MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline

 

Mieczysław KARŁOWICZ (1876-1909)
Symphonic Poems Vol. 1

Stanisław i Anna Oświecimowie, op.12 (1907) [22:43]
Rapsodia litewska (Lithuanian Rhapsody), op.11 (1906) [19:36]
Epizod na maskaradzie (Episode at a Masquerade), op.14 (1908-1909) [28:22]
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra/Antoni Wit
rec. Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, Warsaw, Poland, 13-16 November 2006 (op.12 and op.14) and 30 November 2006 (op.11)
NAXOS 8.570452 [70:41]
Experience Classicsonline


This disc’s arrival gave me an excuse to go back and listen again to some earlier recordings of Karłowicz’s music that appeared on the Chandos label a few years ago. Those well-regarded accounts by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Yan Pascal Tortelier (vol. 1) and Gianandrea Noseda (vols. 2 and 3) did a great deal to bring the composer to widespread attention. But, given its enterprising knack of discovering forgotten musical byways, the Naxos label would surely, in any case, have got around to exploring Karłowicz’s oeuvre sooner or later. 

In truth, there is not actually a great deal of music to uncover. The list of Karłowicz’s works goes no higher than op.14 Epizod na maskaradzie, of which less than 500 bars had been completed by the time of his unexpected death. So, as with many other composers throughout history, we are left with a mere torso of musical achievement to judge on its own merits while simultaneously – with greater or lesser leaps of faith – speculating on the endlessly fascinating fantasy of “what might have been…”. 

One can say, though, with some certainty that Karłowicz’s music is very much of its time and place - Poland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the most important musical trends were being set by composers of the “Young Poland” movement. Probably too loosely associated to be considered a “school”, they included Fitelberg (b. 1879), Szymanowski (b.1882) and Różycki (b.1884). With music characterised by subjective, often impressionistic emotional expression and a strong appreciation of the natural world, they formed a distinct national – but in many ways quite typical - branch of the wider European fin-de-siècle culture closely associated with such late Romantic “decadent” composers as Alexander Scriabin (The Poem of Ecstasy) and pre-1914 Richard Strauss (Salomé).

But Karłowicz was not simply a “Young Poland” composer and more diverse influences are clearly apparent in his compositions. Classical Editor Rob Barnett suggested some key influences when he wrote elsewhere on this site that Karłowicz “can best be thought of as a contemplative Polish Tchaikovsky… [H]is music is mixed with brooding elements from Rachmaninov and early Miaskovsky.” In his 2002 notes for the first Chandos disc, Alistair Wightman spread the net even more widely, however, looking west as well as east to suggest reflections of Bruckner, Grieg, Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Wagner - though by the time he came to write the notes for the follow-up disc in 2004 Bruckner had disappeared. I would most definitely add the name of Scriabin to those earlier lists. 

In fact, although the surprisingly large number of MusicWeb International reviews of this composer’s music may not always agree on the influences behind it, they are virtually unanimous – and absolutely spot-on - in consistently characterising it by such adjectives as “dark”, “brooding” and “gloomy”. All the works contained on this new disc certainly have deep and significant elements of introspection at their heart. 

Interestingly enough, Karłowicz himself was conscious of his own gloomy approach. Of the Lithuanian Rhapsody, he stated that “I tried to pour into it all the grief, sadness and eternal chains of this people whose songs had filled my childhood”. Thus, his own words confirm that his idiom offers a very different, far more soulful take on Eastern European peasant life from, for example, such roughly contemporaneous equivalents as Enescu’s popular and jolly Romanian Rhapsody no.1 and the rumbustious Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes by Liapunov. 

Karłowicz was undeniably a very skilled composer but one who, because of his small output and its relative unfamiliarity, has failed to establish himself as a widely-accepted musical reference point. We tend to listen to his music and say to ourselves “Ah, yes – Tchaikovsky here… A bit of Rachmaninov there…”. We do not, perhaps sadly, hear a composition written by someone else and say “Oh, yes, that phrase reminds me of Karłowicz…”. 

This new disc offers us three of the six symphonic poems that many critics consider to be the composer’s greatest achievement. All previously appeared on the Chandos discs as well as on a 2-disc set from Dux that has particular claims to authoritative status. The fact that the Naxos issue is billed as a first volume presumably indicates an intention to issue the remaining three symphonic poems in due course. 

The subject matter of these works is, as is so often the way with Eastern European composers, somewhat bizarre or even macabre. In the case of Stanisław i Anna Oświecimowie, it is positively ludicrous, in that we are supposed to accept the fanciful notion that the no less than Pope himself has presented the eponymous siblings with a dispensation to permit their incestuous sexual relationship! 

Polish-born Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic have, of course, recorded for Naxos before. My colleague Tony Haywood chose their recording of Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand as one of his MusicWeb International discs of the year in 2006 and, while Karłowicz’s symphonic poems may not require such gargantuan resources, the performances here are quite equally assured. Perhaps understandably, the Warsaw orchestra sounds more at home in this repertoire than their counterparts in Manchester’s BBC Philharmonic, while Wit’s long experience in presenting Polish music to the wider world means that he gives us an idiomatic performance that sounds both completely natural to him and utterly authoritative. 

I find the sound on the Naxos disc preferable to the rather reverberant ambiance inhabited by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra on the Chandos discs. The Polish players, in contrast, have been recorded at a slightly higher level and, set as they are within a dryer acoustic, have a far more immediate and realistic impact. 

Richard Whitehouse has penned some useful notes for the CD booklet. They will certainly prove a good introduction to the many inquisitive purchasers who will, I hope, be attracted at this bargain price to explore Mieczysław Karłowicz’s music.

Rob Maynard

 





 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.