Jascha Horenstein: Andrzej Panufnik Four Pieces for Orchestra, London Symphony

Andrzej Panufnik (1914-1991)
Four Pieces for Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
Jascha Horenstein
(Studio rec., 1970)

1) Tragic Overture (7')
2) Autumn Music (17') @ 8:49
3) Heroic Overture (6') @ 26:04
4) Nocturne (15') @ 33:01

Tragic Overture (1942, reconstructed 1945, rev.1955)
This work represents the composer's search "for a new stringent economy of means of expression." His intention was to explore a single four-note cell "to the very limit," transposing, augmenting or inverting it at times, but strictly preserving "the same intervals between the notes (minor third, major second and minor second), always within the framework of repeated rhythmic patterns."

Autumn Music (1962, rev.1965)
Written in memory of a friend who lay dying during an autumn, its three brief sections are predominantly elegiac in tone and its individual and beautifully realized sonorities tellingly invoke a desolate landscape. But these are more than mood pictures, for in this precise and poised score simple ideas are ingeniously extended and developed. "I composed the whole central section of the work against an ostinato pattern on the piano, a single repeated note in the lowest register. This sombre, deep note, regular as a striking clock, seemed to suggest in my imagination the ruthless passing of time, the cruel foreshortening of a human life, and, at the same time, the relentless progression of nature in autumn, the season of decline."

Heroic Overture (1952, rev.1969)
In its musical structure the Heroic Overture ingeniously embodies the idea of hidden resistance that was forced on the Poles first by the Nazis and then by their successors. The piece is based on a rousing patriotic song, "Warsawianka." But what we actually hear, proclaimed 'tutta forza' by the four horns in unison after a few forthright bars of preparation, is not the tune of the song but a theme that serves as its notional counterpoint. "Warsawianka" itself thus remains in the background like a kind of animating principal - as it were mirroring Panufnik's activities during World War II, when he played piano duets in underground concerts with his colleague Lutoslawski and wrote patriotic songs under a pseudonym.

Nocturne (1947, rev.1955)
Nocturne won first prize in the Karol Szymanowski Competition in Poland. It marked Panufnik's return to orchestral composition after the events experienced in Warsaw during the Second World War -- "In this piece, I completely detached myself from the tragic memories of the past years. I was escaping reality, weaving for myself a kind of night vision, as in a dream -- seeing at the beginning cloudy and mysterious images, which gradually emerge clearer and clearer, building very slowly and irrevocably up into an orgiastic climax, then transforming little by little back into the misty images as at the beginning, softly dispersing until they fade out completely."

From notes by Bernard Jacobson