Karlowicz: Returning Waves; A Sorrowful Tale; Episode at a Masquerade cover

Karlowicz: Returning Waves; A Sorrowful Tale; Episode at a Masquerade

Released

Mieczysław Karłowicz may well have become Poland’s first world-renowned symphonist had his life not been dramatically cut short at the age of only 32 in a freak 1909 ski accident. Although all but unknown today, Karłowicz’s output was key connective tissue in the development of Polish orchestral music, rooted in the folk-inflected Romanticism of Chopin, Moniuszko, and Paderewski, and looking ahead to the more ambitious 20th century experimentalism of Szymanowski, Lutosławski, and Panufnik. His pictorial flair and gift for orchestration (honed through close study of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov) are enlivened and honored in these eloquent, enthusiastic readings from Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic of two of his most engrossing symphonic poems, Returning Waves and Episode at a Masquerade, artifacts of a mind taken far too soon.

Zev Kane

Recommended by

Suggestions
Strauss: Lieder cover

Strauss: Lieder

Helmut Deutsch, Jonas Kaufmann
Romantic Arias cover

Romantic Arias

Jonas Kaufmann
Forgotten Sounds cover

Forgotten Sounds

Charles Martin Loeffler, Graeme Steele Johnson
Mass cover

Mass

Leonard Bernstein
Bruneau: Requiem; Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande, symphony cover

Bruneau: Requiem; Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande, symphony

Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie, Ludovic Morlot
Anna Clyne: Mythologies cover

Anna Clyne: Mythologies

André de Ridder, Irene Buckley, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Jennifer Koh, Andrew Litton, Sakari Oramo, Anna Clyne
Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake cover

Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake

Mikhail Pletnev, Russian National Orchestra