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Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra & Łukasz Borowicz – Grzegorz Fitelberg: Symphony in E minor, Op.16 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 27:32 minutes | 485 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © DUX
Symphony in E-minor, Op. 16 by Grzegorz Fitelberg is the latest world phonographic premiere by Poznań Philharmonic Orchestra. Recorded on 6 October 2023 during a concert at A. Mickiewicz University Auditorium, recording of the piece conducted by Łukasz Borowicz.
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Łukasz Borowicz – Grażyna Bacewicz: Complete Orchestral Works Vol. 2 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 53:03 minutes | 512 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CPO
In her own words, Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) had been gifted by nature with a “small, invisible engine” that allowed her to do in ten minutes what others needed an hour for. This inner drive can be demonstrated in all areas of this Polish artist’s life. She was an excellent violinist from an early age, had success as a writer and already wrote her first compositions as a teenager – all at a dizzying pace. Even so, the quality of her works are not superficial in the least. This new release by cpo is the second in a series of her complete symphonic works. After presenting her Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4, works from the early 1950s, Lukasz Borowicz and the WDR Symphony Orchestra perform more examples of Bacewicz’s wealth of expression. These include the neoclassical outbursts of the Overture (1943) and the Second Symphony (1951), the sophisticated, already strongly timbre-oriented Variations for Orchestra (1957) and Tre movimenti, by which time Grazyna Bacewicz had achieved her “late” style – the so-called “sonorism”, in which the colour of sound plays an essential structural role. After these “three movements”, the “small engine” ran for almost another four years – this phenomenal musician had completed everything faster than the others. Her invisible drive can still be heard here today.
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Bartłomiej Nizioł, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Łukasz Borowicz – Stojowski & Wieniawski: Violin Concertos (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:50 minutes | 985 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records
The music of Zygmunt Stojowski has yet to benefit from the renaissance enjoyed by other Polish composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His violin concerto—enthusiastically received at its premiere—is here revivified alongside Wieniawski’s dazzling Fantaisie in volume 20 of our Romantic Violin Concerto series.
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Jonathan Plowright, Jakub Drygas, Aleksandra Kubas-Kruk, Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra & Łukasz Borowicz – Bergson: Orchestral Works (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:04 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © DUX
Michal Bergson’s piano concerto receives its world recording premiere — thanks to a chance discovery. Polish composer and pianist Michal Bergson (1820-1898) spent most of his life abroad, retiring to England.
The manuscript for this 1868 concerto was recently discovered in a London antiquarian bookstore. Little is known of the circumstances surrounding the composition, save that Bergson was the soloist for the premiere in Paris.
Pianist Jonathan Plowright specializes in the Polish Romantics. He makes this concerto his own. Bergson’s concerto isn’t quite as big as Grieg’s (premiered a year later), but it points in that direction.
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Krystian Adam, Robert Gierlach, Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra & Łukasz Borowicz – Cherubini: Faniska (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:54:26 minutes | 2,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © DUX
The opera Faniska, which premiered at the Kärntnertor Theatre in Vienna in 1806, is said to have been enthusiastically received by both Haydn and Beethoven. The libretto is available in German and Italian, and is based on the melodrama Les Mines de Pologne by the Nancy-born French playwright René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt. The action takes place in Poland, from where the first recording of the opera also comes.
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WDR Sinfonie-Orchester, Łukasz Borowicz – Bacewicz: Complete Symphonic Works, Vol. 1 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 54:27 minutes | 528 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CPO
The symphonic oeuvre of the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz has never before been recorded in its entirety ‘from one source’, so that the series beginning here represents a pioneering act. The Third Symphony for large symphony orchestra was written in early 1952 and the monumental and pathetic music shows a hitherto unknown face of the composer. One of its characteristics is the use of large instrumental blocks, although fragments also appear that hint at the lighter expressivity of the neoclassical tradition. It is a masterfully constructed work and the overt formal schemes of the Classical period are complemented by the subtle use of elements that were characteristic of music between the wars – in particular the timbres of the French tradition. Nevertheless, this work is not about setting new accents. The same applies to the Fourth Symphony. The orchestra of this work from 1953 is larger than in the previous symphony – among other things, English horn, E-flat and bass clarinet, contrabassoon and harp are now also called for. In both works, the composer achieved an excellent balance between the music of the past (form referring to tradition) and new sources of inspiration (folklore) as well as a new approach to traditional elements (rhythm). As a result, she managed to reconcile the autonomous, artistic qualities of her music with the expectations of the cultural policy of the time. We are very happy to have found congenial interpreters for this project, which sets new standards in the WDR Symphony Orchestra and the Polish conductor Lukasz Borowicz.
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Piotr Beczala, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Łukasz Borowicz – Heart’s Delight – The Songs of Richard Tauber (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:34 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
It is mostly operetta enthusiasts who remember the name of the monocle-wearing Austrian tenor Richard Tauber today, and that’s why this release by Polish tenor Piotr Beczala is welcome. Tauber was an enormously popular figure in many countries, singing in many languages, from the 1910s through the end of his life, unhappily exiled from his native Austria due to Jewish ancestry, after World War II. It’s not clear whether Tauber’s languages included Polish, but the program here involves German, English, and Italian. Beczala’s German is excellent; his English is slightly accented, but probably less so than Tauber’s own, and there are no distractions to impede the enjoyment of Tauber’s biggest hit, You Are My Heart’s Delight, from Franz Lehár’s The Land of Smiles. That and a few other similar numbers set the pattern for operetta and later film musical composers who tried to tailor their big numbers to Tauber’s strengths. The composers here range from the well known (Lehár) to the moderately known (Emmerich Kálmán) to the all-but-forgotten (Rudolf Sieczynski and several of the film film composers), but all the music seems of a piece, and in a style consistent enough to be familiar. That style straddled the divide between operetta and popular song; it is extravagantly romantic, almost strangely so from a modern perspective, filled with the rhythms of the waltz and other popular dances, but exploding often enough into the upper tenor register to give the singer some star quality. Beczala, something of a connoisseur’s tenor up to this point, handles the high Bs nicely, and there is just a sense of fun about the whole thing that puts across something of what Tauber must have been like. You get an aural whiff of Tauber himself in track 7, Du bist die Welt für mich (You are the world to me), which he also composed; this could have had an odd necro-duet feel, but it is tastefully handled, with the Tauber excerpt, recorded in 1934, coming in at the end as a sort of memory. An enjoyable major-label debut for operetta lovers.
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Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin & Lukasz Borowicz – Alfvén: Symphonic Works, Vol. 3 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:43 minutes | 736 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CPO
During his lifetime, Hugo Alfvén became known as one of Sweden’s principal composers of his time, with works that struck a chord with a wide audience. As a result of his popularity, a nationwide collection was held in celebration of his 70th birthday in 1942, with the proceeds used to build Alfvéngården, the composer’s home during his final years. Now, 80 years later, Elin Rombo and Peter Friis Johansson are releasing their tribute to Alfvén’s 150th anniversary, recorded at Alfvéngården using the composer’s own piano. Alfvén is primarily known for his orchestral music – including the ubiquitous Swedish Rhapsody No. 1 – and as a composer of choral music. As befits the setting, the focus of the present disc is on more intimate works, however – namely songs and piano pieces. Some of the pieces are closely related to the venue – Fyra låtar från Leksand (Four Tunes from Leksand) is a piano version of folk tunes collected from a local fiddler and Så tag mit hjerte (‘So take my heart’), Alfvén’s most frequently performed song, was composed there in 1946 as a present to his wife.
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