Lutoslawski: Orchestral Works Vol 2 - Gardner, Lortie, BBC Symphony Orchestra (2012)

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Lutoslawski: Orchestral Works Vol 2 - Gardner, Lortie, BBC Symphony Orchestra (2012)

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This is the third volume in the Chandos series devoted to the music of the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski. It brings together his first surviving orchestral piece (The Symphonic Variations) and his last symphony, as well as two works for piano and orchestra – an early work originally written for two pianos (The ‘Paganini’ Variations), and his very last concerto. The works are performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner, described by Gramophone as a veritable ‘Dream Team’ in Vol. 1. They are joined in this recording by Louis Lortie, the award-winning pianist and exclusive Chandos artist.

Lutoslawski composed his Symphonic Variations while he was studying with Witold Maliszewski at the Warsaw Conservatory. When he showed the work to his teacher, he was told in no uncertain terms: ‘For me your work is ugly.’ A rather disheartening response to be sure, but perhaps also proof that here was a work that was well ahead of its time. Today it fits in easily with the European tradition of variation form, and is considered a prime example of the lush, but edgy harmonies of the composer, and of his vivid ear for instrumental colour and virtuosity.

Less than three years later, Poland was invaded by Germany, and normal music life disappeared. In its place, musical cafés emerged as places where light music as well as mainstream repertoire was performed. Lutosławski made his living in these cafés by playing a repertoire of light music, arranged by himself and his piano-duet partner, Andrzej Panufnik. All but one of these works were destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The sole survivor was the Variations on a Theme of Paganini. The version recorded here is Lutosławski’s orchestration for piano and orchestra, of the original version for two pianos.

Also on this disc is the Piano Concerto, the last of Lutosławski’s concertante works, as well as Symphony No. 4, which Lutosławski composed over four years (1988 – 92), conducting its premiere in Los Angeles, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in 1993, just a year before his death.

Composer: Witold Lutoslawski
Performer: Louis Lortie
Conductor: Edward Gardner
Orchestra/Ensemble: BBC Symphony Orchestra

Reviews: This fascinating and immensely enjoyable disc covers a wide span of Lutos?awski’s compositional career, from the earliest surviving orchestral work to his last symphony, and from an early work for two pianos (albeit in a version orchestrated by the composer 40 years later) to his last concertante work. In the Symphonic Variations , which open the disc, conductor Edward Gardner takes half a minute longer than the composer in his own 1976 reading (EMI)—this shows up straight away in the opening flute solo. Gardner’s reading is a shade cooler than the composer’s, perhaps, but no less effective. The music is delightfully unselfconscious and this is caught perfectly by Gardner. The surprise is the degree of assuredness shown by the composer, in his 20s, in this music. His ear for color and instrumentation is strong and the work feels more consistent with his later music than does the substantially later Concerto for Orchestra . The influences of Szymanowski, Bartók, and Stravinsky may be clear and obvious but they are already being assimilated and so, when they show up at the start of the second movement, for example, they feel all of a piece.

In 1978, Lutos?awski orchestrated his two-piano Variations on a Theme of Paganini (1941) as a concertante work. Each variation is played twice, the piano and orchestra swapping over for the second time around, thereby generating a more substantial work (more of a raison d’être to perform it) as well as allowing the composer to show his orchestral skills. These are, nevertheless, never forced on the music, which retains its lightness and charm, particularly in Louis Lortie’s and Gardner’s reading.

The Piano Concerto, completed in 1988, is, like so many of Lutos?awski’s works, end-weighted, by which I mean that the later movements carry the greater part of the emotional content, intellectual weight, and, indeed, duration. So the composer starts, in the first movement, with themes he describes as “nonchalant, light, sometimes wayward,” though there is space for a broad, yearning cantilena. The second movement is a short Presto, one of whose functions, I suspect, is just not to be like the third movement, which starts with a lengthy peroration for solo piano (there are no cadenzas in this work). The fourth is structurally the most interesting. Lutos?awski partially decouples the soloist from the band. They don’t go their own ways entirely but, whereas the two parties had adopted a rather conversational style in the first three movements, now they tend to talk over each other in this set of variations. Lortie is highly responsive to the music and his touch is completely assured. This work is very much of the composer’s late period, if I may be allowed to invent that concept. As with the earlier Third Symphony, it uses an integrative musical language that is both melodic and often passionately lyrical, absorbing and being influenced by the styles of composers of previous generations; not in a knowing postmodernist way, or even in the inclusive, but seemingly random, way Mari Takano employs in the music I review elsewhere in this edition. Rather Lutos?awski achieves coherence and consistency—and innovation—in a way that shows both the composer’s line of succession and his links to his musical past.

Like many a Lutos?awski work, this CD is also end-weighted, with the symphony coming last. However, the Fourth Symphony itself is atypical: The opening has a gravity and a lyricism usually reserved for much later on (for example, in the Third Symphony) and it builds to a powerful climax. Eloquent woodwind lines alternate with fluttery material so characteristic of the composer (beautifully caught by the recording)—a couple of times the Concerto for Orchestra momentarily comes to mind, for example. Although the composer described this symphony as “ordinary,” it takes several listens to get the measure of the structure of both movements. The second, longer, movement is more enigmatic: somewhat sectional (emphasized by the indexing on the CD, which divides it into four tracks) with a climax that Gardner judges perfectly. Clearly the composer does not want to have a typical Lutos?awski weighty ending, but underplay this climax and the whole work would sag. It’s followed by a very vestigial coda for solo violins accompanied by distant clarinet and percussion, the latter almost, but not quite, inaudible. And then there’s a brisk ending that risks being heard as stuck on as an afterthought but just about works in this reading. My only trivial cavil about the recording of the symphony is that the orchestral piano is surely too forward, but otherwise all is well.