Witold

This long awaited album was released by DUX and features two piano concertos by the outstanding Polish post-Romantic Zygmunt Stojowski, a student and friend of Ignacy Jan Paderewski. It is our great pleasure to be able to remind listeners once again of such a valuable repertoire. We are certain that this new album will bring them much joy and satisfaction!

Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100, in Soviet Russia in one month in the summer of 1944. Fourteen years had passed since Prokofiev wrote the first version of his Symphony No. 4 in C major. World War II was still raging during the symphony's gestation, and Prokofiev composed it in the Soviet Union. He gave out in a statement at the time that he intended it as "a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit." He added "I cannot say that I deliberately chose this theme. It was born in me and clamoured for expression. The music matured within me. It filled my soul.

The silver age of Russian culture at the turn of the 20th century is a time when the tendencies in Russian art, which had been growing for a century, reached their peak, placing it in a gap between its fascination with the Western culture and being rooted in the Slavic tradition of Great Ruthenia.

Among all the solo piano works Lutoslawski must have composed up to the end of World War II, only the Sonata (1934) and the Two Etudes (1940/41) are still preserved today.

Lutosławski’s twenty carols are not a ‘Top Twenty’ collection; conspicuous by their absence are some of the most popular carols like Wśród nocnej ciszy (In the midst of night’s quiet), Mędrcy świata (Wise men of the world) or Pójdźmy wszyscy do stajenki (Let’s all go to the stable) while little known works are included.

Dennis Russell Davies has had a long-running and highly productive association with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra – documented on exceptional ECM recordings of repertoire from Mozart to Kancheli - and is currently the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate. Here he leads them through spirited performances of Bartók’s “Divertimento”, “Romanian Folk Dances” and “Seven Songs” (on which the orchestra is joined by the Hungarian Radio Children's Choir.) This selection of lively Bartók pieces is viewed through the prism of Wittold Lutosalwaski’s “Musique funèbre”, written in memory of the great Hungarian composer, and first performed on the 10th anniversary of Bartók’s death. It’s an important, and moving, piece (and one which also led to international recognition for Lutoslawski).

Why arrange Boccherini concertos? To bring out the colours, rhythms, dances, melodies and countermelodies. To reinvent our roles or to exchange them like a game, from one page to another.

Witold Maliszewski was a prolific Polish composer who is remembered not only for his compositional oeuvre, but also his contribution to education- he was a founder of Odessa Conservatory and a professor at Warsaw Conservatory. Students of Maliszewski include Witold Lutoslawski, Mykola Vililnsky, Shimon Shteynberg, and Boleslaw Woytowicz. His style was largely shaped by Russian musical traditions. His symphonies are non-programmatic, and only the Fourth Symphony in D major contains any trace of traditional Polish music.

This new album conducted by Nicholas Collon continues Ondine’s award-winning series of orchestral works by Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994) together with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The series has gathered several accolades, including a Grammy nomination, a BBC Music Magazine Awards nomination, as well as several recording of the month awards and best recordings of the year nominations. This album includes the composer’s early hit, his folklorish masterpiece Concerto for Orchestra, which is among his most performed compositions.

Obscurus is an exploration of the obscured, in a programme which showcases some of the most incredible trumpet writing of the 20th and 21st century, as well as several reimaginings of older, more mainstream works for other instruments, arranged for trumpet by Lucy Humphris.