Arranco de Varsóvia Rosalina

On the 35th anniversary of Sinfonia Varsovia, concert masters and leaders of the orchestra's string section make their phonographic debut as the Sinfonia Varsovia String Quintet. On the CD they present their intimate, more intimate musical face: from the spectacular String Quartet No. 8 op. 110 by Dmitri Szostakowicz, through the music of Polish artists of the 20th century - Five folk melodies by Witold Lutosławski and Votive Roxanna Panufnik in the version for string quintet, after Quintetto per archi by Krzysztof Penderecki, artistic director of the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra.

The Polish composer Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) is best remembered for a handful of virtuoso piano pieces, but he also produced a substantial body of orchestral music, most of it unperformed for decades. Astonishingly, he was only in his early twenties when he wrote his monumental ‘Symphonic Poem in Four Movements’ Johanna d’Arc – heard here in its first recording – a vast symphonic fresco depicting the life, death and transfiguration of the heroine of Friedrich Schiller’s 1801 play, Die Jungfrau von Orleans. Moszkowski admitted to the influence of Wagner and Raff on the work – but he also managed to prefigure the musical language of the Hollywood epics of sixty years later. As pianist, Ian Hobson has a long-standing relationship with Toccata Classics, and this is the fourth recording he has made in his alter ego as conductor – at the helm of the Sinfonia Varsovia, as with his previous albums, which uncovered the early orchestral music of Martinu. This is the first of a series of Ian Hobson recordings for Toccata Classics that will focus on Moszkowski’s piano and orchestral music.