All three phases of Lutoslawski are here, with two of his finest orchestral works flanking a ‘transitional’ score whose historical importance outweighs its purely musical interest. Every time I hear it, the Funeral Music sounds more counter-productively in awe of its model and dedicatee, Bela Bartok, and it also comes across here as the item which least engages the skills and enthusiasm of Yan Pascal Tortelier and the BBC Philharmonic. Fortunately, the other works offer abundant compensations.
Tortelier’s virtues as a conductor – expressive warmth allied to a special rhythmic buoyancy – are generously apparent in a sizzling account of the Concerto for Orchestra. The musical flow is firmly controlled, yet the effect is never inflexible, and the technical precision and alertness of the playing throughout is something for the listener to revel in. The sound is bright, well-differentiated dynamically, and even if the BBC’s Manchester studio lacks some of the depth and atmosphere of Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, as caught in Barenboim’s rival version on Erato, the Chandos recording is generally more vivid, in keeping with a performance which has precisely the kind of bite and energy that the score demands.
I was particularly pleased that Chandos and Tortelier chose Mi-parti to complete the disc, since of all Lutoslawski’s later instrumental works this one makes out the best possible case for his radical change of technique around 1960. Although the composer’s own Polish recordings of Mi-parti (and of the Concerto) remain in the catalogue, and are naturally of some historical interest, the music-making on this Chandos release is superior to all its rivals.'