Berbard Maris

Paweł Łukaszewski (b. 1968) is possibly the most-performed contemporary composer from Poland. His spiritual choral works are performed by both professional and amateur choirs around the world. Paweł Łukaszewski’s output has a significant position in Great Britain where his works are performed and premiered by renowned London and Cambridge choral ensembles. This new album by the award-winning State Choir LATVIJA under Māris Sirmais includes several world première recordings from the Polish master.

This third instalment of the recent symphonic output of Fridrich Bruk (born in Ukraine in 1937 but a Finnish resident since 1974) brings two works of astonishing vitality for a composer in his eighties. Both of them have social undercurrents: Symphony No. 22 is driven by ecological concerns about the pollution of the world’s oceans, and No. 23 takes its material from folk-melodies of the Ingrians, a vanishing ethnic group on the Finnish-Russian border. The orchestral writing in both pieces is passionate and wildly inventive, a kaleidoscope of color and counterpoint, sitting somewhere between Villa-Lobos and Pettersson in its profligate abundance.

This third instalment of the recent symphonic output of Fridrich Bruk (born in Ukraine in 1937 but a Finnish resident since 1974) brings two works of astonishing vitality for a composer in his eighties. Both of them have social undercurrents: Symphony No. 22 is driven by ecological concerns about the pollution of the world’s oceans, and No. 23 takes its material from folk-melodies of the Ingrians, a vanishing ethnic group on the Finnish- Russian border. The orchestral writing in both pieces is passionate and wildly inventive, a kaleidoscope of colour and counterpoint, sitting somewhere between Villa-Lobos and Pettersson in its profligate abundance.