Lutoslawski: Orchestral Works

Featuring

Edward Gardner
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Witold Lutosławski

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Composer's Artistic Vision

Lutosławski developed a personal musical language that was rich and varied in its expressive potential, encompassing harmonic, rhythmic, and structural elements.

Compositional Technique

The 'Chain' works, including Chain 3 on this album, refer to Lutosławski's technique of overlapping musical textures, a method he had used since the early 1950s.

Composer Biography

Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994) saw himself belonging to the 20th-century traditions of Bartók, Debussy, and Stravinsky, rather than to his Polish compatriots.

Compositional Technique

Lutosławski was unique among Polish composers in seeing symphonic potential in national folk music, using eleven folk tunes from the Mazowsze region in his Concerto for Orchestra.

Performer Biography

Edward Gardner, the conductor on this album, began his tenure as Music Director of English National Opera with a critically acclaimed production of Britten's Death in Venice.

Composition History

The Concerto for Orchestra was written at the height of 'socialist realism', a Soviet-imported cultural dogma, which Lutosławski found to be a 'dreadful experience'.

Recording & Production

This Chandos recording utilizes 24-bit technology, offering a dynamic range up to 48 dB greater and 256 times the resolution of standard 16-bit recordings.