Several of these pieces have been available
on CD before, but with this 3 CD collection we now have a major
survey of Lutosławski’s orchestral music up to the early
1970s, all conducted by the composer, in one place. Competition
at the budget price range at which this series is aimed has until
now been pretty much sewn up by Naxos’s series conducted by Antoni
Wit, but if you want to collect all of the works on these three
discs you will need to buy all six of the Naxos releases and put
up with the fine pleasure of having a good deal more besides.
The
earlier analogue recordings on this EMI set still sound very
good indeed. With the Naxos recordings all having been made
from the mid to late 1990s you do get a greater sense of consistency,
but at no point did I feel let down in the set presented here.
The Naxos sound does have greater dynamic range, wider stereo
separation and transparency, but more as a question of degree
than as a deciding factor. The elements of Stravinsky in the
Symphony No.1 come across very strongly with Wit, but
Lutosławski never holds back with this early work, and
is equally if not more dramatic at times. His orchestra certainly
sounds darker and more menacing, where Wit seems to find a
greater sense of light and playfulness. The Funeral Music
sees Lutosławski exploring the dodecaphonic serialism
of Schoenberg, while never entirely abandoning, and indeed
with great skill incorporating his natural inclination for
tonal grounding and development. Lutosławski’s version
is truly cataclysmic in the opening Prologue, and the
playing is gripping throughout in this version. Wit’s Naxos
recoding has the advantage of being split into the four tracks
of each named section. His opening is more secure and refined,
but doesn’t reach quite the hair-raising horror climaxes that
Lutosławski achieves. Wit is more romantic –relatively
speaking a perfumed wreath to Lutosławski’s dark, damp
terminality; though these is no escaping the grim message
in both recording’s final Epilogue.
Lutosławski
wrote his symphonies in two sections, claiming that the more
usual three movement pattern was too exhausting. This doesn’t
weaken the effect of the incredible Symphony No.2,
which includes those passages which give greater freedoms
to the musicians, and some of the aleatoric effects by which
we recognise this composer the most. I find it hard to choose
between the two versions. Wit follows the first movement’s
title of Hesitant and sounds like an explorer moving
in a world of danger, where Lutosławski gives the sensation
of delicate virtuosity in progress. The sliding strings of
the second movement, Direct, are again more urgent
with Lutosławski, and you would expect him to have the
more compact timing. In fact, Wit undercuts in the first movement,
but is indeed a whole minute longer in the second. I love
Lutosławski’s sonorities in this masterpiece of a movement
– a rich chaos which transforms the orchestra into a huge
organic magnet of sound – a ball of free flowing iron filings
which always manage to point in the same direction. Wit is
good too, but I don’t have quite the same sense of unyielding
power with the Naxos recording.
The
Concerto for Orchestra was written while Communist
rule in Poland still made the creative freedoms to be found
in Lutosławski’s later work forbidden and unthinkable.
Nevertheless, the composer found ways of creating powerful
expression – smuggling in dissonance and a feeling of rebelliousness
while keeping to the Bartók mould of using folk material and
conventional three-movement form. The 1970s recording suffers
a little at the highest peaks of volume, but as with the rest
of the works in this set still sounds wonderfully fresh. At
price-no-object one of my favourite recordings for this piece
is with Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
on Erato in 1993, but there are plenty more decent recordings
of this justly popular work. Antoni Wit is also very strong
in this piece, and the clarity in the recording also brings
out the little threads of folk melody to greater effect. Who
would want to be without the conductor’s own performance though?
The opening colour with the pizzicato bass and harp in the
opening of the third movement’s Passacaglia is still
the best on record to my mind, and the build-up is wonderfully
excruciating. This version is something which has its own
sense of drama and excitement, and is a recording from which
many have rightly taken their lead.
With
Venetian Games we truly enter the aleatoric world which
was to become a defining and highly influential aspect of
Lutosławski’s work. With the composer at the helm, you
know the effects in this and the wonderful Livre pour orchestra
are just what he was after, and even now I don’t have quite
the same thrill from any other recording of these works. Mi-parti
is one of those pieces which, if you’ve never heard it before,
may give you a fright by seeming to emanate from somewhere
you recognise, but can’t quite catch or define. It seems to
coalesce in the air as if it had always existed, just requiring
the composer’s imagination and conducting ability to give
it corporeal form. Lutosławski’s recording may not be
entirely perfect: there are one or two intonation issues,
and the balance isn’t entirely seamless, but I love this recording
with a passion. Antoni Wit is very good as well, but his instrumental
solos are fatter and more well-fed, his lines more Brucknerian;
where Lutosławski maintains a kind of hunger and intensity
which insinuates deeper into the soul.
The
Preludes and Fugues for 13 solo strings receives a
closer recording than the grander symphonic orchestral sounds
in disc 2 and there are a few bumps and squeaks here and there,
but this is white-hot music making. With the Trois
Poèmes d'Henri Michaux the introduction
of a chorus brings in a different dimension, with the kinds
of vocal shapes and textures which were also taken and developed
in different directions by Penderecki. There is a realistic
perspective in the recording which I appreciate greatly, the
chorus and orchestra very much equal partners. This is also
true of the Naxos recording, the choir perhaps a little more
present in the balance, but with certainly a very highly disciplined
bunch under Antoni Wit. With the advance of time, it has to
be said that the more recent singers seem a little more comfortable
with the idiom, but this is not a point I would want to labour
too strongly. I find Lutosławski’s subtle directness
of utterance quite unsettling in his choral writing, especially
in dreamlike movements such as the final Repos dans le
malheur. There is also quite a dramatic imploration in
Bernard Jacobson’s booklet notes: “In the outer movements,
resist the temptation to turn up the volume, lest you do violence
to the fragile magic of these elusive utterances”.
Where
Lutosławski’s recording of Paroles tissées has
the authentically nasal Frenchness of Louis Devos, Antoni
Wit employs the richer tones of Piotr Kusiewicz, whose French
is, it has to be said, not especially wonderful. Pitting the
two against each other, and it’s easy to hear which you can
understand the least. Again, the Naxos release has each text
on a separate track, and I don’t understand why EMI couldn’t
be bothered to do the same. The final work of the set is the
Postlude no.1, which is one of a series of pieces which
has a kind of transitional feel – a symphonic sketch. This
one has a sense of nocturnal drama, but neither the special
effects or the harmonic movement are in any way conclusive
or resolved.
What
is conclusive is that this is a ‘must have’ if you are in any
way intrigue or inspired by the Polish avant-garde in the 1960s
and 70s, and Lutosławski in particular. I have lived with
and enjoyed the Naxos/Antoni Wit recordings for many years now,
but coming back to these ‘originals’ has rekindled some of the
excitement I remember feeling on hearing these pieces for the
first time. For sure, the recordings have a few rough edges and
not everything is perfect, but in fact I was pleasantly surprised
by the high standards maintained throughout the recordings on
this set. This well-filled collection is now something of an historic
classic, and while it misses out on a big chunk of this composers
later major works it will provide you with a massive introduction
and hopefully leave you wanting more. My own minor memory of Lutosławski
was that of his self-effacing resourcefulness. At the R.A.M. in
the 1980s, Paul Patterson managed to organise a visit by the great
man, and all of us composition students were there hanging on
every ounce of the experience. During one of the talks, Witold
wanted to demonstrate some musical material on the grand piano,
but someone had forgotten to unlock the thing. A poor flunky was
sent to find the key, but, entirely unruffled, the noble old genius
in his immaculate suit spotted a cheap old brown upright behind
a curtain, and played his music sat on the side of the stage –
remaining there even after the precious Steinway had, with breathless
and abject apologies, been liberated. This I am sure was a small
echo of the spirit of that Polish underground survival instinct,
and I have a feeling he rather liked it ...
Dominy Clements
Louis Devos (Tenor, Paroles tissées), Kracow Polish
Radio/TV Chorus (
