Lutoslawski - Chain 1-3

The recent acquisition of a CD issued by Naxos with Lutoslawski's last recorded concert - October 24, 1993, barely three months before he died of cancer in February 1994 - was a good opportunity to relisten to some of his late masterpieces. I selected the three works that go under the name of Chain:

• number 1 dating from 1983 and written for a mixed chamber ensemble of 14 instrumentalists, 
• number 2 dating from 1985, a 'dialogue for violin and orchestra' (dedicated to A.-S. Mutter), 
• number 3, from 1986, for full orchestra.

The Naxos recording is a re-issue of a disc that has been in (limited) circulation for a while. It was taped in Toronto during a concert with the New Music Concerts Ensemble and independently issued. Now Naxos seems to have purchased the rights.

Without wanting to connect everything that I listen to Bartok, one can easily intuit a kinship between the work of these two composers. Both reflect an artistic integrity that led them to develop a highly sophisticated musical language, innovative and uncompromisingly modernist but without pandering to the tastes of the contemporaneous avant-garde. Both have something of a musical watchmaker, setting great store by harnessing the visceral energy of their musical ideas with a formal equilibrium and almost neoclassical poise of their compositions. Without being able to substantiate it, I also seem to feel an harmonic likeness between the two, perhaps reflected in their focus on integrating diatonicism and and chromaticism in a single framework and their pechant for darker colours and night musics.

Anyway, the Chains are masterpieces of the late Lutoslawski. Despite their sequential numbering they do not form a cycle. The formal principle that ties them together is that of partially overlapping sections, differentiated by harmony, melodic line and texture (there is a good deal more to be said about this). My favourite is Chain 3 which despite its limited duration (a good 10 minutes) has an impressively epic sweep and monumentality. (Sibelius' Tapiola is the archetype of these kinds of works with an apparently very high specific gravity). There is a fantastic recording of Chain 3 on another CD which has been branded as Lutoslawski's final concert on the obscure label KOS Records Warsaw. It dates from a Warsaw Autumn festival concert late September 1993.

For Chain 2 we are still best served by Lutoslawski's DGG recording with the work's dedicatee as a soloist (despite a rather fat recorded sound from Walthamstow Town Hall). But Mutter's playing has tremendous fire and the BBC Symphony Orchestra is in great form. A good second is Isabelle van Keulen's rendering with the Philarmonia under Heinrich Schiff (Koch-Schwann, coupled with the Schnittke Viola Concerto). The recording on the present Naxos disc is, I am sorry to say, not up to the same standard. The soloist is not in the same league and the performance lacks forward momentum.

Chain 1 has been recorded less often than either of the other works. It's the more uncompromisingly avant garde of the three, and leans qua spirit most towards the mildly surrealist atmosphere that characterizes some of Lutoslawski's other late works (notably Chantefleurs et Chantefables).
My favourite recording is one with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Harding, issued in 1996 on the Virgin label and long since disappeared from the catalogue. Another very lively performance has been recorded by the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, led by the composer. Again, the Naxos recording is not a worthy competitor I find.

There's a charming documentary on Lutoslawski - made on the occasion of this visit to the School of Music at UCL in 1985 - here, here, here and here.