KRZYSZTOF BACULEWSKI (b.1950): The Profane Anthem to Anne for Soprano, Vocal Soloists, Mixed Choir, String Orchestra and Continuo, 3 Rilke-Lieder for Soprano, Baritone and 2 Mixed Choirs, Prelude, Psalm and Meditation for Choir, Organ and Tam-Tam, Gloria for Alto and Mixed Choir, Miserere for Mixed Choir, Nox ultima, nox beata for Mixed Choir, Ozwodne i krzesane for Mixed Choir.

Description: If you enjoyed the various splendid discs of choral music by Sandström that we've offered in the past few years, you will find this similarly rewarding. Baculewski belongs to the generation of Polish composers who enthusiastically adopted 'new romanticism'. Like many adherents of such newly accessible idioms, Baculewski feels free to incorporate elements of sonorism and extended vocal techniques into his individual style, but sparingly; the choral glissandi in the Gloria, for instance, are coloristic accents in the otherwise sumptuous, harmonically rich tonal vocabulary that characterises all the works here. The organ writing in the recent Prelude, Psalm and Meditation certainly suggests Messiaen (those are surely birdsongs in the central movement's introduction), and the level of dissonance in the work is more pronounced than elsewhere in the program, but the piece remains very approachable and dramatically effective, and resolves into the same kind of chordal texture, with clearly defined tonal centers, that the composer has employed elsewhere, in the final movement. Elsewhere, especially in the highly original Anthem, prefaced by an instrumental introduction, then setting texts of John Donne, Renaissance and Baroque choral music is more likely to come to mind as the historical precursors of Baculewski's richly individual style. German-Polish and English texts. Tomasz Orlow (organ), Katowice City Singers' Ensemble "Camerata Silesia", Concerto Polacco; Anna Szostak.