Release Date: 01 January 2000
Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 636943428320
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: LUTOSLAWSKI
Description
WitoldLutosławski (1913-1994) Symphony No. 1Silesian TriptychJeux venitiensChantefleurs etChantefables Postludium IWitold Lutosławski remains among the mostdistinguished Polish composers, by the side of his close contemporary AndrezjPanufnik, in the generation after Szymanowski and before that of Penderecki andGorecki. Lutosławski was born in 1913 intoa family of some intellectual distinction. His mother, a mathematician by earlytraining, was a doctor and his father Jozef, once reputedly a pupil of Eugend'Albert, like his brothers, a man of culture and of strong patrioticinstincts. The dangers of German occupation in the war of 1914 led the familyto take refuge in Russia, where Jozef and his brother Marian fell early victimsto the Bolsheviks. In 1919 Lutosławskireturnedwith his mother and older brothers to Poland, eventually settling in Warsaw,where he was able to develop his musical abilities. Here he studied the violinwith a former pupil of Joachim and in 1927 entered the Junior Conservatory, fromwhich school-work later compelled him to withdraw. He was able, however, tostudy composition with Witold Maliszewski, a former pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov inSt Petersburg, and to continue with the same teacher when, in 1933, heabandoned his university study of mathematics to enter the Conservatory. Duringhis years there he began to make a name for himself as a composer, with what helater regarded as his true professional debut in 1939, with the performance ofhis Symphonic Variatians.The war brought inevitable difficulties and hardships, after theinvasion of Poland by Germany in the autumn of 1939 and the subsequentpartition of the country with Soviet Russia. Serving as an officer cadet, Lutosławski was taken prisoner, but managed to escape andmake his way to Warsaw, where his mother had moved, while his brother Henrykfell victim to the Red Army. In the following years he collaborated withPanufnik, playing a wide repertoire of music for piano duo in cafes and othermeeting-places. Much of this store of compositions and arrangements accumulatedfor this purpose was destroyed in the Warsaw uprising. At the same time hebegan work on his Symphony No. 1, the first movement of which occupiedhim intermittently between 1941 and 1944, when it was completed. The otherthree movements were eventually finished in 1947.In the years that followed, Lutosławskiwas tosome extent overshadowed by Panufnik, a situation that ended when the latterchose to take refuge abroad from a regime that he found repressive. Lutosławski too experienced problems with the Communistmusical establishment and his new symphony was condemned as"formalist" the charge leveled in the same year against Shostakovich,Prokofiev and others in Russia. His reaction to censure came in a series ofsafer compositions, although he himself described works of the period, whichmade use of folk material, as a necessary stage in his development, in no waythe result of political pressu
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Yang Zheng; Xinxin Song; ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; Gottfried Rabl
Spectrum Concerts Berlin
Robert Trent
