Music for Winds by Skrowaczewski

An active composer, Skrowaczewski's most recent work, Music for Winds (2009), has already been performed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony, German Radio Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony and Minnesota orchestras as well as New England Conservatory under Charles Peltz. Feb 13 2010 In the programme at Minnesota the picece was described:

R Flessner wrote in Chicago Classical Music that:
Skrowaczewski's piece is colorful and modernistic; I would describe it as moderately challenging for the listener but likely to be readily digestible with a few repeat hearings.

In StarTribune.com Larry Fuchsberg writes:
Co-commissioned by the orchestra and eight other ensembles, his "Music for Winds" is a symphony without strings, in the no-longer-modish-but-still-viable European modernist style he has made his own. In the program notes, the composer sounds coy: "The listener may find the character or tone of the piece to be sad, mysterious or even tragic. This could be my own reaction to the state of our world, in which great art is slowly disappearing and being replaced by superficial 'semi-culture.' "

As I hear it, the work is an aggrieved indictment of contemporary culture - combative, sardonic and, at the end, unabashedly funereal, with scattered angry cries and wounded murmurings. Such plaints, of course, are nothing new - which is not to say they are unfounded. But can they serve as the basis of a cogent piece? In Skrowaczewski's hands, perhaps they can. Music for Winds tries to exemplify the values of the high culture whose eclipse it mourns. Though not for every taste, it deserves a hearing.