Each of the five works on this recording occupies a significant place within Lutosławski’s output. The Dance Preludes represent the climax of his folk music-based period, whereas the Double Concerto and Grave are a part of a sequence of increasingly creative orchestral pieces that culminated in the Third Symphony in 1983. Chain I, written directly afterwards, explores a new way of creating extended forms, based on the concept of links in a chain. The Children’s Songs date from some thirty years earlier, and can be regarded as Lutosławski’s political response to the Socialist Realism of the time.