A Sea of Dreams Did Breath on Me

Composed for the final concert of the Chopin bicentenary celebrations in Warsaw in 2010, Krzysztof Penderecki's Powialo na mnie morze snów... (A sea of dreams did breathe on me...) is an extended song cycle comparable in scale to the composer's Eighth Symphony [Naxos 8.570450]. The individual songs, settings of both Romantic and contemporary Polish poetry grouped into larger movements, chart a progression from an almost impressionistic lightness to monumentality, the expressive tenor of the music ranging widely - nostalgic for loss, but also tense and impassioned. Antoni Wit, Polish conductor non-pareil and for over a decade the managing and artistic director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, is at the conductor's podium leading the orchestra, chorus and soloists gathered together for this grandly-scaled, important project.