Krystian Zimerman, Simon Rattle - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto, Symphony No 2 (2015)

This album follows up Krystian Zimerman and Sir Simon Rattle’s award winning DG recording of Brahm’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Lutosławski’s Piano Concerto, written in 1988, is dedicated to Krystian Zimerman and was presented by him the first time to audiences in Salzburg in the same year. The piece features extremely virtuosic demands, its dense pianistic gestures at times recall the piano concertos of Bartók and Prokofiev. The Symphony No. 2, created with techniques of “limited aleatoricism” (Lutosławski), fascinates with its orchestral surfaces that offer an insight into their creator’s ability to organize sounds in a very precise way and their iridescent and colorful vitality.

Composer: Witold Lutoslawski
Performer: Krystian Zimerman
Conductor: Simon Rattle
Orchestra/Ensemble: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

They are powerful, virtuoso and elegant: Witold Lutosławski’s works prove most attractively that music from the late 20th century can offer more than just cerebral pleasure. It would be hard to imagine a group of artists more suitable for a recording of Lutosławski’s only Piano Concerto and his Second Symphony than those gathered here: the pianist Krystian Zimerman, who premiered the Piano Concerto – which was dedicated to him – at the Salzburg Festival in 1988; the Berliner Philharmoniker, which has worked together with Lutosławski on many occasions; and Sir Simon Rattle, who has been an advocate of the Polish composer more than almost any other conductor. Rattle and Zimerman are also recipients of the Centenary Medal conferred by the Lutosławski Society, and both artists knew the composer personally.

In 2013, on the one hundredth anniversary of Lutosławski’s birth, the Berliner Philharmoniker honoured him with a series of concerts. Rattle was delighted to see how positively the orchestra and the audience responded to this kind of music in which aleatoric passages (where instrumentalists can experiment freely with given material) are combined with a precise architectural plan.

Speaking about the composer, who died in 1994, Sir Simon said, “He is someone whom I greatly miss,” and that under the coat of his aristocratic manners slept a “volcano”, which could also be heard in his music. The mixture of strict form and intensity of feeling is not only to be found in the Second Symphony, composed between 1965–1967, but also in the Piano Concerto, which also contains hidden reminiscences of Lutosławski’s Polish composer colleague Chopin. This makes it an ideal work for Krystian Zimerman, whose sense of tonal colour and creative intelligence have made him one of the outstanding pianists of our time.

Tracklist:

1. Concerto For Piano And Orchestra : 1. Dotted Quarter Note = 110 - Quarter Note = 70 (5:53)
2. Concerto For Piano And Orchestra : 2. Presto - Poco meno mosso - Lento (4:40)
3. Concerto For Piano And Orchestra : 3. Eighth Note ca. 85 - Largo (7:57)
4. Concerto For Piano And Orchestra : 4. Quarter Note = 84 - Presto (7:42)
5. Symphony No.2 : 1. Hésitant (12:27)
6. Symphony No.2 : 2. Direct (13:42)