This is not a re-creation of the last concert conducted by Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, but a recording of his actual last appearances conducting his own music, in Toronto on October 24, 1993, a few months before his death. As a live recording it's quite good; the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) sound is clear, and crowd noise is restricted to some nice applause at the ends of pieces. Apart from the fact of Lutoslawski's appearance as conductor, the album is noteworthy for its program; the earliest work, ...
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This is not a re-creation of the last concert conducted by Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, but a recording of his actual last appearances conducting his own music, in Toronto on October 24, 1993, a few months before his death. As a live recording it's quite good; the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) sound is clear, and crowd noise is restricted to some nice applause at the ends of pieces. Apart from the fact of Lutoslawski's appearance as conductor, the album is noteworthy for its program; the earliest work, Chain 1, was composed in 1983, when Lutoslawski was 70, and the entire group focuses to an unusual degree on the composer's late style. Toward the end of his life Lutoslawski restricted, but did not discard, his trademark aleatoric (chance) techniques, putting them to very specific uses within a strict framework of intervals and motives. Chain 1 and Chain 2 represent what the composer called his chain form, in which the music defines two processes (his word is "strands") that overlap and...
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