After releasing two discs with Karlowicz's symphonic poems, Naxos is now releasing a third disc containing the Violin Concerto and the Serenade. Antoni Wit leads his Warsaw forces, Ilya Kaler is the soloist in the concerto.
The record will be released in January 2011.
I can only hope that Naxos soon will turn their attention to Karlowicz's contemporary Grzergorz Fitelberg!
Details on Naxos' website:
http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.572274 (http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.572274)
Morten
Hrm. The serenade is already on a Chandos CD and the violin concerto is several times recorded, but hopefully the performances on the Naxos CD will be very good competition...
It's the price of the new Naxos CD that will do so much to promote the composer, though.
Economic realities faced by courageous labels that keep expanding our repertory choices -- both the Danacord size shops and the "behemoths" like Naxos -- are all too evident in the LP-era, 51-minute recording time of this disc. And in the States, at least, Naxos has raised its prices. With that in mind I do hope these labels will focus as much as possible on non-duplicate recordings.
I was first introduced to the Karlowicz violin concerto some 25 years ago -- it was love at first hearing. In the years since then, it's been recorded quite a few times. But -- has anyone ever heard it live? This is what's so frustrating to me. Record companies, musicians and such go all out to bring these gems to our ears, yet somehow it never gets translated into new repertoire in the concert hall. Very maddening. But I will welcome the new Naxos. I really enjoy Karlowicz.
I agree that 51 mins for a CD is decidedly mean these days. However, at £5.99 or thereabouts, one can hardly complain. And it's good to have the work done by a Russian violinist and Polish forces.
Or, and I don't want to be naughty, £3.99 post-free from HMV! irresistible, despite all the other Karlowicz on the shelves.
Peter
Surely Naxos could have included for example the Symphonic Prologue "Bianca da Molena", incidental music to "The White Dove"on this disc because as far I can see they have not recorded that work. Anyway that would also have been a duplication of an earlier recording (Chandos).
Looking at Karlowicz's worklist it seems that all his works involving orchestral forces have been recorded. The one exception I can think of, if it exists, is a small Intermezzo from the music to the above-mentioned The White Dove.
Morten
Quote from: petershott@btinternet.com on Saturday 04 December 2010, 19:11
Or, and I don't want to be naughty, £3.99 post-free from HMV! irresistible, despite all the other Karlowicz on the shelves.
Peter
Oh yes - I'd forgotten about HMV. They're often the cheapest for us in the UK!
Excellent news. I recently got the two naxos CD's with his tone poems, and they are brilliant! My discovery of the year.
I wonder how long we will have the luxury of HMV in London. In the Autumn/fall 2010 many CD's which had been very well reviewed in the media were not available or on order. All ordering had been centrally controlled, there were gaps on all the racks. About November things looked up and there was some new stock but how many sales were lost by customers not prepared to wait? In December the freehold of their flagship store in Oxford Street, London was sold.
True, in the last few years the HMV stores (outside London) have been pretty dire - perhaps a Domingo or two and nothing else. (Whereas in the early 1980s I was first in the queue for regular sales in my store in the provinces - there were umpteen glories to grab). If you read the financial papers you'll quickly see HMV are in a very bad way indeed. The steady abolition of retail outlets is part of their response. I know nothing at all about DVDs, pop music, games et al - but as far as proper music is concerned they have themselves to blame. The stores are hugely inhospitable to folk like us, the prices often exceed those of specialist retailers, the staff were ignorant (I was once asked, 'What group is that?' when enquiring about the availability of an Amadeus recording of Haydn quartets!), the stock was controlled centrally by either a machine or someone entirely on their own little desert island and without regard to even such crude criteria as 'currently recommended by the Gramophone comic, and thus they lost opportunities to sell things to the casual punter.
End of rant. However the HMV on-line store, based as it is in Guernsey, and thus an opportunity for them to evade tax payments, seems to be flourishing. True, the web-site is a glorious mess, but the prices are a real giveaway. And they are efficient. For example, on my order list are 9 CDs from Naxos, Hyperion, CPO etc scheduled for release on 3 January. Only half an hour ago I received an e-mail notification that they have all been dispatched - and hence I should be peeling off the cellophane by the end of the week and before their official release date. A happy customer.
Apologies - this has got nothing whatsoever to do with music, let alone the unsungs! But the name HMV popped up, and off I go!
Peter
An announcement of a new interesting release... http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.572487 (http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.572487)
With this release Naxos fills the only gap in Karlowicz's orchestral music on record since the above-mentioned Intermezzo is included here.
Morten
Yeah I saw that too - I wonder if I should buy it, or get the Chandos (will wait for reviews I guess....)
Well, I've ordered this CD. Conductor Antoni Wit has made fine recordings of Karlowicz's symphonic poems, so I'll guess his version of the symphony must be on the same high level.
Yes, the Wit recordings on Naxos are fine indeed, and no-one would regret acquiring them. But then, to my mind at least, they don't quite equal those exceptionally fine recordings on Chandos - Tortelier in Vol 1, and Noseda in Vols 2 and 3. And how I wish Karlowicz had not had that unfortunate encounter with a mountain. How his music might have developed is a very intriguing question. Anyone care to have a guess at that?
Quote from: petershott@btinternet.com on Sunday 17 April 2011, 12:46
Yes, the Wit recordings on Naxos are fine indeed, and no-one would regret acquiring them. But then, to my mind at least, they don't quite equal those exceptionally fine recordings on Chandos - Tortelier in Vol 1, and Noseda in Vols 2 and 3. And how I wish Karlowicz had not had that unfortunate encounter with a mountain. How his music might have developed is a very intriguing question. Anyone care to have a guess at that?
An intriguing question indeed! To me, Karlowicz's orchestral works have a very definite flavour of Richard Strauss; if one considers how much Szymanowski's op 12 Concert Overture is like Strauss as well, maybe Karlowicz would have developed in a similar direction to Szymanowski. Then again, maybe he wouldn't!
I have more than a soft spot for the readings by Salwarowski and a Silesian orchestra, which were my first exposure to this wonderful music.
To me Karlowicz has affinities with Delius, Sibelius, Magnard, to mention only those three. How he would have developed is anyone's guess. Stanislaw and Anna is rather Straussian, but his final, unfinished, tone-poem, An Episode at a Masquerade (one of my favourites) strikes a balance between melancholy and ebullience which to my ears is something very new.