Description
In this attractively priced 5CD box set from Dux, the Capella Regia choir conducted by Stanislaw Krawczynski presents the complete surviving works of Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki (c. 1665-1734), a priest and leading Polish composer of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, whose music was closely associated with the liturgy of Wawel Cathedral in Krakow. Organised thematically, the Opera Omnia encompasses oratorios, five Masses, motets, antiphons, hymns, sequences and other sacred works, culminating in his sole surviving instrumental composition, the Polonaise balowy for solo violin. Gorczycki's music reveals a remarkable synthesis of sophisticated polyphony and the expressive use of Gregorian chant and archaic forms. The recordings bring together an international ensemble of soloists with Capella Regia, continuing the centuries-old tradition of the Wawel musical chapel, which Gorczycki himself directed for 36 years.