With one serious reservation this is a pretty well ideal coupling of major, representative works from each of Szymanowski's creative phases, early, middle and late. All are very well performed, with Woytowicz's plangently expressive soprano a great asset in both the Symphony and Stabat Mater (a particularly moving performance), and Szostek-Radkowa powerfully eloquent in the vehement Kasprowicz songs. The chorus is devoutly impassioned in the Stabat Mater, properly luscious in the Symphony, and all three conductors are obviously devoted to this music. The recordings, of various dates, are all good, unless you react against very forwardly placed soloists. Indeed, but for that reservation I would say that if you have space or means for only one Szymanowski disc in your collection it should be this one.
The reservation is that no texts are provided. The very sound of the Polish translation of the Stabat Mater, the mysterious, voluptuous imagery of the text chosen for the Third Symphony (by the Sufi poet Jalal ad-din Rumi, again set in Polish), the dark sayings of Kasprowicz, are all crucial to the compelling expressive intensity of these three very different works; listening to any of them without knowing what the singers are so urgently communicating is like looking at a great painting through dark glasses. If you don't speak French, C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute; if you do, what is 'It's worse than a crime, it's a blunder' in Polish?'