Serenade for String Orchestra (1996/97) [9:03]
Sinfonietta No. 2 for Flute and String Orchestra (1994) [14:55]
Sinfonietta per Archi (1990/91) [13:57]
Concerto per Viola (Violoncello) (1984) [22:22]
Łukasz Długosz (flute) (Sinfonietta No. 2)
Rafał Kwiatkowski (cello) (Concerto)
Radom Chamber Orchestra/Maciej Zółtowski
rec. 23-30 June 2012, Krzysztof Penderecki Concert Hall of Oskar Kolber Music Schools in Radom.
DUX 0935 [60:19]
This release is dedicated “to the distinguished artist
on the eve of his 80th birthday”, and is a superbly
performed and recorded programme of chamber orchestra works. DUX
has on occasion a knack of filling their booklets with information
about the performers and composer while managing to avoid saying
anything at all about the music. This is a minor irritation in
an otherwise excellent production.
Penderecki’s Serenade has appeared on the Dux label
before (see review),
but this release has a far more satisfying programme even were
there to be any argument about the quality of the performance.
Reviews for equivalent repertoire on the Naxos label can be found
here
for the Serenade and Sinfonietta No. 2 in its
version with clarinet; and here
for the Viola Concerto. Antoni Wit’s recordings
of Penderecki for Naxos are consistently good, and if you’ve
already been collecting these you probably won’t feel the
need to duplicate from Dux. If however you are only now embarking
on your explorations of Penderecki this release has a vibrant
quality which has a tendency to deliver just a little more than
from Wit.
The Serenade has, like Bartók’s similarly
innocently named Divertimento, a pretty potent musical
punch, played with passion and energetic engagement by the Radom
CO strings. The Sinfonietta No. 2 is another wide-ranging,
concerto-like piece in which soloist Łukasz Długosz
is heard to great effect. His flute tone is not quite as glossy
as some, but to my ears this makes for a more durable sound, the
musicality more significant than shining virtuoso brilliance.
The Sinfonietta for Strings is once again played with
incomparable verve by this orchestra. The intensity of experience
is maintained to a higher pitch than with Antoni Wit on Naxos
(8.572212), with Maciej Zółtowski somehow keeping
a greater sense of direction and shape in all those solos in the
first movement. The second movement is swifter from Wit, but there
is a gritty irrepressibleness about the Radom performance which
I find every bit as convincing.
Placed on one track rather than Naxos’s seven access points,
the Viola Concerto is played here on cello by Rafał
Kwiatkowski, who does a great job with the intense upper register
passages and has a fine, full tone elsewhere. This is one of those
pieces which works as well on viola as cello, but I have a sympathy
for the sonorities and lyrical quality of the viola in this case
as it moulds more closely to the upper strings of the orchestra.
This may also be a feature of the Naxos recording, which has the
soloist at a more realistic distance when compared to the Dux
balance, which allows us to hear the cellist’s grunts and
gasps in quieter passages. The cello makes for a more overtly
dramatic listen where the viola is more elegiac, though there
is little holding back from Grigori Zhislin on the Naxos recording.
In the end this is an unequal comparison, and with both performances
filled with high-octane musicianship I would be hard pressed to
pick a champion.
Whatever your inclination, this is a Penderecki programme which
ticks every box with regard to content, performance and production,
and even by Dux’s usual high standards it emerges as an
all-round winner.
Dominy Clements
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