A short all-Polish programme is the
engine that drives this Dux disc. It’s
issued under the auspices of the Ludwig
van Beethoven Association, whose Beethoven
Academy Orchestra does the honours throughout.
Other than that I must say it is hard
to gauge the target audience for a concert
such as this. The disc is short measure;
there’s a young soloist in a warhorse
concerto now more admired in the breach
than in the performance, some orchestral
Bacewicz and there’s the short but intense
Penderecki Agnus Dei in this
string orchestra arrangement.
Whatever the merits
or demerits of the
programme it’s always good to hear a
young soloist in the Wieniawski D minor,
a work once colonised by such as Heifetz,
Elman and Stern – more recently Perlman
has placed his stamp on it. Pławner
was a prize-winning twenty-one year
old when he recorded it and he
has a nice, sweet, clean style, not
always entirely in tune in the early
stages. He doesn’t quite sculpt the
lines as glamorously as his epic predecessors
and some of the orchestral playing is
inclined to be a touch inert as well,
though there’s a first class principal
clarinettist. Pławner
employs some decent lower string work
in the slow movement, which he takes
with lyrical impress, and shows a fine
pair of passagework heels in the finale.
It’s a promising performance but not
especially distinctive.
For most people it’s
the Bacewicz that will prove the major
draw though her Concerto for String
Orchestra has been recorded a number
of times before, not least by the Cracow
Philharmonic under Roland Bader on Koch
Swann back in the mid 1990s when it
was coupled with the composer’s Third
Symphony and also by the Polish Chamber
Orchestra slightly earlier which was,
in truth, a better recording. Written
in 1948 this is a bustly neo-classical
work, not one of her most individual
or characteristic, but one that builds
a good head of steam. The first movement
is classic sonata form and has concertante-like
moments for solo violin (her own instrument)
and cello. It possesses an urgent freshness
and in the slow movement a warm lyricism
that’s not quite untouched by a certain
aloofness. The pizzicato-laced finale
has vivid rhythmic impetus and polymetric
drive. It makes for diverting listening
in a good performance such as this one.
The Penderecki Agnus
Dei is a powerful, concise threnody,
a melancholic utterance of immediate
impact.
That alone wouldn’t
be enough to compel interest; the Bacewicz
is a strong piece and as interest in
her works has increased of late I’d
be happy to recommend it to those yet
unaware of it. But it’s very much to
be sampled before purchase, as this
is more a souvenir of an event than
a cohesively designed sequence in its
own right.
Jonathan Woolf
Wojciech Pławner (violin) 
