The Naxos label has done excellent work in bringing the music-making of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor Antoni Wit (and its fine associated choir) to wider distribution. There are a number of fine recordings of Leos Janácek's Glagolitic Mass and the perversely named Sinfonietta with its short movements but giant orchestra; many of the ones from the works' Czech homeland are good. But this one, unusually well recorded on a couple of occasions at Warsaw's Philharmonic Hall, can stand with any of them. The ...
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The Naxos label has done excellent work in bringing the music-making of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor Antoni Wit (and its fine associated choir) to wider distribution. There are a number of fine recordings of Leos Janácek's Glagolitic Mass and the perversely named Sinfonietta with its short movements but giant orchestra; many of the ones from the works' Czech homeland are good. But this one, unusually well recorded on a couple of occasions at Warsaw's Philharmonic Hall, can stand with any of them. The Glagolitic Mass, setting texts in Old Church Slavonic, is a work with a remarkably wide emotional range, from quiet introspection to Wagnerian triumphalism devoted, depending on whom you ask, to the goal of Czech nationalism or of pan-Slavic ideals. The conductor's job includes keeping the critical thread of text articulation going through a very complex orchestral landscape, and here Wit excels. Credit too goes to the Warsaw Philharmonic's brass section, which makes it cleanly through...
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