This handsomely presented
premium price anthology drawn from Panufnik’s
orchestral music is recorded with integrity
and performed with devout brilliance.
Ondine have shown great
honesty in conveying the orchestral
sound without spotlighting or other
intensifying artifice. Even so in the
Heroic Overture my preference
remains for the 1960s analogue recording
as issued on Unicorn. There is one interpretative
difference between Storgårds and
Jascha Horenstein on Unicorn. In the
last few bars the vituperative accelerando
is taken at a frenetic pace by Storgårds;
more so than by the composer.
There’s quite a lot
of stylistic blue sky, not to mention
a couple of decades, between the Heroic
Overture and the elliptical expressive
world of the Sinfonia di Sfere.
It is in seven segments here separately
tracked. It is the sixth of Panufnik’s
ten symphonies. The symphony manages
to be both peaceful as you might expect
from Music of the Spheres yet also troubled
and violent. Brutality is expressed
through the salvos and tirades of the
molto allegro (tr. 6) with lots
of catapulted and left-right bounced
percussion and drums. I had recently
been listening to Tüür’s Fourth
Symphony Magma so that particular
aspect was familiar even if Tüür’s
approach is more manic. The abruptly
cut-off final segment returns to barbarity
with the percussion shots accentuated
by a woodwind shriek. It’s all the more
shocking after the andante in
which the piano entreats peace amid
rumbling disturbance. I have yet to
sense the claimed geometrical-mathematical
cohesion of this work though I read
in the notes that it’s there. This a
symphony that remains episodic if impressive.
Landscape
is intended to evoke some interior psychological
landscape, perhaps in Suffolk, perhaps
in the Poland from which Panufnik had
been dispossessed. Its tremulous and
whisper-quiet keening is redolent of
both Pärt and Copland. This is
a communing typical of the prayerful
murmuring in Sinfonia Sacra.
It gradually rises to a throbbingly
soulful paean then falls back again
into a silence interceded by a shredded
whistle from stratospheric violins –
fallible and vulnerable.
Sacra is
resonantly recorded and is sensibly
placed last in the playing order. Those
echoingly glorious fanfares have never
been done to such telling effect. The
Tallis-like blissful exhaustion
of the velvety Larghetto is deeply
moving. Vision III has another
violent and viscerally exciting barrage
of brass and percussion matched by a
deeply exciting climax on the wing at
1:30. After three short movements the
symphony ends with a sustained Hymn
spanning 14:23. This builds from
a barely audible whistle and whisper
of high violins. Panufnik makes inventive
use of the oscillation and ululation
of high strings over an underpinning
rumble of deep woodwind. It brings a
lump to the throat. The music progresses
at a noble - almost Brucknerian – pace
which rises to real magnificence at
12:39. The whole is thuddingly well
recorded. Quite apart from doing justice
to Panufnik’s loud oratory it also extracts
every mote of emotion from the extensive
quiet intoning. The throbbing and tolling
finale has never sounded as majestic
as this!
There’s just a twinge
of regret that Ondine and Storgards
did not select the Sinfonia Elegiaca
in place of Sinfonia di Sfere
and the Tragic Overture in
place of Landscape. That aside
this is a fine and often moving entry
in the Panufnik catalogue. It’s more
easily accessible than the CD Accord
disc by Kord
(includes Sacra, Symphony 10
and Piano Concerto) and less esoteric
than the Atherton
disc on Explore (di Sfere and
Mistica in mid 1970s analogue).
At mid-price and with generous timing
there is an all-Panufnik disc on EMI
Classics which is also well worth exploring.
The EMI includes the early Sacra
and Rustica conducted by
the composer in pioneering recordings
(Monte Carlo, 1967) as well as the much
later and drier Sinfonia Concertante
(0946 3 52289 2 2).
The photos in the Ondine
booklet are well worth having. They
include a full studio portrait of Panufnik
smoking a curvaceous Sherlockian pipe.
Even more rare is the atmospheric picture
of the composer in 1944 conducting an
orchestra in Warsaw. These otherwise
unpublished photographs are from the
personal collection of Panufnik's widow,
Lady Camilla Jessel Panufnik. The extensive
and satisfying notes are by Bernard
Jacobson.
I heard this in its
CD format not as an SACD.
Rob Barnett
Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra/John Storgårds
