Zdzisław Szostak

CD version. The Łódź beginnings of the film adventures of Zdzisław Szostak, an outstanding conductor and versatile composer who was drawn completely into the world of cinema. Unique recordings from films made at the Educational Film Studio (Wytwórnia Filmów Oświatowych, WFO) in Łódź: a fascination with the avant-garde and with the classics in one explosive mix.

It is hard to name a musician who got deeper into the cinematic fabric of Łódź than Szostak. He made his name there as a composer, scoring films by Filip Bajon (Aria dla atlety, Limuzyna Daimler-Benz), Leszek Wosiewicz (Kornblumenblau) and Janusz Majewski (the series Królowa Bona). He also became the house conductor for productions of the Łódź Feature Film Studio, leading the recordings of more than two hundred scores, among them works by Wojciech Kilar and Zbigniew Preisner. Yet his film adventure in Łódź began on the welcoming premises of the Educational Film Studio. There he worked with Konstanty Gordon (five films, including Cyrk, based on the paintings of Bronisław Wojciech Linke), and there he wrote the first fiction-film score of his career, for Leokadia Migielska's short Pokusa. The results are vividly coloured recordings, intriguing in their sonic solutions, that set avant-garde fascinations against memorable melodies.

The recordings were remastered from the original tapes in the WFO archive in Łódź. The booklet includes film stills and an essay on Szostak's work. Pokusa opens the series uncovering the rich musical archives of the WFO in Łódź, a many-threaded journey into a factory of the unexpected where artists as different as Krzysztof Komeda, Wojciech Kilar, Henryk Kuźniak and Józef Skrzek with SBB tested what they could do. The programme: Cyrk (1963, tracks 1 to 4), Bronisław Wojciech Linke (1963, track 5), Xawery Dunikowski (1963, tracks 6 to 8), Polska rzeźba współczesna cz. I (1963, tracks 9 to 13), Uzbrojona wolność (1972, tracks 14 to 16) and Pokusa (1974, tracks 17 to 23).