Xiayin Wang - Schurmann: Orchestral Works - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The Gramophone Award-winning Silesian Quartet present a double-album of the complete works for string quartet by compatriot Henryk Gorecki. All three of his numbered string quartets were written late in life - the first in 1988 - and all three were commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. The First Quartet is a single-movement work, based on a sixteenth-century song by Waclaw of Szamotuly. The Second, double the length of the First, is subtitled 'quasi una fantasia' and follows a classical four-movement form, subtly referencing Beethoven. Gorecki completed the Third Quartet (double the length of the Second!) after the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs had catapulted his music to much wider acclaim. It extends to five movements and is considered by many to be one of his greatest compositions. In the 1980s and 1990s, Gorecki composed several collections of choral songs. Five Kurpian Songs is based on folksongs from Kurpie, a region north-west of Warsaw. The composer himself suggested that these works would be effective when performed by a string quartet, and here the Silesian Quartet gives us the world premiere recording of that version.

Leading pianist and composer Geoffrey Fiorese has decided to build his Quartet project around the myth of InchTerpsichoreInch, the muse of dance. This close relationship between music and dance invites us to receive a sound, a melody, not by simple listening, but through the prism of a global perception, where the whole body serves as a receptacle for sound harmony. A large amount of improvisation is left to the musicians who are thus able to react in the moment to an impulse, a feeling, like an imaginary dance that one would build continuously from impressions left by the senses. This project is about living the music, feeling it to the depths of your being, taking the spectator through a unique experience. Between long meditative musical poems and surging improvisations bordering free jazz, this project transcends the frontiers of jazz and thus gradually brings the listener to unknown territories where listening results in self-forgetfulness.

W. Lutoslawski - Concerto for Orchestra [COMPACT DISCS] date 03/19/1996