This disc contains one of the most exciting and absorbing new works I’ve encountered for many a long year. The opening of Orawa could almost have come from the pen of Philip Glass but over the course of the next nine minutes it develops along lines which no American minimalist could begin to envisage. Clearly the influence of Polish folk music (specifically of the Podhale region) exerts a strong influence yet, unlike the earlier Krzesany where folk elements counter great swathes of dissonant orchestral texture, the folk-based melodies and rhythms in Orawa evolve organically out of the music. It’s a dazzling piece of string writing, making use of relentless motor-rhythms and employing some fascinating and original string timbres. It culminates in an exultant shout from the orchestra who clearly have been enjoying themselves immensely – it’s played magnificently and communicates a tangible sense of involvement from the players which transcends the limitations of this flawed recording.
Wojcieh Kilar belongs to that triumvirate of Polish composers known as ‘Vintage 33’, the others being Penderecki and Gorecki. Echoes of Gorecki abound in the principal, but by no means longest, work on this disc, Requiem Pere Kolbe. Drawn from the score Kilar wrote for the film A life for a life (which tells the story of Father Maximilien Kolbe, the Polish priest who sacrificed his life in Auschwitz by swapping places with an unknown condemned man, and was subsequently beatified by Pope Paul IV) this is an unrelievedly mournful dirge verging on the corny (a funeral procession, a heavenly hymn-tune played on the celesta) but nevertheless in its own way deeply moving.'