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

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

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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

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