All that one gains from the CD insert sheet about Nancy Van de Vate is that she was born in 1930, and that neither of her works represented here is more than three years old. Even if you didn't know Chernobyl's title and date, I think it would be possible to guess that it's a recent piece. In its transition from somewhat conventional 'menacing' sounds (high violin clusters above an ominous deep bass pedal) to a moody apotheosis based on a slow-moving, folksy tune, it could easily be a late-1980s film score—a good one too though like so many film pieces, incomplete in effect when shorn from the images that inspired it. At least Chernobyl tells a story; the Concerto seems to these ears no more than a string of more or less sharply characterized episodes, far less distinguished in its basic material, but like Chernobyl's final section, dripping with the additive-rich honey of post-modern romanticism.
Krzystof Penderecki's two offerings are impressively professional after Van de Vate's Concerto, but whether they plumb any greater depths is another matter. The Viola Concerto is a good deal more concentrated than the fatally expansive Violin Concerto, and the presence of a cleverly scored, relatively animated central section is a big plus, but once again there's the wearying fixation with semitonal sighing figures: it's effective for a while, and then, as Dr Johnson put it, ''the attention retires''. Threnody still impresses for its cunningly juxtaposed effects, but, compared with the experimental pieces of Penderecki's compatriot Lutoslawski, it all sounds rather unmotivated.
Performances, however, are impressive: the Polish Radio and Television Symphony strings play Threnody with great intensity and incisive brilliance (presumably the music isn't new to them) and add a glowing conviction to Chernobyl without which I suspect I would have found it hard to palate. The two fine string soloists do sterling work in the concertos and the whole programme is atmospherically recorded. Hear it if you're interested in new music in general: in its way this disc tells a lot about the fate of modernism or at least of one particular modernist.'