Eternal Songs, Op. 10 / Stanislaw and Anna Oswiecim, Op. 12 / etc

Critic's Choice - Gramophone Magazine 2002

"During his 10-year directorship of the BBC's Manchester-based Philharmonic, Yan Pascal Tortelier built on reputation already impressively honed in Ulster. The BBC Philharmonic has become one of the UK's finest ensembles with remarkably wide musical sympathies. With this recording, they turn their attention to a composer whose rich imaginative vision makes his obscurity seem all the more incomprehensible. The Karlowicz scholar Alistair Wightman argues that this short-lived Polish composer (1876-1909) turned away from the nationalist idiom of his contemporaries and looked instead to Bruckner, Grieg, Strauss, Wagner and Tchaikovsky. The result is intoxicating music, ripe with Romantic yearning and painted with an extraordinarily complex tonal palette. A real discovery, stunningly played and recorded." (Gramophone)

***** Five Stars Pick of the Month BBC Music Magazine (October 2002)

"Tortelier's committed, idiomatic performnaces are a 'must hear' experience for any admirer of late Romanticism" (BBC Music Magazine)

This is the BBC Philharmonic's hundredth release on Chandos and the final disc that Yan Pascal Tortelier recorded as Principal Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic.

Tortelier's recordings with the BBC Philharmonic for Chandos have received universal acclaim for his fine interpretations and adventurous repertoire.

This CD contains music by little-known Polish composer Mieczyslaw Karlowicz. Karlowicz's music is characterised by its late-romantic melancholy and reflects his admiration for the music of Bruckner, Grieg, Richard Strauss and Tchaikovsky.

Karlowicz was the composer most representative of 'Young Poland', an artistic movement based on the union of modern artistic principles with national tradition. His reputation rests largely on his five colourful symphonic poems, of which Eternal Songs, Lithuanian Rhapsody and Stanislaw and Anna Oswiecim are included here.

Eternal Songs, Karlowicz's second poem, completed in 1906, has three movements: 'Song of Everlasting Yearning', 'Song of Love and Death' and 'Song of Eternal Being'. The work reflects the impact of Schopenhauer's philosophy on the composer and of mystical experiences he enjoyed in the Tatra Mountains.

Lithuanian Rhapsody, also composed in 1906, is exceptional in Karlowicz's output in that it is the only one of his works to be based entirely on authentic folksong. The Rhapsody had to do with 'recollections of childhood with the portrayal of the family home and children's games'.

Stanislaw and Anna Oswiecim was inspired by a painting by the Polish artist Stanislaw Bergmann. The painting took as its subject a seventeenth-century legend concerning a brother and sister who struggled in vain against their love for one another. It is possible in the music to detect the remnants of sonata form with the exuberant 'Stanislaw' theme as first subject, and the more extended 'Anna' melody as the second. So wide a range of expression is traversed in this work, and such a wealth of technical ingenuity brought into play that it is not surprising to find it described by a distinguished musicologist as Poland's 'most splendid symphonic poem'.