Bacewicz: Piano Quintets; Piano Sonata No 2

Krystian Zimerman, Kaja Danczowska, Agata Szymczewska, Ryszard Groblewski, Rafal Kwiatkowski Deutsche Grammophon 477 8332 ****

Jan Popis’s hagiographic sleeve notes make strong claims for Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-69), ranking her string quartets with those of Bartók, and her Second Piano Sonata (1953) with the late sonatas of Prokofiev. The sonata, of which Krystian Zimerman has long been a powerful advocate, sounds to have something of the mixture of harmonic clotting and angular virtuosic brilliance that is to be found in the piano sonata by Samuel Barber. The First Piano Quintet (1952) has a folksy neo-classicism that sometimes shows a sharp bite and also features moments where the harmonic writing becomes wincingly intense. The Second Quintet (1964) attempts a not- always persuasive synthesis between the neo-classical and the avant-garde. The performances are consistently first-rate. See url.ie/57as