I just have to share with the listers my wonderful journey of discovery
concerning the music of Szymanowski.

If you like the music of Strauss, and the Scriabin of "Poem of Ecstacy,"
you will find much to like in the music of Szy.  My latest dicovery, after
the Violin Concerti and the Stabat Mater is his Symphony #2 and #4.

Symphony #2 is very lush and heady, but astringent enough to make this
listener forget about it's indebtedness to late Germanic Romanticism.
Symphony #4 includes a piano part and once again, the music is colorful,
exotic, and most importantly, the musical ideas presented seem to be
elaboratedly and the Symphony as a whole is stylistically unified.  (As
opposed to something like the "Hebridean Symphony" of Granville Bantok--the
quiet opening is *so* atmospheric and inspired but then when the sun comes
up it sounds like "Also Sprach Richard Strauss)

A word of warning.  I can be said that Szymanowsky's music all sounds the
same.  I wouldn't recommend listening to his different opus' back to back.
His music has a lot going on, but some of lines are buried in some pretty
thick textures--get a good recording and play back on gook equipment.

Stabat Mater and Symphony #3--Rattle on EMI
Violin Concerti--Dutoit on London (Rattle didn't seem as coherent to me)
Symphony #2 and #4--Sinaisky on Chandos

John Smyth