Zygmunt Noskowski (1846-1909)
Symphony No.3 in F major ‘From Spring to Spring’ (1903)
Step (The Steppe), symphonic poem, Op.66 (1896)
Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/Antoni Wit
rec. 2024, Philharmonie, Ludwigshafen, Germany
Capriccio C5547 [57]

Many of Zygmunt Noskowski’s orchestral works, including the three symphonies, were recorded between 2000 and 2009 in three Sterling discs, conducted by Łukasz Borowicz. More recently Antoni Wit has entered the lists with his own Capriccio discs (Symphonies 1 and 2 are on C5509) which include this latest example containing Symphony No.3 and the symphonic poem, Step, Op.66, a large-scale work that escaped the trio of Sterling releases.

The Symphony was composed during 1903 and premiered in January 1904. It’s a four-movement, 38-minute work that explores the seasons ‘from Spring to Spring’ through imaginative orchestral colour. The opening has plenty of dappled woodwind and verdant awakening, as one might anticipate. Noskowski marshals his detailing well and Wit prefers a tauter tempo than Borowicz which vests this movement with a rather greater urgency. The harp and oboe come to the fore in the hazy beauty of a Polish summer, a long lyric movement where the buttressing brass lightly evoke Smetana. The fugal writing in Autumn suggests a festive feel with boisterous high spirits encoding a Polish harvest song. Winter’s gravity is skilfully done and its snowstorm is conveyed with almost pictorial realism, the flurries in the winds straddling the divide between imaginative and naïve. Gradually, Spring emerges cyclically to begin the cycle again and Noskowski’s work is done. The Third Symphony is an attractive piece, cast in the tradition of Glazunov, Smetana and figures of that kind – chronologically Noskowski bisects them both, being twenty years younger than Smetana and twenty years older than Glazunov.

Step (The Steppe) dates from…well, take your pick. The track listing says 1896, Jens Laurson in his notes says 1894, and IMSLP says 1895. In any case it’s a large-scale 19-minute symphonic poem that has been recorded before by Grzegorz Nowak with the Sinfonia Varsovia in a mixed disc containing works by Moniuszko and Chopin on CD Accord. There are yearning string melodies and lyricism a-plenty – polonaise themes, scurrying shepherds on the plains, hints of Borodin. I think he could have said everything he needed to in about half the length but that’s late-Romanticism for you and I can’t fault the performance.   

The one thing that did slightly disappoint me was the rather flat orchestral perspective in the Philharmonie, Ludwigshafen. A real front-to-back orchestral sound would have brought these two works to life with more flair but Wit is a rather more incisive exponent of the Symphony than Borowicz and crucially, he launches it with more momentum, which works to its structural advantage. That said, both performances work well and bring the folklike charm and exuberance of Noskowski’s finest symphony to verdant life.

Jonathan Woolf

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