Richard Fairman, Financial Times, 6th February 2014
★★★★
“…The Sinfonia Sacra, probably his best-known work, is typically clear-headed and direct. Four solo trumpets at the corners of the stage announce the start with a volley of fanfares. A medieval Polish chant inspires music of hallowed simplicity, interrupted by a short, sharp movement of violent rhythmic energy, and then the final hymn builds to a glowing climax, crowned again by the four trumpets. In the mid-1960s it is easy to imagine how this seemed too obvious, too easy on the ear. But we have lived through the minimalists since then, including the Polish Górecki, and perhaps it is time to revisit Panufnik.
His Lullaby (1947, revised 1955) now seems a decade or two ahead of its time. The piece asks 29 solo string players to commune softly at different speeds, some of them with quarter-tones. The result is like an angel on some wheezy old accordion, softly breathing its ragged notes in and out – numinous Górecki blended with Ligeti-like clouds of sound, wistful and charming.
The Dvořák – his Symphony No.9 and Violin Concerto, in that order thanks to Mutter’s delayed arrival – could have felt quite hearty by comparison. But the conductor, Michael Francis, led a brisk, no-nonsense performance of the symphony and Mutter, as always, found marvels of expression in the concerto.”
