Szymanowski: Violin Concertos; Mythes

Szymanowski absorbed influences from Chopin and Richard Strauss in his youth, later from Debussy, Ravel and Scriabin, the Orient and its mythologies, interpreted with hedonistic indulgence, and the folk music of his native Poland. His First Violin Concerto of 1916 is one of the peaks of his output, and the Latvian/Russian pairing of Baiba Skride and Vasily Petrenko convey its impressionistic sensuality with startling clarity, as if their goal is to unblur lines and shapes that others present in softer focus. They are equally persuasive in the Polish folk music ambience of the Second Concerto, written in just four weeks in 1933. Skride and her sister Lauma delight in the heady perfumes of the 1915 Mythes for violin and piano. orfeo-international.com