Lutowslawski: Vocal Works - Crowe, Gardner, BBC Symphony Orchestra (2011)

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Lutowslawski: Vocal Works - Crowe, Gardner, BBC Symphony Orchestra (2011)

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The BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner, music director of English National Opera and an exclusive Chandos artist, presents Volume 2 of their Polish Music series; a disc dedicated to vocal works by Witold Lutosławski. They are joined by the soloists Lucy Crowe, Toby Spence, and Christopher Purves in looking at some of the composer’s earlier works for voice and orchestra as well as three major works written after 1960: Paroles tissées, Les Espaces du sommeil and Chantefleurs et Chantefables.

Among the earlier pieces, Lacrimosa is the only surviving fragment of an intended Requiem and the only sacred work in Lutosławski’s output. In complete contrast, the Silesian Triptych was written at the height of the post-war Soviet doctrine that called for music that connected with the broad masses. In this folk-based work, Lutosławski takes three Silesian songs about the trials of love, giving them sparkle as well as depth to lift them above the mundanity of everyday life. Both works here feature the soprano soloist Lucy Crowe.

When Poland finally emerged from the cultural oppression of the post-war decade, its music scene flourished.

For Lutosławski, it was a time for personal development. In the first half of the 1960s his music had a raw energy, but by 1965 it had developed a much more subtle tone. Paroles tissées, in which the tenor soloist here is Toby Spence, simply accompanied by strings, harp, and piano, was the first work really to show this new subtlety in his works. Les Espaces du sommeil, with the baritone soloist Christopher Purves, is another prime example of the new lyrical quality that came to colour many of Lutosławski’s later orchestral works.

Chantefleurs et Chantefables is made up of nine charming and humourous songs which, inspired by the collection of childrens’ poems by the surrealist Robert Desnos, explores the vivid imagery and bright colours of the natural world through the innocent eyes of a child.

Performer: Lucy Crowe
Conductor: Edward Gardner
Orchestra/Ensemble: BBC Symphony Orchestra

Reviews: Edward Gardner continues his excellent series of Lutoslawski recordings for Chandos, with the orchestral works release already having achieved status.

In a vibrant recording, the lively Silesian Triptych makes for a marvellous curtain raiser, its folk rhythms and colourful orchestration granted full impact. The earliest work in this programme, Lacrimosa, is a terrific vehicle for soprano Lucy Crowe. This is Lutoslawski’s only sacred piece, and the only surviving fragment of a planned but never completed Requiem. If you know and love Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater then this is a wonderful place to extend the experience.
/> Paroles tissées or ‘Woven Words’ was one of Lutoslawski’s early pieces in the distinctive style which made his name a force to be reckoned with in the 20th century. Generating maximum effect from a relative minimum of instrumental means, the textures and harmonic worlds generated take one into realms of dreamlike imagination – often beautiful, sometimes fearful and even shocking. Toby Spence’s delivery from the drama of ‘a thousand black horses” to the chilling dark/light of “Sleep this pallor…” is excellent throughout.

Sleep, sleep brings us back from the brink, returning to a simpler world of children’s song, but introducing a thread of directness of expression which shines its light on later works such as Chantefleurs and Chantefables. Between these lyrical masterpieces we are given one of Lutoslawski’s great works from the 1970s, Les Espaces du sommeil. Christopher Purves’s baritone is perfectly suited to the transparency of the orchestration in this work, his tone often light and even breathless in expression. He also wins the prize for most convincing French accent. The title translates as ‘The Spaces of Sleep’, and once again the imagery is surrealist and dreamlike, the fragmentary moments of birdlike filigree and dark atmosphere in the orchestra moving and unsettling.

The programme is concluded with the longest and most recent piece on the disc, Chantefleurs et Chantefables, which again brings us back from chasms of epic profundity to more charming subjects. These two last pieces share Robert Desnos as the author of their texts, but the inner life of the shorter songs of Chantefleurs et Chantefables is one more of theatre and operatic stagecraft than abstract landscapes of the imagination. Animals and plants are brought to life, the character of their personality or movement indicated in the orchestration and vocal lines. Lucy Crowe is marvellously in tune with the psychology behind these portraits, and ranging from a darting grasshopper which is both near and far, beauteous roses and their slightly obsessive picker, to the sneakiest of Alligators.

These pieces are familiar through very good recordings such as that on Naxos 8.554283, which has the Silesian Triptych and Chantefleurs et Chantefables alongside Venetian Games and the Symphony No.1. Antoni Wit and his musicians are very good, but Edward Gardner is in a different league in terms of subtlety, and the balance of the vocal solo against the orchestra is more realistic in the Chandos recording. Likewise with Paroles tissées and Les Espaces du sommeil paired on Naxos 8.553423. I’ve known and held these Polish performances in high regard for a long time – and still do, but this Chandos newcomer brings me to places I hadn’t yet discovered through the Antoni Wit performances. Piotr Kusiewicz sounds almost ecclesiastical by comparison in Paroles tissées, and Christopher Purves is also stronger and more tonally accurate in comparison with Adam Kruszewski in Les Espaces. The Last Concert is also a moving souvenir for Chantefleurs, but as a live performance with the voice apparently slightly ‘off-mic’ and with flashes of distortion in the peaks on the recording this doesn’t really compete in the same field as the Chandos version.

All vocal texts are printed in the booklet in their original language and in English translation, and the whole package is nicely designed as one would expect. With the best lineup of soloists around and the BBC Symphony Orchestra on top form, this was always going to be something a bit special, but it exceeds even my expectations. Like a good novel or a potent poem, it’s the kind of recording which you emerge from blinking, as if from a darkened cinema into the light of day. In other words, it could quite conceivably change your view of the world. Even if it’s only for a moment – and how long is a moment?