National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra Katowice

(...) The shadow of Wagnerism that hovered over music a century ago is audible in much of the Polish composer Mieczyslaw Karlowicz's output.
Yet, as his Violin Concerto shows, Polish music was turning in other directions, too. The centrepiece of the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra's (NPRSO) concert at Cadogan Hall in London, a gala launch for the 'Polska! Year' celebration of Polish culture across Britain, this rarely-heard concerto breathes the somewhat cleaner air of the composer's beloved Tatra mountains, where he was to die tragically young in an avalanche.
Karlowicz sets his Polish-inflected themes in the traditional romantic concerto mould, so virtuosity is very much required. It was provided here by the soloist Tasmin Little, playing with all her customary poise and polish but also the introspection needed in the haunting slow movement. The NPRSO's new music director, Jacek Kaspszyk, a passionate advocate of this music, shaped a rapturous performance of exciting sweep.
Framing the programme were works by two later masters of Polish music, Andrzej Panufnik and Witold Lutoslawski. In Britain, his adoptive country, Panufnik's music has been unjustly neglected of late, making the performance of the Heroic Overture (played in its 1969 revision) especially welcome. Kaspszyk and his orchestra caught the heavy tread of this ominous music. Antiphonal snare drums whip up dissonant fanfares in a work first sketched in 1939 but not heard until two versions appeared into the early Fifties: the music is a true mirror of its times. Lutolawski's Coticerto for Orchestra, a work of grinding power and tumbling folk tunes, has become a modern classic. Kaspszyk unlocked its power and whimsy in a ferocious performance that demonstrated why the Katowice-based NPRSO is rated as Poland's foremost orchestra.

John Allison "Ringing the changes"
Daily Telegraph, 10.05.2009