Karolina Wigura

Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet in C minor was one of the first of its genre in France, composed as part of the ‘Ars Gallica’ idea of strengthening French music against German cultural domination. Fauré didn’t entirely escape the influence of Brahms however, and both he and his pupil George Enescu share a spiritual closeness to German late Romanticism in the melancholy complexity of expression in these chamber masterpieces. The monumental first movement of Enescu’s First Piano Quartet contrasts with the rhythmic momentum of the last, in a work that integrates French impressionism with the unmistakable folk music characteristics of his native Romania.

Karolína Janů completed her master's degree in the class of Prof. Jana Jonášová at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She continued her studies at the Academy of Classical Music at Codarts University of the Arts in Rotterdam under the direction of Professor Roberta Alexander. On this CD the young soprano makes her debut with the Pilsen Philharmonic Orchestra under Chuhei Iwasaki with arias by Dvořák, Smetana and Martinů.

The choral music of Richard Lambert, born in Bath in the English West Country in 1951, covers a wide range of expression, ranging on this album from straightforward SATB settings for church performance to a sardonic parody of the excesses of established religion. It also encompasses the timeless and the timely, with a number of contributions to the age-old tradition of Christmas music to a cantata inspired by the Covid pandemic.

Karolina Nadolska developed her artistic personality under the guidance of prof. Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń, and then during her studies at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw in the piano class of prof. Piotr Paleczny and in the chamber music class of prof. Krystyna Makowska-Ławrynowicz.