Polish

Alla Polacca is an invitation to delve into the world of sounds, scents and flavours of Poland and Polish folklore. What is presented here is a journey through Poland and Polish culture through the eyes of various European and Polish composers who lived, worked or traveled to Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and whose compositions present elements of the Polish style.

Twenty Polish Christmas Carols (Polish: 20 polskich kolęd) is a collection of Polish carols arranged for soprano and piano in 1946 by Polish composer Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994) and then orchestrated by him for soprano, female choir and orchestra in 1984–89. The music and lyrics were taken mostly from 19th-century printed sources.

The name of Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński is still not well known outside his native Poland, but there was a time when he vied for attention in Warsaw’s musical circles with his near-contemporary Fryderyk Chopin who went on to become the country’s most famous composer. The career of Chopin flourished after he left Poland. Dobrzyński on the other hand remained in Warsaw and saw his own compositional ambitions thwarted by the difficulty of working in Russian-occupied Poland.

Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994) was the pre-eminent member of a group of Polish composers that came to prominence after the Second World War and whose artistic advancement was given impetus by the death of Stalin in 1953. The works in this set cover four decades of Lutosławski's career and include most of his important orchestral works, starting with the early Symphonic Variations, his first and second symphonies and the Concerto for Orchestra, perhaps his best-known work.

Nigel Kennedy - Polish Spirit 2007
2007 | 130 MB | MP3 | 256 Kb/s CBR
Total Time: 71.28 | Label: Emi classics | Genre: Classic Violin
Performed by: Jacek Kaspszyk, Nigel Kennedy, Polish Radio Chamber Orchestra

Review by James Leonard After restoring his first name, Nigel Kennedy (aka, the artist formerly known as Kennedy), released a series of recordings on EMI as virtuosic and eccentric as himself: East Meets East, Inner Thoughts, The Vivaldi Album, and the Blue Note Sessions. But despite the enormous musical diversity of those records, little could have prepared one for the album that followed: Polish Spirit, featuring violin concertos by Emil Mlynarski and Mieczyslaw Karlowicz and arrangements of Chopin's 2 Nocturnes, Op. 9. This music is virtually unknown outside of Poland: Karlowicz's Violin Concerto had been recorded only three times in the digital era, nothing by Mlynarski was in print at the time of this release, and none of Kresimir Debski's Chopin transcriptions had heretofore been recorded. But as Kennedy so abundantly demonstrates, each work here deserves to be better known. Both Mlynarski and Karlowicz's concertos are big, late Romantic works with song-like openings, penetrating central Andantes, and spirited closing Vivaces, and Kennedy plays them with his characteristic blend of panache and intensity. With the plush-toned Polish Chamber Orchestra and the strong-willed Kaspszyk, Kennedy turns in performances that make the best possible case for the music. What more could anyone reasonably ask for? Recorded in the Filharmonia Pomorska in Bydgoszcz, Poland, EMI's digital sound is colorful and full.