Dux have done very
well by Paderewski - please see Jonathan
Woolf's reviews of the piano
and chamber
music.
Here is Paderewski’s
single massive Symphony - a work of
ambitious aspiration. Paderewski began
work on it in 1903 and intended a dedication
to mark the 40th anniversary of Poland's
uprising against Tsarist rule. The work
was finished in 1908. During the intervening
years his fame as pianist had spread
and the classic struggle between composition
and the life of a travelling virtuoso
took its toll on progress with the work.
The secure, moodily
auburn tone of the strings in the Miaskovskian
introduction to first movement is a
credit to the players. At no time while
listening to this disc did I shudder
or feel that we might have been betrayed
by the weaknesses of some student orchestras.
I suspect we are talking here about
seniors with a stiffening of teachers
and other professionals because the
playing is uniformly admirable. This
is tested through sometimes saturated
textures as in the uproarious splendour
of the fanfaring final five minutes
of this Mahlerian length of work. At
that stage there is a definite touch
of Glazunov's contemporaneous Eighth
Symphony in the air.
In this tense cloud-hung
pressurised romantic piece the music
echoes with early Scriabin and Miaskovsky,
the darker Tchaikovsky and even some
Rachmaninov from The Isle of the
Dead. The rumbling threat in the
pages of Balakirev's Tamara can
also be heard. There is even the odd
echo of Richard Strauss in the unembarrassed
repeatedly rolling horn address at 9.00
onwards in the first movement. A Francesca-style
storm at the start of the third movement
veers into Korngold territory in its
last ten minutes. I mentioned Mahler
earlier on but this Symphony at no time
sounds like Mahler. Perhaps Suk’s Asrael
might be a closer cousin though the
Paderewski lacks the transfixing psychological
power of that work.
This is not the Paderewski’s
first recording. I seem to recall that
a cut version appeared on LP and also
on an Olympia CD back in the 1980s.
Currently the competition comes from
Hyperion CDA67056 (reviewed
here). Hyperion's team had a Polish
conductor, Jerzy Maksymiuk (who has
also conducted Czepiel's Cracow orchestra)
with his own orchestra, the BBC Scottish
Symphony. Their version, made in 1998,
timed out at 30.08+17.01+27.04 as against
the slightly swifter Czepiel on Dux
(27.58+15.11+28.55).
I do hope that success
with Dux's Paderewski series will result
in sufficient funding and confidence
for them to issue their complete recording
of Paderewski's opera Manru.
It is infuriating that this recording
exists yet Dux have insufficient funding
to support its production and release.
Here to tantalise you further are the
details: DUX 0368/0369 Taras Ivaniv,
Ewa Czernak, Maciej Krzysztyniak, Zbigniew
Kryczka, Barbara Krahel, Agnieszka Rehlis,
Radoslaw Zrkowski, Dorota Dutkowska,
Andrzej Kalinin, Choir and Orchestra
of Lower Silesia Opera conducted by
Ewa Michnik. There is no point in trying
to order it. The master lies with DUX
and will not be issued until funding
is forthcoming.
For now what we have
here is a late-romantic symphony of
brooding grandeur. It is similar in
tone to the first two Sibelius symphonies
yet without quite their exceptional
melodic invention and orchestrational
genius. The performance is no-holds
barred and is from a Polish orchestra
and conductor. There is little to choose
between the Hyperion and this version
made two years later. The Hyperion scores
on better background notes from Adrian
Thomas but that is about it.
If you are in the market
for a not inconsiderable late-romantic
symphony and your expectations do not
run to a masterwork then you should
hear this … and soon. Where better than
in the hands of a Polish orchestra?
Rob Barnett
Symphony Orchestra Music Academy, Cracow/Wojciech
Czepiel