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  • Plays music of Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Bacewicz, Kisielewski, Komsta, Oles

    MW744

    Artist: Contemporary Quartet

    Label: NotTwo Records

    With their slightly oversize elegant hard card packaging, they look like Japanese imports, but they're not. Not Two is a label run out of Cracow in Poland by jazz enthusiast Marek Winiarski, and if these releases are anything to go by, it's a label to watch. The Contemporary Quartet consists of Romanian pianist Mircea Tiberian, German bass clarinettist Rudi Mahall, and the Polish kickass rhythm section of bassist Marcin and drummer Bartlomiej Oles. Don't be put off by the text "plays the music of Bacewicz, Kisielewski, Komsta, Lutoslawski and Penderecki" - this is no pale collection of oh-so-tastefully arranged Polish contemporary classical music, but a dynamic and hard swinging treatment of the kind of repertoire jazz musicians have usually tended to steer clear of, at least since the heady days of Gunther Schuller's Third Stream experiments. Taking Penderecki's 1987 "Prelude" for clarinet solo as a bona fide head in its own right kick-starts the album in fine style; Mahall and Tiberian turn the theme inside out, while Oles and Oles power the music forward. Stefan Kisielewski's "Duet" (from a 1954 "Suite" for oboe and piano) segues into Marzena Komstal's "Langueur", from a piano piece of the same name written thirty-six years later, without skipping a beat. Penderecki's "Violin Sonata", written back in 1953 long before the composer burst onto the contemporary music scene with the legendary "Threnody (for the Victims of Hiroshima)", provides the source material for the thr...