The works on this recording were written by four roughly contemporary Polish composers who settled and pursued their careers in different parts of the world. Grayna Bacewicz's first Violin Concerto displays her own glittering virtuosity as a performer, while Alexandre Tansman wrote his Baroque-infused Five Pieces for the great Josef Szigeti. Michal Spisak considered his neo-classical Andante and Allegro to be "a little story for violin and orchestra", while Andrzej Panufnik's wide-ranging Violin Concerto became a "pilgrimage into my past" and is richly suffused with Polish atmosphere.
Review:
There are four rewarding works to be discovered on this disc, although only two of them are technically concertos. Andrzej Panufnik's Violin Concerto, written in 1971 and recorded in concert in 2014 by ?ód?-born violinist Piotr P?awner, the Kammersymphonie Berlin and conductor Jürgen Bruns. The second movement, with its seemingly endless lines of melody, reminds us that the concerto was written for Yehudi Menuhin and his famous nonstop vibrato. P?awner does those long lines justice here, before wrapping up the piece in a spiky, frenetic Polish dance.
