Excellent value. There's a touch of edge, a hint of congestion to the orchestral sound occasionally, but the playing throughout is first-class. Both conductors are perfectly at home in Szymanowski's elusive idiom, and in The song of the night both the soloist (I am beginning to prefer a tenor in this music) and the chorus are excellent. The two symphonies are central to Szymanowski's output, of course; the Concert Overture is not, but what fun to watch your friends' dropped jaws and double-takes at its unashamed borrowing from Strauss's Don Juan. Antal Dorati's almost identical coupling (Decca Enterprise, 7/90, nla—he omits the Concert Overture, substituting Bartok's Two Pictures) was not inferior to the present reissue, and was more sumptuously recorded, but I find the Polish choir more idiomatic and Ochman preferable to Dorati's soloist, Ryszard Karczykowski.'