Orchestral Works

This second part in Sakari Oramo's Bacewicz series contains three rarely recorded works with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Peter Donohoe as soloist in the Piano Concerto. Grazyna Bacewicz was a pioneering Polish composer of the twentieth century, known for her lively and dynamic musical language. Her music bridges neoclassicism and modernism and is exceptionally well crafted. The Concerto for piano and orchestra was written in 1949 in response to the Frédéric Chopin composition competition organized by the Polish composers association to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Chopin's death. It was awarded second prize in the category of works for piano and orchestra - no first prize was awarded! The Second Symphony was completed in January 1951 and premiered during the opening of the First Festival of Polish Music in the same year. It is actually the composer's third symphony, because Bacewicz had discarded the first one. Bacewicz described her four-part, perfectly balanced work as a work that refers to the tradition of the great classical masters and in which she incorporated her own musical discoveries. She wrote her concerto for large symphony orchestra a decade later, in 1962. Bacewicz herself regarded the work as part of the evolutionary process that led to the third phase of her compositional journey.