Symphonic Poems, Vol. 1 (Incls 'Rapsodia litewska')

"This is a young man's music--he was only in his early 30s when he died in 1909--full of self-indulgent excess; but it's also brimming with promising talent. This sumptuously engineered production reminds us of just what a loss his early death represented for 20th-century Polish music, while allowing us to savor his all too meager legacy."
(10 Sound 10 Performance ClassicsToday)

"Antoni Wit takes the Lithuanian Rhapsody and Episode at a Masquerade a little more broadly than his counterparts on Chandos, and there is certainly an attractive raw energy in the Polish playing. But Tortelier and Noseda have nothing to learn from anyone about communicative immediacy..." Gramophone Magazine, October 2008

Although he left the merest handful of compositions at his seemingly accidental death in an avalanche while skiing, Mieczysław Karłowicz ranks among the most important Polish composers of his generation. The final years of his brief career were taken up by a series of six symphonic poems, the third, fourth and sixth of which are included on this first disc of these works. Alternating between fervent affirmation and brooding melancholy, these impressive late-romantic works are notable for their colourful and imaginative orchestration and fresh and original harmony.