Since 2015, Krzysztof Urbanski has been principal guest conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, one of the leading German orchestras. They are currently preparing together the inauguration in January 2017 of Hamburg’s new concert hall, the Elbphilharmonie, a major musical event in Germany with which Alpha Classics will be associated. Krzysztof Urbanski is also music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. A resolutely international career for a young conductor who recently earned praise from the Chicago Tribune for ‘his keen musical instincts and vigorous way of translating his ideas into orchestral sound that has both shape and meaning’.
For this first recording, he was keen to celebrate a great composer, one of the most eminent of the twentieth century and a Pole like himself, who, like Stravinsky, Bartók, Berg, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, gloried in the sound material of the orchestra and displayed boundless imagination. Though less well known than his illustrious colleagues for the moment, Lutoslawski amply deserves to meet a wider public, for his music can speak as directly to connoisseurs as to simple music-lovers. We hope that this programme will help to further his reputation.
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