Justyna Reczeniedi - Night Shadows - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Chopin's Ballades are not a closed cycle; they were created in different times and circumstances. Moreover, no recommendations of the composer indicating their joint performance have been found. However, listening to them one after another is an extraordinary experience - the history of the artist's life, told with his most intimate musical language, reflecting the entire wealth and experience of his short, yet uncommonly fruitful life. None of Chopin's compositions exceed his ballads, neither in the mastery of the form nor in the beauty of the poetry. Karol Szymanowski, considered as the most outstanding Polish composer after Chopin, opened a new period of his works with Metopes and slightly later Masques, irrevocably departing from the neo-romantic stylistics to his own unique musical language, immersed both in universal European cultural roots and in Polish musical idioms. This by Justyna Gabzdyl, a Polish pianist living in Canada, consists of a very subjective, yet remarkably accurate, synthetic selection of what is most interesting in Polish piano music, and perhaps the most characteristic. Album Tracks 1. Isle of Sirens 2. Calypso 3. Nausicaa 4. Sheherezade 5. Tantris the Clown 6. Don Juan's Serenade 1. Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 2. Ballade No. 2 in F Major, Op. 38 3. Ballade No. 3 in A-Flat Major, Op. 47 4. Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52

Album Tracks 1. Go Crystal Tears 2. Can She Excuse My Wrongs 3. Mr. Dowland's Midnight 4. Come Again 5. Flow My Tears 6. Dowland Shadows 7. I Saw My Lady Weepe 8. Fine Knacks for Ladies 9. Come, Heavy Sleep 10. Now O Now I Needs Must Part 11. In Darkness Let Me Dwell 12. Melancholy Galliard 13. Weepe You No More Sad Fountains

Aleksandra Brejza is a graduate of the Department of Composition and Theory of Music of the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz in the composition class of Prof. Franciszek Wozniak. She participated in the Young Composer Courses organized by the Polish Composers' Union (1988) and in the International Composers' Courses held as part of the Bartók Seminar in Szombathely, Hungary (1992). Her output includes mainly chamber pieces (especially piano pieces and songs), choral compositions, larger vocal and instrumental forms as well as compositions for children. Aleksandra Brejza's pieces have been performed in, among others, Poland, Germany, France, the USA, Russia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania. Her works have been conducted by, Michal Nesterowicz, Anna Szostak, Andris Vecumnieks, and Kinga Litowska. The composer was twice awarded in the Tadeusz Baird Competition for Young Composers of the Polish Composers' Union for her String Quartet (1989) and Ultima moriar for great symphony orchestra (1993). She also received the 1st honorable mention and the Award of the Mayor of the City of Gdansk in the International Composers' Competition 'Pomorski Siew sw. Wojciecha' for Kantyczki for mixed choir (1996). She is also a finalist of the New London Choir Choral Composition Prize 2000 (for Psalm Iudica me! For mixed choir) and winner of the 2nd prize in the National Psalmodic Competition in Katowice (2002).