Who holds the deeds to cultural identity? What constitutes a “national school”? Can composers fit these nebulous categories even from afar? That’s the line of inquiry behind EDA’s series on mid-20th century Polish diaspora composers whose music often fell between the gaps. Jerzy Fitelberg fled Warsaw to New York via Berlin, Paris and Buenos Aires; Tadeusz Zygfryd Kassern survived the Warsaw Uprising to become a UN cultural attaché, while Michal Spisak moved to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger and never went home.
Despite dating from the 1940s, two of the works on this disc were premieres when recorded live in 2011. And though they aren’t masterpieces, they are worth hearing: the impish neoclassical spark in Kassern’s Concerto for strings, the tuneful urgency in Spisak’s Concertino, the bright-eyed modernity in Fitelberg’s Concerto for trombone and piano — think Prokofiev at his sunniest. The Warsaw orchestra under Christoph Slowinski is spirited, a tad rough-edged and clearly invested in bringing this repertoire back to life.
