The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra is Poland’s leading performing ensemble and one of the finest broadcasting orchestras in Europe. Built on a long tradition and often featuring works by Polish composers, the PNRSO performs throughout the world as a musical ambassador of Poland – that is demonstrated on this CD with the pieces of Karol Szymanowski and Witold Lutosławski. This is the second album of the orchestra under their Principal Conductor Alexander Liebreich. Their first CD released in 2015, also with works by Szymanowski and Lutosławski (Concerto for orchestra), is already considered as a reference recording.

In the work beyond the scores of these 20th century masters, we encounter “exquisite compositional refinement of the highest order, born of an awareness of the European tradition”, according to Alexander Liebreich. Szymanowski’s powerful and imaginative Symphony No. 2, Lutosławski’s groundbreaking Musique funèbre à la mémoire de Béla Bartók and his masterpiece Livre pour Orchestre were recorded in Katowice’s new concert hall opened in 2014 and highly celebrated for its phenomenal acoustics.

Again, this news recording is the most significant achievement in the discography of PNRSO.