Karlowicz: Symphonic Poems · 2

“Wit and the orchestra are at their finest in the final movement, 'Song of Eternal Being' in which Karlowicz brings the cycle to a grandiose and optimistic close.” --BBC Music Magazine, March 2009 ****

Mieczyslaw Karlowicz was a significant talent, and his early death in 1909 (at age 33) was a serious loss to 20th century Polish music. His symphonic poems are typically refulgent late-Romantic works, full of ambition and, to be frank, pretension. 

 Consider the three parts of Op. 10 (Eternal Songs): Song of Everlasting Yearning; Song of Love and Death; Song of Eternal Being. Heavy-duty stuff, and there's no point in pretending that Karlowicz, talented as he was, did full justice to the program, but the point is that he tried, tried hard, and produced gobs of richly entertaining music in the process.

Antoni Wit's first disc of tone poems was exceptional, and this one is excellent as well, if a hair less outstanding than previously. What problems there are stem from having the New Zealand orchestra rather than Wit's own Warsaw forces. Of course the New Zealanders play very well, and are well recorded, but their string section lacks the luxuriance that the music ideally requires, and while some listeners may prefer a leaner basic sonority, what Karlowicz really asks for is Strauss on steroids (i.e. Korngold and that crowd). Still, you won't find better performances of this music than Naxos' edition, and you can purchase this second volume with complete confidence. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

MP3 320 · 137 MB

Karlowicz: Symphonic Poems · 1

“Antoni Wit takes the Lithuanian Rhapsody and Episode at a Masquerade a little more broadly than his counterparts on Chandos, and there is certainly an attractive raw energy in the Polish playing. But Tortelier and Noseda have nothing to learn from anyone about communicative immediacy...” --Gramophone, October 2008

“Antoni Wit handles the dynamics of Karlowicz's musical language with flexibility and unerring insight, and the Warsaw Philharmonic is clearly passionately engaged…” --BBC Music Magazine, March 2009 ****

“The folksong-driven Lithuanian Rhapsody, composed in 1906, is the most straightforward of the three [symphonic poems]; Stanislaw and Anna Oswiecimowie, completed the following year, is the most structurally cogent; while Episode at a Masquerade is the most problematic: it was unfinished, and whether the completed work fulfilled Karlowicz's intentions remains unclear. The full-blooded performances under Antoni Wit leave no room for doubt, though the Chandos versions with the BBC Philharmonic are more refined.” --The Guardian, 1st August 2008 ***

“In warmly robust recordings, these performances of three of his opulent orchestral works are every bit the equal of those in Chandos's acclaimed Karlowicz series, with the addition of some winningly characterful playing from the Polish musicians, especially the woodwind. Antoni Wit lovingly shapes the music, a mixture of grand gestures and memorable themes, and brings out all the colour of Karlowicz's luminous orchestral writing.” --The Telegraph, 2nd August 2008

MP3 320 · 155 MB