4. June 2022
The Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orlinski dedicated his fourth album to the art song treasure of his homeland with works by Tadeusz Baird, Pawel Lukaszewski, Karol Szymanowski, Mieczslaw Karlowicz, Henryk Czyz and Stanislaw Moniuszko.
He calls the CD “Farewells” and mixes old and new rarely performed songs whose composers are hardly known.
Stanislaw Moniuszko and his 54-year-old contemporary Pawel Lukaszewski can be heard from the romantic period. His elegiac song “Jesien” (autumn) fascinates with expressive-melancholic vocal lines, to which the somewhat hesitant-sounding piano accompaniment by Michal Biel conjures up a suitable natural mood of the season from the keys.
The pianist does not remain in the background in all songs and sometimes succumbs to a dramatic sound attack that almost covers Orlinski’s finely structured, boyish countertenor voice. It’s hard to believe that the two artists have been touring with the songs for years.
Of course, with the certainly intended and achieved goal of presenting Polish music to the public and making it better known. From this point of view you have to listen to the album and learn to love it despite all the difficulties that you don’t understand the lyrics. Unfortunately, they were also only translated into English in the booklet.
