iSound

Much of the music on this disc is linked to the great Cathedral of Wawel, which, along with the neighboring Royal Castle, towers over the medieval city of Kraków, Poland. Wawel (pictured on the cover of this CD) was and remains a place of great national significance to the Polish nation, and the Cathedral has functioned both as the site of Royal coronations and as a national necropolis. More recently it became more widely famous as the episcopal see of Karol Woytyła—the future Pope John Paul II—while Archbishop of Kraków. Not surprisingly, then, musical provision at the Cathedral, which generally followed Western European trends during this period, was consistently of the very highest level, with some of the greatest music in Polish musical history being composed specifically to echo around its walls.
There can be no finer music to have graced this sacred place than that of the author of the opening tracks on this disc, Bartłomiej Pękiel (d. ?Krakow, c.1670). Pękiel took up hi...