this extremly demanding repertoir. 5 pieces by Artem Vassiliev take us on a journey trough modern styles from minimalism to jazz.

The title work, "Transformations" by Elena Langer is very romantic, fresh and impressive piece which changes from a dream world of first movement through an agressive and ecstatic mood of the second to the "new light" in the end. The work is probably the most appealing on the disc. Lutoslawski's Subito is a demanding virtuoso piece which gives Mints a chance to show his seductive tone and his command of the instrument. Part's Fratres is a religious meditation executed with great feeling. Works by Gubaidulina and Penderecki involve pianist playing inside piano and thus, explore new sound dimensions. In general, this album is outstanding and is a joy to listen to. (Amazon)

Miranda Cuckson / Blair McMillen BÉLA BARTÓK - ALFRED SCHNITTKE - WITOLD LUTOSLAWSKI

The New York Times has praised violinist Miranda Cuckson’s “undeniable musicality,” while Gramophone has declared her “an artist to be reckoned with.” Born in Australia and educated in America, she makes her ECM New Series debut – alongside pianist Blair McMillen – with three 20th-century milestones: the Hungarian Béla Bartók’s Violin Sonata No. 2 (1922), the Russian Alfred Schnittke’s Violin Sonata No. 2 “Quasi una Sonata” (1968) and the Pole Witold Lutoslawski’s Partita for Violin and Piano (1984). “Bringing these great Slavic composers together enables us to hear each dealing with the dichotomies of form and spontaneity, playfulness and seriousness, folk expression and abstraction,” Cuckson explains. “The colors and traits of Slavic ethnic music are vibrantly in the foreground in Bartók’s music, more subsumed into abstraction and flavor in the Schnittke and Lutoslawski. Humor is a tool of provocation and survival in Schnittke and to some extent Lutoslawski, a cheeky attitude anchored by deep purpose. In Bartók, the boisterousness and teasing charm of folk dances gives way to moods of profound melancholy.” (ECM Records)

Krystian Zimerman / Simon Rattle / Berliner Philharmoniker LUTOSLAWSKI Piano Concerto - Symphony No. 2

. . . [Piano Concerto]: the hall's acoustics respond beautifully to the mellow, floating textures. Lutoslawski often writes quiet music, but with such detail that every nuance needs to be heard. Every nuance is heard here, and the effect is spectacular. The piano is always apparent across the orchestra, even when their respective textures call its dominance into question. Of course, Lutoslawski knows what he is doing, and no doubt he is relying on Zimerman's always clear articulation and touch to project the piano's lines . . . The Berlin Philharmonic sound is ideal here, not only for the sheer elegance the orchestra displays, but also for the details that it is able to project, again aided by the excellent audio . . . this Zimerman/Rattle collaboration comes highly recommended. Whatever this mercurial pianist's motivations for returning to the concerto, we should all be glad he did.

(Record Review / Gavin Dixon, Classical CD Reviews) 

. . . [Zimerman's performances of the Piano Concerto] mix complete authority with fresh, questing spirit, as if he were laying out the notes for the first time . . . Zimerman injects both delicacy and virtuosity into the dialogue with Simon Rattle's orchestra, and also holds the key, as probably only a Pole could do, to the serious yet wistful undercurrents of this work . . . Rattle's own input is distinguished . . . he conducts this with a similar ecstatic beauty . . . [the Symphony no. 2 is] a work of warmth, and who better to summon up that than the luxurious-sounding Berliners?

(Record Review / John Allison, BBC Music Magazine)

Ewa Kupiec WITOLD LUTOSLAWSKI Complete Works for Piano Solo

"Pure substance“, Ewa Kupiec is praised by Fono Forum, Germany’s leading magazine for classical music. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung certifies: “Kupiec plays with a rare mixture of spirit, a faultless technique, a complete understanding of musical texture and an ability to shape music with transparency and an impressive richness of colours. Her playing is brilliant but never obtrusive, full of atmosphere and subtly virtuosic.”



Ewa Kupiec regularly performs at the world’s leading festivals but also with major orchestras, which in recent seasons have included Munich Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Royal Danish Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Orchestre de Paris. Conductors she worked include Marin Alsop, Neeme Järvi, Ingo Metzmacher, Xian Zhang, Sakari Oramo, Semyon Bychkov, Herbert Blomstedt, Krzysztof Penderecki, Lothar Zagrosek, Gilbert Varga, Christoph Poppen, Andrey Boreyko, and Marek Janowski. Renowned Polish maestro Stanislaw Skrowaczewski has initiated and supported an exceptionally fruitful musical collaboration between the two, and as such they have performed all over the world and, released in 2003, recorded Chopin’s piano concerti  together.



2014 sees four special releases: Polish composer’s Andrzej Panufnik’s piano concerto for the complete recording of his œvre, together with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin (cpo), Grażyna Bacewicz‘ piano quintet arranged for piano and string orchestra for the Naxos label together with the Bydgoszcz Philharmonic, piano quintets by Scharwenka and Dvorak with the Armida Quartet (Solaris), and Chopin’s works for piano and cello with Johannes Moser (Hänssler).



Ewa Kupiec is closely connected to the music of Chopin and other Polish composers. For his 200th birthday she offered three different Chopin recital programs. Next to standard works, her concerto repertoire includes works by Loewe or Veress. For Sony, she has recorded Władysław Szpilman’s music, known from the movie „The Pianist“.



In 2012 she played an especially striking juxtaposition of the Paganini variations both by Rachmaninov and Lutosławski, together with the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra. A dramaturgically wonderful incidence not only because he gave new luster to the classical concert solo, but also because these are two of Ewa Kupiec’ typical showpieces among which – next to Chopin’s work – Richard Strauss early masterpiece Burleske can be found.



Equally interesting are Ewa Kupiec’s solo and chamber music programs, for example with cellist Johannes Moser or the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet. In 2013, which marks Witold Lutosławski’s 100th birthday, she dedicates a special recital program to him – she worked with him when a young pianist. She will also perform his piano concerto in 2013, together with the German Philharmonic Orchestra Rhineland-Palatinate.



Ewa Kupiec is recognised as one of Europe’s most dedicated interpreters of contemporary music. Her Berlin Konzerthaus performance in 2005 of Schnittke’s First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra was the first performance of this work since 1964 and was released by Phoenix in 2008, together with other Schnittke works for piano and orchestra. Her recital and chamber music programs often include contemporary works, and different composers have dedicated pieces to her.



Among Ewa Kupiec‘ numerous recordings are works by Grażyna Bacewicz, Lutosławski, Szymanowsky (ECHO Klassik 1997) and Paderewski. 2007 Haenssler released her recording of Janacek‘s solo works and in 2008 Phoenix published Schnittke’s piano concerti with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. 2010 saw the release of Żal, with solo works by Chopin and Schubert, and in 2011, in cooperation with Deutschlandfunk, she published a CD with solo works by Kodály and Enescu (Solaris). 2012 saw the release of Chopin’s piano concertos and Nocturnes selection on the Australian ABC label, and 2013 the premiere recording of Lutosławski’s works for piano solo (Sony).



Ewa Kupiec studied in Katowice, at the Chopin Academy in Warsaw and at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and in 1992 she won the ARD Music Competition (category duo piano/cello). From autumn 2011, she will be a professor for piano at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover.

Stuttgarter Kammerorchester / Dennis Russell Davies WITOLD LUTOSLAWSKI - BÉLA BÁRTOK Musique Funèbre

Conductor Dennis Russell Davies leads the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in a program of music by, and dedicated to, Béla Bartók. The disc opens in the latter vein with Witold Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre, composed between 1954 and 1958 for the 10th anniversary of Bartók’s death. The title, often erroneously translated as “Funeral music,” is better rendered as “Music of mourning,” and connotes homage to one of Lutosławski’s greatest inspirations, if not the greatest, for he never dedicated a work to another composer. Although the piece’s overarching development resembles Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the opening cellos closely prefigure the robust, overlapping memorial of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, even if they do chart a vastly different geography, from collective to individual landing. That initial feeling of density and weight gives way to a dark airiness. Motives bend and sway—at moments pliant, at others sharply angled. Darting violins bring us closer to a sense of inner turmoil and bold reckoning. The Bartókian flavor is clear yet faged, and falls back where it began: in the solemn cellos. Ashes to ashes.

As Wolfgang Sandner observes in this album’s liner notes, for Bartók the music of Hungary’s peasants “was the source of a radical new musical system, not material for reverting to a nostalgic transfiguration of the original sounds.” In light of this, we might reckon his Romanian Folk Dances of 1917 not as an archival storehouse but, more like Estonian composer Veljo Tormis’s choral arrangements, as an experiment made fresh by extant impulses. While for me the reference recording by Midori and Robert McDonald (1992, Sony Classical) gets to the core of the music in ways I’ve not since heard, the Stuttgarters’ soaring performance of this 1937 arrangement for string orchestra by Arthur Willner articulates the orbits of its moons with surprising precision. A delicate piece of nevertheless sweeping proportions, it moves by a hand unseen. The solo violin stands out like a red rose among a field of black, its changes organic, even a touch mournful, in the present setting. As the mosaic evolves, it gives light to the translucent cells of its becoming. The flute-like strings in the enlivening finale give us reason to rejoice in the shadows.

So, too, does the Divertimento. Composed 1939 in dedication to Paul Sacher (who commissioned the work) and the Basler Kammerorchester, it achieves novel balance of spiritedness and restraint under Davies’s direction. Its unmistakable beginning lures with its insistent rhythm but would just as soon fragment into multiple galaxies of melodic thought. There is a smoothness of execution in the tutti passages and a paper-thin delicacy to the solo strings. While one might expect that energy to be sustained, it waxes and wanes in a most natural, thought-out-loud sort of way that lends especial insight into Bartók’s compositional process. The second movement proceeds slowly at first, but then, with the coming of dawn, stretches its gravity. The lower and higher strings forge an implicit harmony, an acknowledgment of the invisible forces connecting them both. The contrast between double basses and violins is one not of tone but of purpose: the lowers an unstable fundament, the uppers a firmament in turmoil. This chaos they share as if it were blood. The final movement returns the promise of that dance with wit. There are, of course, intensely lyrical and slow-moving parts, with the violin carving surface relief, but always returning with that whirlwind of fire.

In the wake of this dynamism, selections from Bartók’s 27 Two- and Three-Part Choruses (1935-41) come as something of a breather. They are not adaptations of folksongs, but were composed in such a style at the behest of Zoltán Kodály. With evocative titles like “Wandering,” “Bread-baking,” and “Jeering,” each is a vignette of imagined life. A snare drum pops its way through the choral textures, by turns martial and lyrical, adding colors of interest throughout. And while these pieces hardly hold a candle to his a capella choruses (the orchestral writing feels at points superfluous), they provide welcome contrast to the veils that precede it with gift of vision.

Isabelle Faust / Ewa Kupiec JANÁCEK Sonate pour violon et piano - LUTOSLAWSKI Partita - SZYMANOWSKI Mythes

Here's a really terrific recital, both enterprising and intelligent, that winds up being much more than the sum of its very considerable parts. Isabelle Faust and Ewa Kupiec play Janácek's quirky Violin Sonata with uninhibited passion, making no attempt to smooth over the music's rough edges but at the same time (as in the gorgeous second-movement Ballada) offering playing of bewitching beauty and fantasy. Kupiec in this respect proves herself a more than worthy partner to her gifted colleague. For example, her approach to La Fontaine d'Aréthuse, the first of Szymanowski's Mythes, points the music's rhythms with unusual care. No impressionistic fog here! The result, when combined with Faust's exquisitely poised tracery in her upper register, must be the most characterful interpretation of this music since the celebrated Danczowska/Zimerman version on DG, and it couldn't be more different--sharply focused and precise where the DG offers dreamy washes of sound.
The two Lutoslawski pieces--the brief, eruptive Subito and the Partita--find a natural home in this highly individual company of composers and performers. Partita is best known in its orchestral guise, but there's a very good case to be made for hearing it as originally written for violin and piano, particularly when played as here. Kupiec's notably keen attention to harmonic detail provides a much firmer launching pad than does the orchestral version for the violin's evocative, often microtonal explorations. Curiously, although you might think this harder edge makes the music more difficult listening, it's actually easier to hear both its neo-Baroque patterning and beautifully shaped melodic contours, particularly when phrased with the sensitivity Faust routinely displays (witness the poignant Largo central section). Perfectly balanced recorded sound completes as fine a chamber music recital as anyone could hope for. Stunning! (David Hurwitz)

Esa-Pekka Salonen / Los Angeles Philharmonic LUTOSLAWSKI The Symphonies

This complete set of Witold Lutoslawski's symphonies is a mixture of old and new. The second, third, and fourth symphonies are reissues of recordings made in the 1980s and 1990s during Esa-Pekka Salonen's tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; all were acclaimed readings, and the 1985 version of the sizzlingly orchestrated Symphony No. 3, by now Lutoslawski's most commonly programmed and recorded work, has held up well against newer recordings. What's new is the Symphony No. 1, recorded in the new Walt Disney Hall to round out the set in commemoration of the composer's 100th birthday. (The entire recording of the symphony is new, although the bizarre numbering of the tracks makes this difficult to figure out.) This work is not often played. Lutoslawski wrote it in occupied Warsaw and managed to physically carry the score out of the city during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and hide with it in an attic for eight months. Later he expressed a negative attitude toward the piece, but it's well worth hearing. It might be described as overgrown neo-classicism, with short sonata-form movements and strong traces of Prokofiev and Albert Roussel, but with harmonic density, Lutoslawski's complex orchestration, and his characteristic bristly counterpoint breaking out everywhere. Salonen still ranks as Lutoslawski's foremost champion, and these four symphonies, evenly distributed over 50 years of the composer's career, form an arresting portrait of the figure in whose work modernism and the traditional symphonic medium seem most closely reconciled. If there's a complaint here, it's that the remastering, although quite good, cannot compensate for the sonic differences between Walt Disney Hall and the earlier recordings in a studio and in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The set makes you want to hear all four symphonies conducted by Salonen in the new hall, which seems tailor-made for Lutoslawski. (James Manheim)