Piotr Pławner - Karłowicz, Szymanowski: Violin Concertos (2006)

Out there on the extreme fringe of the repertoire is Karol Szymanowski -- the Polish modernist composer whose opera King Roger is occasionally revived by non-Polish opera companies. Somewhere further out past Szymanowski is Mieczyslaw Karlowicz -- the Polish fin de siècle composer whose three-movement tone poem The Eternal Song is very occasionally recorded by non-Polish performers. Thus this 2005 recording of violin concertos by Szymanowski and Karlowicz performed by the young Polish virtuoso Piotr Plawner and the Zielona Góra Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Czeslaw Grabowski couples a fairly obscure modernist with an even more obscure late romantic.
In other words, for listeners who've had it up to here with Tchaikovsky and Bruch and who've been looking for something more challenging, it doesn't get any better than this. Plawner, a fiery virtuoso and a wholly individualistic interpreter, sings and soars in the three-movement Karlowicz concerto and burns and sears in the single-movement Szymanowski Concerto No. 1. In this recording, issued to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its founding, the Zielona Góra Philharmonic plays with Polish emotional intensity and international technical excellence and Grabowski molds them to Plawner's performances with skill and sympathy. Once it's turned up loud enough, Dux's recording is fine -- warm, full, and deep with a superb sense of place and time. Before it's turned up loud enough, however, it's drab, gray, and distant.