RECORDS / New Releases: Szymanowski: Stabat Mater & Symphony No 3. CBSO & Chorus/Simon Rattle (EMI, CD)

Creeping back into repertory and the try-harder list of Classic FM's pronunciation department, Szymanowski has been well served by small labels but only recently attracted the big players. So there's plenty of ground to cover, and these pieces are a gift to Simon Rattle, whose sympathetic interest in the twilit corners of 20th-century music has never found better expression. Spacious, magisterial, evocative, a seed-bed for Gorecki but far more substantial, the Stabat Mater is sung as its composer preferred, in Polish, and the Symphony is afforded its full glory, with the optional chorus. Award material, I'd have thought.