Works featured on this recording – composed over a period of thirty years – convey a compelling insight into the artistry and individuality of Rafał Augustyn’s music. It is enough to listen attentively to Dedication, in order to understand that Augustyn’s text never equivocates, expounds or illustrates. It simply has to be there – as an integral element of the work, of equal length and value in relation to the rest of the musical material. The Wrocław composer – who often creates short and formally concise works – is a true writer of epics with a skill for narrative which he is able to occasionally interrupt or occasionally shift into another gear, but who never wreaks havoc through dramatic turmoil and pathos. Augustyn constructs his images and dialogues out of minute elements, tonal patches, characteristic “phonemes” which become more clearly audible from a distance – and I do not refer to physical distance but rather psychological and intellectual distance which allows one to grasp all the determining factors which lie at the roots of his deeply intellectual creative process. Augustyn is not an aesthete or antiquated classicist: he is a postmodernist who disenchanted by the theory of postmodernity is seeking new ways of approaching it. I hope it takes him a while to find them. 

RAFAŁ AUGUSTYN
String Quartet No. 1  
1. Allegro 5:09
2. Canone 5:47
3. Quasi Rondo 6:19
4. String Quartet No. 2 with flute 17:27
5. Dedication for soprano & string quartet 6:24
6. Do ut des for string quartet 3:40

Grand jeté. Quartet No. 2½ with electronics
7. Londyn I   3:04
8. Leningrad-Londyn II   3:22
9. Warszawa I   1:02
10. Bruksela   2:04
11. Awinion-Londyn III   2:14
12. Cannes   1:03
13. Warszawa II   2:50
14. Londyn IV   3:50

Total time: 64:37