Jerzy Surma

Jerzy Antczak has made a name for himself as long-time Polish neo-prog band Albion's lead guitarist. This is Jerzy's first solo outing. Still very much in the neo mode, there is also some electronic intentions that push his first solo effort into the crossover genre. The music on "Ego, Georgius" is a blend of exotic Eastern sounds, cosmic themes and lots of guitar hooks, riffs, solos and melodies. Aided by some Albion friends as well as Krzystof Wywra on bass from Millenium, the album really shines on multiple levels, very eclectic and cinematographic.

In 1697 King Jan III of Poland died. Attempts to install his son Jacob as King were unsuccessful and the widow of the recently deceased king, Maria Kazimiera Sobieska (also known as Marysieńka) made the decision to move to Rome. In March of 1699 she arrived there – accompanied by 259 courtiers, 30 carriages and carts, some 500 horses and a number of pack-camels! She was soon very active in the cultural life of Rome. Amongst her acquaintances was cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, a famous patron of music. Ottoboni employed Scarlatti, and was an admirer of his music - so much so that he later contributed a Latin epigraph to the composer’s tomb in Naples.

Anton Stepanovich Arensky and Sergei Eduardovich Bortkiewicz are hardly household names. Arensky’s delicious Piano Trio in D minor continues to keep its place on the fringes of the chamber repertoire, and the Waltz movement from his Suite for two pianos receives an occasional outing; otherwise nothing. Who has even heard of Bortkiewicz other than aficionados of the piano’s dustier repertoire?

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809–1845) was a genius of quite extraordinary dimensions. He had reached full maturity as a composer by the age of sixteen (1825, the year of the String Octet), by which time he had also proved himself a double prodigy on both piano and violin, an exceptional athlete (and a particularly strong swimmer), a talented poet (Goethe was a childhood friend and confidante), multi-linguist, water-colourist, and philosopher. He excelled at virtually anything which could hold his attention for long enough, although it was music which above all activated his creative imagination.

Of the myriad piano concertos composed in the second half of the nineteenth century all but a handful are forgotten. The survivors are played with a regularity that borders on the monotonous—the ubiquitous Tchaikovsky No 1, the Grieg, Saint-Saëns’s Second (in G minor), the two by Brahms and, really, that is just about all there is on offer. Pianists, promoters and record companies play it safe and opt for the familiar. Even a masterpiece can become an unwelcome guest, especially when subjected to an unremarkable outing by yet another indifferent player, as happens so frequently today.

A younger contemporary of Scriabin and Rachmaninov, Nikolai Medtner, a Russian of distant German descent, studied under Pabst, Sapelnikov and Safonov at the Moscow Conservatoire, graduating in 1900 with the coveted Anton Rubinstein Prize. Admired as a pianist of particularly formidable attainment and inventive imagination, he held important teaching appointments at the Conservatoire (1909/10, 1914/21) before eventually leaving Russia for periods of domicile in Germany, the USA and Paris. In the winter of 1935/36 he settled in England, making his home in the Golders Green area of north London.

Niniejsza płyta zwraca na siebie uwagę z kilku powodów. Pierwszym jest dobór repertuaru. Kantaty Antonio Cestiego zostały zarejestrowane po raz pierwszy w historii fonografii, co budzi uznanie. Wydawać by się mogło, że najlepiej muzykę dawną wykonują soliści i zespoły zagraniczne. Tymczasem, także u nas w kraju mamy wybitnych specjalistów od tego rodzaju muzyki, a dowodem na ich znakomitą znajomość tematu jest właśnie niniejsza płyta – i to jest drugi powód do zainteresowania się tym nagraniem. Jest jeszcze trzeci, ciekawostka: obie partie wokalne, sopranową i tenorową wykonuje jeden artysta, Jacek Laszczkowski, który w niniejszym nagraniu wystąpił także w duecie z samym sobą. Godna podkreślenia jest łatwość, z jaką przerzuca się on ze swojego podstawowego, tenorowego głosu na śpiew falsetowy, sopranowy.

This sequence of Wagner’s preludes and overtures ranges across his compositional output, from Rienzi, his first distinctive opera, through the stirring Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and the Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre, to his last work, Parsifal from which we hear the Good Friday Music. They are performed by the St. Louis Symphony under the Polish conductor Jerzy Semkow who was the orchestra’s music director from 1975 to 1979.