Completed a decade after the passing of the great Béla Bartók, Polish composer Witold Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre (Music of Mourning) was commissioned by Jan Krenz and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and premiered in Katowice in 1958. Comprising one movement in four distinct sections, the work provides an early example of Lutosławski’s “chain form,” which “braids” together distinct strands of music, and ends palindromically, the final section mirroring the twelve-tone canon of the first.
The acclaimed and dazzlingly talented Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado leads the Orchestre de Paris (and the Orchestre du Conservatoire de Paris) at their home venue in Lutosławski’s miniature masterpiece.