Search - Witold Lutoslawski, Antoni Wit, Polish Radio Orchestra & Chorus Katowice :: Witold Lutoslawski: Concerto for Cello / Novellettes

Great disc beginning to end.

Karl Henzy | 01/08/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a great disc from beginning to end. Livre pour Orchestre (1962) is the earliest Lut. work on disc from the time that he started incorporating aleatory elements and his style became wholely his own. The Cello Concerto is the masterpiece of the disc--coming, really, at the end of the 60s (1970 is its composition date), it's from Lut.'s most radical period (along with the String Quartet and the 2d Symphony). Abandoning any remnant of traditional organization, Lutoslawski seems to have approached the instruments as an experimenter in making sounds, with no preconceptions or prior agenda. And the sounds he makes are remarkable. He then starts playing them off against each other, and the result is like nothing you've heard before. Novelette, from 1979, is the beginning of Lutoslawski's return to familiar orchestral rhetoric, combined with his new discoveries. It's an exciting and compelling piece."

A breathtaking interpretation of a Twentieth Century masterp

R. Rockwell | Brooklyn, NY USA | 01/18/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This fourth volume of the Naxos complete Orchestral works of Lutoslawski is the best yet. The centerpiece is the concerto for cello and orchestra. The work was originally written for and performed by Mstislav Rostopovich. The concerto is marked by a discussion between cello and orchestra with much abrasive brass. The ending is heartwrending. The difficult cello is well handled by Andrzej Bauer. It is Lutoslawskis summit, well played and at a bargain price. Check out all of the naxos Lutoslowski and also Schnittke's Cello Concerto."

Three of his most intriguing pieces, and one glimpse at the

Christopher Culver | 07/24/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The fourth volume in Naxos' series Witold Lutoslawski's orchestral works brings us three pieces from the composer's heyday of aleatoric innovation in the decade after 1960 and one late piece with much affinity with earlier material. As usual, Antoni Wit leads the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Andrzej Bauer as soloist in the concerto.



"Livre for orchestra" (1968) was written shortly after the Symphony No. 2, and continues the bipartite division into a "hesitant" beginning and a "direct" second half introduced in the string quartet of 1965 and fully developed in the symphony. The work is split into four movements, the last of which is just as long as the first three combined, and in between each "chapitre" there are brief interludes of indeterminate sounds to allow the listener to rest his concentration. The hestitant portion is the first three movements, which each pass a general orchestral texture among the various parts of the orchesta. In the second and third movements, Lutoslawski does some rather daring things with rhythm, unexpected from a composer usually lauded only for his pitch organization. After the third movement, however, blob-ish, perpetual expanding harmonies seem to descend upon the orchestra, just like at the crux of the second symphony and just as thrilling, directing it towards long-term development. I think the symphony is a more exciting work, but "Livre" might better satisfying those looking for vaster orchestral colours. One wishes, however, that Naxos had divided the piece across several tracks on the CD, so that listeners could more closely analyse the structure.



The "Cello Concerto" (1970) was written for Mstislav Rostropovich and is one of Lutoslawski's few endeavours in the concerto genre. In spite of the composer's insistence that his work contains no hidden narrative, nearly every listen perceives a battle between the individual, represented by the solo cello, and authoritarianism, represented by the orchestra. The piece opens with the cellist playing a repeated D marked "indifferente". Occasionally he pauses to muse over some topic, resulting in complicated bowing, before returning to the repeated D. The cello's course, however, is interrupted by the entrance of the brass, begun by repeated trumpet blasts as odious as traffic police. The cellist perceives the orchestra and tries to engage in dialogue (with some sympathetic reactions from the strings), but the brass constantly interrupts. There's an arc vaguely like Schnittke's first cello concerto, where the soloist dies only to be resurrected, but since the harmonies and aleatoric interplay are distinctly Lutoslawskian, the result is quite different.



"Novelette" (1978-79) introduces the concept, later exhibited by the Symphony No. 3, of enveloping a bipartite "hesitant"-"direct" form with a distinct introduction and conclusion. Even though the piece is still based on twelve-note chords, there are nonetheless hints at neoclassicism, and a much sparser use of the orchestra. While some of the piece is exciting, all in all it seems to lack confidence. After all, Lutoslawski was in between styles at the time it was written. I would call it a minor work. Luckily, things get better with "Chain 3" (1986), one of Lutoslawski's late works using a technique by which a new section begins shortly before the previous section ends, resulting in a "linking" of material that gives the music a purposeful flow. I'm generally unsatisfied with the late Lutoslawski, when he seemed to get stale and predictable, but I can't recommend this piece enough. "Chain 3" revisits the soundworld of Lutoslawski's masterpiece, the Symphony No. 3, but in compressed form. The huge amount of things going on here defy my ability to describe, but I'll say that this is my favourite piece on the disc and one of the composer's top works.



If you've never heard Lutoslawski's music before, the Third makes a fine introduction, and generally all of the Naxos discs are worth acquiring."