Dobrzynski: Piano Concerto Op. 2 & Fantaisie Op.59

Music of Chopins Time is series of recordings from the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. The aim of the series is to compile a splendid collection of works from Chopins musical world in the most outstanding interpretations by artists with an interest in recovering lost beauty. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the output of Polish composers who, in the shadow of the great exiled genius Chopin laid the foundations of musical culture in their native land. Dobrzynskis youthful Piano Concerto in A flat major, Op. 2 was not performed during his lifetime. The composer never proof-read the score or edited the text. In 1986, the manuscript, held in the Warsaw Music Society Library, was reconstructed twice: by Kazimierz Rozbicki and by Krzysztof Baculewski. The Concerto has been performed according to both those versions around a dozen times in all. The present recording made by Philippe Giusiano with the Sinfonia Varsovia is based on Rozbickis reconstruction, edited by Howard Shelley, who also conducts Sinfonia Varsovia. This new recording also includes Theme original varie, in B flat major, Op. 22 (18331835), Two Mazurkas from Album Pamiatkowe (c.1846) and (Hommage a Mozart) Fantaisie sur des themes de lopera Don Giovanni, in A major, Op. 59 (1847). The works presented here constitute a kind of portrait of Dobrzynski the composer-pianist, from the Concerto, the Fantasy and the set of Variations through to the character pieces for salon (Rhapsody, Ricordanza) and the two mazurkas, which have the formal scheme of a functional dance but display poetical, wistful features. Dobrzynskis piano output attests to his talent and his mastery of composition technique of the early Romantic era; it is an important page in Polish music written in Poland during the first half of the nineteenth century.