MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

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

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


Support us financially by purchasing
this through MusicWeb.

Joachim KACZKOWSKI (1789-1829)
Violin Concerto No.1 in A minor, Op. 8 (c.1810) [39:46]
Violin Concerto No. 2 in B minor, Op. 17 [30:55]
Marucha Agnieszka (violin)
Orkiestra Symfoniczna Filharmonii Lubelskiej im. Henryka Wieniawskiego/Rodek Wociech
rec. 2019, Filharmonii Lubelskiej im. Henryka Wieniawskiego
ACTE PRÉALABLE AP0470 [70:45]

Though he was widely performed during his lifetime and his works published across Europe, the name of Joachim Kaczkowski has fallen by the wayside. Little biographical information exists and even his year of birth is conjectural. It’s known he was a fine violinist and his popularity in Warsaw was augmented by travels in Germany and it’s telling that many of his concertos, symphonic pieces and chamber works were published in Berlin, Vienna and Milan. He returned to Poland in 1817, led orchestras, and became a court music teacher, performing widely until his death in Warsaw in 1829.

His Violin Concerto No.1 was premiered in 1810 in Warsaw. It opens with a nicely ‘pathetic’ character, the executant-composer’s assurance in spinning lyric episodes being evident as the first movement develops. There is some elegant double-stopping, and adept use of winds and horns. The extensive orchestral recapitulation is effective and dance elements are embedded but it is over-extended for its material, lasting over 18 minutes. The slow movement is, by contrast, compact and cast in a lighter vein, and once again lyricism, predictably, predominates. The only distinctively national music comes in the attractive Polonaise finale, where elegance predominates but which a stern critic might find, as with the first movement, too long-winded.

A move toward greater compaction of material can be felt in the Second Concerto. The orchestral introduction in the earlier concerto lasted three-and-a-half minutes. In the later work it’s only two minutes, and again once the solo violin enters there is a sure sense of elegant, slightly melancholic refinement. The passagework is solid and the technical demands seem rather more searching than in the earlier Op.8 concerto. Kaczkowski’s slow movements are not particularly laden, if the evidence of these two concertos is reflective of more general practice. They tend, as here, to be more pleasing than moving. Rather like the earlier work, Polish character is reserved for the finale, here a Rondeau à la Mazure, a pleasingly genial and characterful movement.

Violinist Agnieszka Marucha, who recorded Raul Koczalski’s Concerto so ably for this label recently, is the excellent soloist, well accompanied by Rodek Wociech. If I felt the passagework in the first movement of Op.8 dragged slightly, the blame resides more with the composer, I suspect; it’s too prolix.

Whilst he is hardly a compositional missing link, Kaczkowski can take his place alongside his contemporary August Fryderyk Duranowski as a representative Polish composer of the time (Duranowski’s A Major Violin Concerto, premiered at the same concert as Kaczkowski’s Op.8, can be found on AP0360). Are we going to get recordings of his chamber music?

Jonathan Woolf



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