Spirited and authentic piano concertos

Grazyna Bacewicz Piano Concerto; Alexandre Tansman Piano Concerto no. 1

I never (okay, I rarely) get tired of Rachmaninov, Brahms and Beethoven Piano Concertos, but I often think that perhaps it's time to expand the repertoire with a few fresh pieces. Here are two that fit the bill, beautifully played by the marvellous young Polish pianist Julia Kociuban. Alexandre Tansman's Piano Concerto no. 1 is from 1925; he wrote a second two years later, the year he turned thirty. It has every evidence of Tansman's melodic gift, which was to serve him well in his Hollywood years during WWII. But what it mainly sounds like is Modernist Paris, the fresh and lively milieu of Ravel and Stravinsky. At this point his music isn't especially Polish. It's telling that Honegger and Milhaud pressed him to join Les Six; he declined because he wanted to maintain his independence. But this Concerto at least would fit in perfectly with the avant garde French group's music of the day.

Grazyna Bacewicz also spent time in Paris, studying in the 1930s with Nadia Boulanger. However, her Piano Concerto, from 1949, is very much Polish in style, with folkloric sounds and Polish dances. Again, Kociuban is outstanding in both the virtuoso passages as well as more contemplative ones. She knows Bacewicz's music well, having played the great Piano Sonata no. 2 in the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition. She receives spirited and completely authentic support in both works from the  Łódź-based Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic Orchestra. Both Tansman and Bacewicz are Łódź natives. Plus, how often does an orchestra named after a great piano virtuoso get to play piano concertos? What a marvellous recording!

Outstanding music for violin & orchestra from Poland

I'm a CD-half full kind of guy when it comes to unfamiliar repertoire on disc, but I wasn't expecting such a positive listening experience when I had my first listen to this fine release from Naxos. There are four very solid works for violin and orchestra here, each one full of energy and grace, and all played beautifully by violinist Piotr Plawner, with strong support from the Kammersymphonie Berlin under Jurgen Bruns.  I've recently become quite a fan of one of the composers here, Grażyna Bacewicz. I highly recommend the recent two-disc set of her Complete String Quartets with the Silesian Quartet, which I reviewed last month. Bacewicz was a concert violinist as well as a composer, and her First Violin Concerto, written in 1937, is the first of 7 she wrote to show off her skills in both domains. There is absolutely no empty virtuosity here, though; this is brilliant music, largely in a neo-classical style, but there are also some hints of a more serious and passionate music that she would explore later in the series. I look forward to hearing the other six, and from a quick look at reviews, it seems like Joanna Kurkowicz's series on Chandos might be the place to start.

Alexandre Tansman's Five Pieces, a kind of updated Baroque suite, were written for Joseph Szigetti in 1930. It all sounds quite French to my ears, though there's more of Ravel and Les Six here than Rameau or Couperin. Michal Spisak's Andante and Allegro from 1954 is another work that seems to come from half-way between Paris and Warsaw; it was written for his teacher Nadia Boulanger. He referred to it as "a little story for violin and orchestra." The Andante has the declamatory feel of a recitative, sounding at times a bit pompous. This music is infused with a quite subtle irony, quite unlike the often heavier-handed version of Shostakovich, which often veers into sarcasm. Spisak's Allegro is full of incident, after that fine set-up, with a hustle and bustle beginning that suddenly opens up into a graceful Watteau-like landscape, returning for an energetic, and quite amusing, ending.

The disc comes to a serious, even spiritual, close with Anderzej Panuknik's 1971 Violin Concerto, written for Yehudi Menuhin. Alternating between sober and energetically manic moods, this marvellous work is suffused with melancholy, even when the folk rhythms of Polish dances are evoked in the Vivace finale.

Four works of completely different character, but together a triumph for everyone involved!