1 	Festyn 	 (Party) 5:40 		
2 	Jaskinia (The Cave) 10:59 		
3 	Na obrzezach miasta (In The City's Outskirts) 5:44 		
4 	Taniec osla (Donkey's Dance) 5:56 		
5 	Ulice Babilonu (Streets Of Babylon) 16:42 		
6 	Ein Stuck fur Alle und Keinen 	2:17 	

Pawel Szymanski was graduated with honours from the National Higher School of Music in Warsaw, where he studied composition with Wlodzimierz Kotonski (1974-78) and Tadeusz Baird (1978). Szymanski won numerous composing competitions including the Young Composers' Competition of The Polish Composers' Association in 1979, in the Works by Young Composers category at the Unesco International Composers' Tribune in Paris in 1981, and the Sacred Music Composition Contest of the Internationale Bachakademie in Stuttgart in 1985. In 1993 Szymanski received the annual award of the Polish Composers' Association, followed by the Grand Prix of the Culture Foundation in January 1994.

Pawel Szymanski's music is performed all over the world and a number of his works were commissioned by European institutions and festivals and were premiered by world-famous musicians. Pawel Szymanski’s music is highly sophisticated and always subject to strict technical discipline, yet it enthralls the listener with its variety of emotions and moods ranging from sensuous sound play to metaphysical musings. --- musicsalesclassical.com

Album zawiera utwory skomponowane do spektaklu Zaratustra w reżyserii i scenografii Krystiana Lupy (Stary Teatr, Kraków). Muzyką tą Paweł Szymański wywołał sensację zdobywając w jednym roku dwie z wysoko cenionych nagród muzycznych w Polsce: tytuł muzyki teatralnej roku w plebiscycie miesięcznika TEATR i nagrodę za najlepszą muzykę do filmu (Plac Zbawiciela) na Festiwalu Polskich Filmów Fabularnych w Gdyni!

Krystian Lupa, który zaprojektował również okładkę płyty, tak pisze we wstępie do niej:

(...) Nazywamy muzykę Pawła Szymańskiego "religijną". A przecież od razu rodzi się potrzeba rewizji tego terminu. Ta muzyka nie opowiada przecież o religijnych faktach (chyba, że czasem przez słowa religijnego tekstu) ani nie chce być częścią religijnego ceremoniału. Raczej - podobnie jak u Bacha - muzyka Szymańskiego nie wyraża religijnego przeżycia, ale jest autonomicznym aktem religijnym. Bóg jest fugą...

Nazywamy muzykę Pawła Szymańskiego "kontemplacyjną", a przecież od razu rodzi się potrzeba rewizji (...) Bo może kontemplacja jest koniecznym, niezależnym od nas udziałem w bycie autonomicznym, który się przed nami odsłania. --- wsm.serpent.pl

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    * Lux aeterna (1984) - voices, instruments
    
      Camerata Silesia Chamber Choir and Instrumental Ensemble, 
      Anna Szostek - conductor
      
    * Partita III (1986) - harpsichord, orchestra
    
      Elżbieta Chojnacka - harpsichord,
      
    * Partita IV (1986) - orchestra
    
      Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, 
      Antoni Wit - conductor
      
    * Two Studies (1986) - piano solo
    
      Szabolcs Esztényi - piano
      
    * Miserere (1993)
    
      Bornus Consort, 
      Marcin Bornus-Szczyciński – director

We are told that Szymanski developed his own voice early.

Partita III starts as a tumultuous glocken fusillade of activity for the full orchestra and the harpsichord. It sounds rather like a psychedelic Bach fugue - a supercharged Martinů or Poulenc concerto. This whirling activity stops and starts, punctuated by silences and modest gentle querulous sighs from the strings. The dreamy focusing and blurring melts into a slow motion vision rather along the lines of the 'trippy' dissolution sections of Valentin Silvestrov's Fifth Symphony. The harpsichord touches in ringing silvery patterning like clockwork running down.

Partita IV is the most avant-garde sounding of the works here. It was commissioned by BBC Northern Ireland and premiered in 1987 by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Lionel Friend. Again it is constructed from repeated cells in evolution but here the incidents are furious and typical of the Polish 1960s avant-garde. Even the long-held quiet notes are ambiguously dissonant (5.50) though they do gain an almost sentimental warmth (11.23) made equivocal by moans from the brass. This piece represents an evolutionary progress from vehemence to silence.

The Two Studies for solo piano peck and impact in slow progression - again sounding both familiarly in the style of Bach yet dissected in an unhurried and surprisingly avant-garde exhibition. The second study moves to slough off the first at about 6.03. The second glitters in Mozartian gemwork.

Lux Aeterna is based on a theme from l'Homme Armée which is sung as if diced into sections presented haltingly cocooned in a tinkling commentary from the ensemble. Everything is presented with clarity and in a halo of warmth contributed by harp, piano, celesta and vibraphone. Time and again with Szymanski iterative bell sounds real or evoked are crucial. So it is with Lux Aeterna.

The Miserere is stunningly recorded as are all the other works here. Like the Lux Aeterna there is an archaic plainchant feeling to this work for chamber choir, a quartet of cellos plus harp and vibraphone. There are whispers, glintings, sighs and sinuous wails and stratospheric sirening from the cellos.

There is some extraordinary writing here. If you want to keep up to date then don't miss Partita III and Lux Aeterna. There will I am sure be much more to be heard from Szymanski. ---Rob Barnett, musicweb-international.com

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Paweł Szymański
1. Five Pieces For String Quartet: Crotchet = 72
2. Five Pieces For String Quartet: Dotted quaver = ...
3. Five Pieces For String Quartet: Quaver = 72 ...
4. Five Pieces For String Quartet: Crotchet = 90
5. Five Pieces For String Quartet: Crotchet = 48

6. Four Pieces For String Quartet: Crotchet = 90
7. Four Pieces For String Quartet: Crotchet = 60
8. Four Pieces For String Quartet: Crotchet = 120
9. Four Pieces For String Quartet: Crotchet = 40

10. Two Pieces For String Quartet: Quaver = 60
11. Two Pieces For String Quartet: Quaver = 60

Paweł Mykietyn
12. String Quartet No 2 

Royal String Quartet:
Izabella Szałaj-Zimak – I violin
Elwira Przybyłowska – II violin
Marek Czech – viola
Michał Pepol – cello

The official titles of the works performed here are not helpful: what they conceal are the most extraordinary soundworlds from two composers at the vanguard of the contemporary Polish music scene, and the magicians of the Royal String Quartet summon from their instruments sounds of collective and individual wonder.

This is music to grab the attention of its audience—whether willing or not—and it will leave listeners emphatically having chosen a side of the fence. ---hyperion-records.co.uk

The Royal String Quartet may sound like the name of a British ensemble, but this release on Britain's Hyperion label is otherwise Polish all the way: the group and both composers come from Poland. The composers represented are well known in Poland but not elsewhere, and on the evidence here they ought to be more widely played. The three sets of pieces for string quartet by Pavel Szymanski, born in 1954, are especially intriguing. They have a common language, based in Witold Lutoslawski's economical interval-based structures, despite ranging in composition date from 1982 to 2013. But a sense of humor present in the early Two Pieces for string quartet flowers in the later sets; Szymanski may begin with a conventional gesture (such as a passage that might have come from a Classical-era string quartet) but then let it run out of gas or fall to the ground in downward glissandos, and finally generate a simple set of pitches. The music is not minimalist or neo-Romantic, but it is absolutely accessible and engaging; Szymanski, perhaps, has found a middle ground between the Polish modernism of the middle 20th century and more contemporary and simple trends. The String Quartet No. 2 (2006) of Pawel Mykietyn was composed for the Kronos Quartet and explores microtonal structures in a similarly accessible way. The Royal String Quartet achieves the silent, sparse textures required in the Szymanski pieces without trouble. Strongly recommended for those interested in new trends in Eastern European music. ---James Manheim, AllMusic Review

Po niedawnych płytach hyperionu, odkrywających prace polskich kompozytorów romantycznych (także tych mniej znanych) , przyszedł czas na współczesną awangardę i dwóch, bodajże najważniejszych jej przedstawicieli, Pawła Szymańskiego i Pawła Mykietyna. Ich kwartety smyczkowe to wielce osobliwe dzieła, łączące eksperymentalne techniki wykonawcze z nietuzinkową atmosferą, w doskonały sposób tworzoną przez instrumentalistów z Royal String Quartet. ---empik.com

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