Name: Lutosławski: Orchestral Works 3
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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]... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2013, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 29th Oct 2012
Catalogue No: CHSA5106
Label: Chandos
Series: Edward Gardner Polish Music Series
Length: 69 minutes

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Lutosławski: Little Suite (Mala suita)

Work length10:20

$4.00

$5.20

$6.40

Edward Gardner, BBC Symphony Orchestra

I. Fujarka (Fife). Allegretto

Track length2:43

$1.00

$1.30

$1.60

II. Hurra polka (Hurrah Polka). Vivace

Track length1:33

$1.00

$1.30

$1.60

III. Piosenka (Song). Andante molto sostenuto

Track length2:50

$1.00

$1.30

$1.60

IV. Taniec (Dance). Allegro molto

Track length3:14

$1.00

$1.30

$1.60

Lutosławski: Cello Concerto

Work length24:00

$5.00

$5.85

$7.20

Edward Gardner, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Paul Watkins

I. Introduction

Track length4:14

$1.00

$1.30

$1.60

II. 4 Episodes

Track length7:34

$2.00

$1.95

$2.40

III. Cantilena

Track length6:27

$1.00

$1.30

$1.60

IV. Finale

Track length5:45

$1.00

$1.30

$1.60

Lutosławski: Metamorphoses for Cello and String Orchestra: Grave

Work length5:46

$1.00

$1.30

$1.60

Edward Gardner, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Paul Watkins

Lutosławski: Symphony No. 2

Work length29:49

$7.00

Album only

Edward Gardner, BBC Symphony Orchestra

I. Hésitant

Track length14:30

$3.00

$2.60

$3.20

II. Direct

Track length15:19

$4.00

Album only

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About

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.

Reviews

February 2013

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.

December 2012

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.

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.

January 2013

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.

25th November 2012

The characteristic formal diptych of the symphony is superbly enacted.

8th December 2012

This is a wonderful disc, brilliantly delivered by Edward Gardner’s BBC Symphony forces. Few orchestras play this repertoire so well.

Lutosławski: Orchestral Works 3

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