Recording of the Month
Lutos awski Symphonies Nos 1 & 4
‘Recorded in brilliant sound, this disc makes an unbeatable introduction to Witold Lutos awski’s world’
Lutos¯awski Symphonies Nos 1 & 4; Jeux vénitiens
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/hannu Lintu Ondine ODE 1320-5 (hybrid CD/ SACD) 57.21 mins
Three keys works, each from an essential point in Witold Lutos awski’s career, add up to a thrilling portrait of the modern Polish master.
All are played with searing energy by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the lucid baton of their chief conductor, Hannu
Lintu, in equally successful performances that render any relative rankings of these pieces entirely redundant.
Yet benefitting particularly from this approach is the First Symphony, seldom heard in the concert hall perhaps because its Bartókian energy is deemed blunt in comparison with the composer’s mature masterpieces. The symphony, which was first performed in Warsaw in 1949, led to accusations of formalism against Lutos awski. It also gained the dubious distinction of becoming the first major Polish musical work to be banned by Stalinist cultural commissars – Lutos awski’s subsequent and now celebrated Concerto for Orchestra cleverly found a way around the censorship. Still speaking with a powerful and sorrowful heart, it’s hardly the ‘cheerful’ piece so characterised by Lutos awski’s self-critical shrug-off. The clarity of Lintu’s approach and of the Finnish orchestra’s playing shows – more than many interpretations – how at this early stage of the composer’s career, Stravinsky was perhaps a bigger influence on him than the more oftencited Bartók.
The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra play with searing energy under Lintu
In 1961, Jeux vénitiens signalled the arrival of Lutosławski’s mature style. These ‘Venetian games’, originally composed for the Venice Biennale, saw him establishing the aleatoric technique that would become a hallmark of his musical language – rhythms are free in places but pitches remain fixed, so the improvisation is actually quite precisely controlled. That said, performances (especially of the final movement, the most radical in its chance procedures) can differ widely and this one is especially satisfying. Lintu and his players relish the chamber orchestra sonorities, and the pointillist delicacy of the slow movement is very haunting, heralding the chamber and vocal works that were to follow soon after Jeux vénitiens.
These performers are equally attuned to the more muscular soundworld of the Fourth Symphony. By this time – the Fourth was premiered in 1993, a year before Lutosławski died – the composer had left much of the intricate translucence of his ‘high’ period behind, not to mention most of the ad libitum passages, and the music’s clarity finds exciting expression here. The Fourth Symphony is also more compact than its predecessors, and conceived as a two-movement structure to be played without any break; Lutosławski loses little time in getting his sombre message across, with the clarinet projecting an expressive solo at the start. Lintu shows himself alert to the greater melodic dimension that had by this time reasserted itself as an important part of the composer’s musical language.
Captured in brilliant sound, this recording makes an unbeatable introduction to Lutosławski’s world. PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
Hear excerpts and a discussion of this recording on the monthly BBC Music Magazine Podcast available free on itunes or classical-music.com