CD Review Disc of the Week and the Proms

Our recording of Lukaszewski's Via Crucis with Polyphony and Stephen Layton is Andrew MacGregor's CD of the Week on BBC Radio 3's CD Review on Saturday morning (and available for the following week on iPlayer). It will be at around 11.40. Our other BBC news is on our homepage: details of our Prom, announced last week.

Via Crucis CD

It's a March retail release, but our new recording with Polyphony of Pawel Lukaszewski's 'Via Crucis' is now available on the Hyperion Records website. Having listened to an advance copy I am glad that the impact it made in concert is captured brilliantly: its power is partly through its long, slow build - it is not the kind of piece you dip into. The striking image chosen for the cover is one of the paintings by Jerzy Duda-Gracz for the Stations of the Cross at Jasna Gora, the monastery which is the home of the Black Madonna and has a symbolic role in Poland's history. As Meurig Bowen writes in the CD booklet, 'The journey witnessed in the Via Crucis - the conflict, the suffering, the humiliation, the defiance, the resurrection - can also be seen as a reflection on Polish Catholicism's victory over Communism'. Thus, crucifixion iconography is updated, with the Polish Pope, a concentration camp inmate and the Black Madonna icon itself. An interesting debate about CD covers has started on another blog: On An Overgrown Path. Will this new cover feature?
Our next live concert is in Chelmsford tonight; it was sold-out before the weekend, so do check with the box-office for returns before turning up.

Pawel Lukaszewski on Hyperion

A new recording of choral music by Pawel Lukaszewski has recently been released on Hyperion. Performed by the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and conducted by Stephen Layton, it makes a brilliant precursor to our recording with Polyphony of Pawel's Via Crucis, due out in the first part of 2009. BBC Music Magazine said: 'Layton's affinity with this radiant, accessible music is clear as he guides the Trinity College Choir, which sings with passion and purity throughout the programme.'

4 Lunchtime Broadcast Premieres

Four Britten Sinfonia commissions receive their broadcast premieres on BBC Radio 3 this coming week. They were recorded during our recent At Lunch series in Cambridge. Each programme goes out at 13.00 (GMT+1): on Monday you can hear Richard Causton, Tuesday Helen Grime, Wednesday Robin Holloway, and on Thursday Pawel Lukaszewski. Full details of the music are on the Afternoon at 3 website.

Via Crucis recording

The response of our audiences at the two performances of Paweł Łukaszewski’s Via Crucis we gave last Friday and Saturday in Norwich and Cambridge was unprecedented. It is one of those great contemporary works with a searing spirituality which people respond to, whatever their faith or beliefs, right up there with James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross, Arvo Pärt’s Passio and Miserere, and John Tavener’s Veil of the Temple. Not that Via Crucis is in any way ‘like’ these latter pieces in form: it is rather its impact, and its ability to cut through any cynicism about the reality of faith which should establish it as a repertoire piece. It was certainly a privilege to introduce the work to UK audiences. We recorded it for Hyperion, so watch this space for news of its release.

Having unleashed this maelstrom of a work on us, Paweł sat calmly with Adrian Peacock, the CD producer, as you can see in the following photos, which also show Stephen Layton and Polyphony.

Via Crucis receives UK premiere

'Qui passus est pro nobis.
Jesu Christe, miserere nobis.'

This exquisite choral refrain - increasing in intensity through simple repetition - punctuates Paweł Łukaszewski's Via Crucis, the UK premiere of which we gave last night in Norwich Cathedral. Impassioned, heartfelt, both large-scale and intimate, it displays an unerring sense of drama as it tells the story of Christ's Passion through the Stations of the Cross. Britten Sinfonia and Polyphony are joined by Iestyn Davies, Allan Clayton and Andrew Foster-Williams, with Roger Allam as narrator. Stephen Layton conducts. We are giving a further performance tonight in Cambridge. There are just a few tickets left: call 01223 357851.

Jasnogórska Golgota by Jerzy Duda-Gracz

Paweł Łukaszewski was born in 1968 in Czestochowa, spiritual capital of Poland. He lived through the Solidarity era in Polish politics. As a small boy, he worshipped in the Jasna Góra Monastery, praying in front of the ikon of the black Madonna. Jasna Góra has long been a symbol of religious strength in the face of occupation. During the Second World War, the Nazis occupied the monastery and Himmler used to stay there. The monastery contains the ashes of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, the chaplain of the Solidarity movement who was murdered by the secret police in 1984. In 1982, during the Jaruzełski regime, Lech Wałęsa gave his Nobel Peace Prize medal to the monastery as a votive offering. John Paul II, on becoming Pope, celebrated a mass for a million people on the monastery steps. This painting is one of a series, ‘the Stations of the Cross', housed in Jasna Góra. These paintings were the inspiration for Łukazewski's Via Crucis, which we are performing in Norwich and Cambridge at the end of the week.

Roger Allam narrates Via Crucis

Olivier Award-winning actor Roger Allam will join Britten Sinfonia and Polyphony for our two concerts of Polish composer Pawel Lukaszewski's Via Crucis at the end of the week. The spoken interventions are integral to Lukaszewski's central concept, whereby dramatic iterations accumulate station-by-station, and so we wanted to work with an actor of stature, and who better than the man cast by Stephen Frears as Rogen Janvin in the film The Queen.
Roger won his Best Actor Olivier Award for his performance as Captain Terri Dennis in Privates on Parade at the Donmar Warehouse in 2002. He has worked extensively at theRoyal National Theatre, with Trevor Nunn, John Caird and Phyllida Lloyd, and at the RSC with Steven Pimlott and Tim Albery.
Check full details of the concerts in Norwich and Cambridge on our website.

Paweł Łukaszewski

We have two projects in the coming weeks which include the music of the Polish composer Paweł Łukaszewski.

First, some biographical background: born in 1968, Paweł is a graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin Music in Warsaw, where he studied the cello (with Andrzej Wróbel) and composition (with Marian Borkowski). He also studied at the School for Arts Management at the University in Poznań and took the postgraduate course in choral conducting at the Music Academy in Bydgoszcz. In 2000 he received a Ph.D. in composition.

He won the ‘Fryderyk’ Award of the Polish Phonographic Academy in the ‘vocal music’ category (2005) and the Award of the town of St Quentin at the Concours Europeen de Choeurs et Maitrises de Cathedrales (2006).

He has received the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1998), the award of the Mayor of Częstochowa for outstanding compositional achievements (1995) and the Saint Brother Albert Chmielowski Award (2006).

His works have been performed in many European countries (Britain, Belarus, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine, the Vatican), as well as in Argentine, Chile, China, Israel, Cuba, Canada, South Korea, Moldova, Peru, Uruguay and the United States. He has worked as a visiting professor in Chile and Argentina, also performing as a conductor in these two countries. He is Artistic Director and Conductor of the ‘Musica Sacra’ Choir of the Warsaw-Praga Cathedral.

Building on our residency in Krakow, Britten Sinfonia has commissioned Concertino from Paweł Łukaszewski for our At Lunch series in March. Featuring our brass players, it gives us an opportunity to introduce this intriguing composer to wide audience in the UK. Later next month we perform his large-scale work for choir and orchestra Via Crucis , with Polyphony and Stephen Layton. More information will appear in our digiSpace on these concerts.