Chopin University Press - Polish Modern Brass Music (2022)

This CD contains works which implement new visions of chamber music intended for brass instruments. Most of them are unknown or rarely performed works composed by Benedykt Konowalski, Bartosz Kowalski, Witold Lutosławski, Kazimierz Machała, Edward Sielicki and Piotr Wróbel. Recorded compositions present a wide panorama of musical ideas, in which the present day is intertwined with history.

In Sielicki's Ensaladas, known motifs and quotes from old masters receive a new aesthetic dimension. Imbued with symbolism, Konowalski's Apage satanas presents the eternal struggle between good and evil. Kowalski's three-part Brass quintet appears as a tangle of wandering motifs. Konowalski's Playful Hallucinations are a journey between epochs and musical conventions, exposing the quality of pure sound. Wróbel's three time zones take up the theme of a symbolic journey through time, joined by a returning and transforming sound motif. The jazz trend is represented by the exuberant Sunset Rag by Kazimierz Machała.

"The disc of the National Philharmonic Brass Quintet is a proposal not only for contemporary music lovers discovering new paths of expression, but also for those who respect tradition. The journey through the ages in the conventions of postmodernism is not only an expression of the new searches of 21st century composers, but also reflects the idea of ​​the creative freedom mentioned at the outset, which in contemporary music does not set any frames and does not set up barriers. The pleasure of meeting with the band is enhanced thanks to the perfection of performance, in which the focus is on the purity of sounds, technical perfection, as well as beautiful timbre and melting sounds of all instruments "

Joanna Cieślik-Klauza