What the critics say:    AUDIO No 12/1004

About the CD of Lutosławski's music in the series The Pearls of Polish Music  -  SACD&CD
Record of the Month - December 2004

".... The first Polish SACD, produced by BeArTon, has hit the music shops. Moreover, it is the first SACD featuring music by Witold Lutosławski, one of the greatest 20th-century composers, to be produced anywhere in the world. An interesting launch of the album took place on 27 October in the concert hall of PWM Edition in Warsaw. It brought together the conductor Jerzy Maksymiuk and the pianist Janusz Olejniczak, as well as sound engineers, Julita Emanuiłow, Zbigniew Kusiak and Andrzej Lupa... [...] I have to stress the truly astounding natural quality of the sound and the precision of the recording. I also cannot fail to underline the impressions evoked by the music. The very selection of the pieces seems to be excellent, as all of them are characteristic of Lutosławski's music and are highly charged with emotion. It is thanks solely to the interpretation of Jerzy Maksymiuk, however, that the pieces have emerged so expressively that they reach the hearts of even those listeners who have no experience in contemporary music.
The recording was made in the Witold Lutosławski Concert Hall of Polish Radio. The HD PCM recording was subsequently mixed in the Izabelin Studio and the disc was sent to the Dutch firm Polyhymnia, which specializes in DSD technology. It converted the HD PCM system into DSD format. The material then went to the Sony DACD pressing facility near Salzburg, whose specialists said that they had never received such a good recording before, one in which no corrections were necessary. The result is an album worthy of all kinds of international recording awards."
                                                                                                               Marek Dusza 

Record of the Month  December 2004

Performance

Recording 

5.0 Multichannel sound