Pawel Lukaszewski: ‘Radiant, accessible music’
6th October 2008
Born in 1968, Lukaszewski is one of a younger generation of Polish composers for whom choral music is central to his output. He is also well established as a conductor, working principally with the Warsaw choir Musica Sacra. While carrying echoes of Gorecki, Tavener and the American minimalists, his music retains a distinctive voice in which subtly shifting chords are sharply contrasted with episodes of rhythmic intensity and lyrical vocal lines.
The newly-published works are three pieces from Lukaszewski’s Beatus vir sequence, each dedicated to a different saint – Beatus vir, Sanctus Paulus, Beatus vir, Sanctus Antonius and Beatus vir, Sanctus Martin – his setting of Psalm 102 and a haunting Nunc dimittis.
All five pieces are featured on a newly released recording of Lukaszewski’s choral music performed by the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, conducted by Stephen Layton. The disc, on Hyperion, is already receiving enthusiastic reviews. “He knows exactly how to write for a choir in order to achieve a particular effect,” writes Ivan Moody in International Record Review, “and those effects are very exciting…”, while BBC Music Magazine’s Barry Witherden praises Lukaszewski’s “radiant, accessible music”.
Sheet music is available from www.musicroom.com
Read more about Pawel Lukaszewski or listen to the music.
