condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (neatly repaired 1" rip on front)

In October 1956, following the death of Stalin and the beginning of the cultural thaw, Poland became one of the first countries in the Eastern bloc to establish a dedicated electroacoustic studio. The Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES), founded by Józef Patkowski in Warsaw, predated similar institutions in Stockholm, Paris, and many Western capitals. It was - as an MoMA retrospective later summarized it - an unlikely development in communist Poland, and one with a profound impact on the direction of Polish music. Many of the composers represented on this LP worked there.

Music Workshop (1970) is the document of Warsztat Muzyczny, the ensemble led by pianist and composer Zygmunt Krauze that formed around the PRES composers and dedicated itself to performing their work. The six pieces on the LP - composed between 1965 and 1970 by Andrzej Dobrowolski, Włodzimierz Kotoński, Krauze himself, Bogusław Schaeffer, Kazimierz Serocki, and Witold Szalonek - span the range of the Polish avant-garde in its most concentrated moment. Serocki's Swinging Music, Kotoński's work for solo instruments and tape, Dobrowolski's Krabogapa, Krauze's Polichromia - all commissioned by or composed specifically for the ensemble, each a distinct attempt to extend what acoustic and electronic instruments could do in close proximity.

This is one of the essential documents of Polish post-war composition, and one of the most searched-after LPs in the Muza catalog. The want-to-have ratio on Discogs tells the story. Original Muza pressing.