Panufnik: Sinfonia elegiaca, nocturne,

The Louisville Orchestra, Whitney, Robert

FECD 0017

The war was merciless against Andrzej Panufnik: the members of his family were decimated and all his compositions prior to 1944 burned during the Warsaw uprising, although the composer was able to reconstruct some of them afterwards. After the war and having helped to put the main orchestras of Poland back on their feet, he moved abroad in 1954 to England, where his career as a conductor and especially as a composer flourished, bequeathing ten Symphonies to the musical world in particular. including this Symphony No. 2 "Elegiaca" (1957), one of his works created by Leopold Stokowski. The recording offered to us here is apparently the only one existing in a score dedicated "to the victims of the Second World War" and whose tragedy is undeniable. • The Nocturne (1947, revised in 1955), also marked by war, is a kind of mysterious and haunting procession ending in its center at a climax and ending at a palindrome. As for the Rhapsody (1956), in tripartite form, it is the first work composed by Panufnik after his immigration to England. Marked by its author's nostalgia for the homeland, this mini concerto for orchestra exploits melodic and rhythmic forms associated with Polish folklore. These three works receive their first world record in admirable performances by Robert Whitney and his superb phalanx.

CD

13.10.2003

809157000174