This issue is important for the two Szymanowski quartets rather than the newer Polish works. The Lutoslawski was written in 1964 in response to a commission from Swedish Radio. The LaSalle Quartet, who have now disbanded gave its first performance in Stockholm the following year and recorded the work shortly afterwards for DG, who recently remastered the recording for CD. About his quartet, Lutoslawski tells us that he ''tried to develop and enlarge the same (controlled aleotoric) techniques I had used in two previous works, Jeux venitiens and Trois poemes d'Henri Michaux'' and so uses ''chance elements to enrich the rhythmic and expressive character of the music without in any way limiting the authority of the composer over the final shape of the piece''. Whether you like it or not, it has a highly developed and refined feeling for sonority and balance, and generally speaking succeeds in holding the listener.
Understandably the performance differs from the LaSalle version and good though that is, the Varsovia are recorded in a warmer and fresher acoustic. In reviewing the former, AW, I see spoke of the ''uncharacteristically diffuse and protracted meanderings'' of the Lutoslawski but the Varsovia are rather more persuasive—or so, at least, it seemed to me. The LaSalle recording also contains Penderecki's First Quartet of 1960, which takes seven minutes: the Second of 1968 is hardly much longer and surely no more substantial. For much of its time, Penderecki's sound world seems to aspire to the condition of electronic music.
When the Pavane LP of the two Szymanowski quartets appeared I commented on the flawless pressing; so silent were its surfaces that one could easily have been deceived into thinking it was a Compact Disc, and comparison reveals that the CD transfer has a warmth that would not disappoint owners of the LP. At the time the Varsovia Quartet had the field to themselves—and they still do! Szymanowski's sound-world is totally distinctive, though one associates him inevitably with the orchestra. There is an exotic luxuriance, a sense of ecstasy and longing, a heightened awareness of colour and glowing, almost luminous textures. It is as if one is perceiving the world in a dreamlike state which, while it lasts, seems more real than the reality of everyday life.
The two quartets are separated by a decade: the First comes from 1917, just after the First Violin Concerto whose sense of ecstasy and longing permeates its opening. It is a beautifully-wrought three-movement piece, though according to Zofia Hellman's note in the Complete Szymanowski Edition, it was originally conceived in four, and the final fugue dropped. It has a great deal of exposed and demanding writing above the stave which calls for the most accurate intonation, and the Varsovia Quartet are impeccable in that respect. This is a subtle and deeply-felt performance and much the same must be said of their account of the Second. The heady perfume and exotic luxuriance of the Third Symphony and the two violin concertos are in evidence in this 1927 quartet, though with Szymanowski's increasing interest in folk-music, the finale has slight over-tones of Bartok. When reviewing the LP, I see I thought that the opening of the Second Quartet is like listening to the Ravel Quartet in a moonlit garden, which is perhaps a bit too fanciful, but the idiom undeniably derives from Ravel and, of course, Debussy. It is an odd thing that one is always describing Szymanowski in terms of other composers. Indeed, such is the diversity and range of his musical sympathies that some musicians have been tempted to think of Szymanowski as something of a magpie, but the closer one comes to his music, the more these influences fall into place as an integrated element in his musical language and the more evident it becomes that he is less of a magpie than a nightingale! There are glorious things in both works and the Varsovia play marvellously throughout. A strong recommendation.'