Classical Music

Classical Music

Antoni Wit's ongoing cycle of Penderecki orchestral works is yet another of those truly outstanding Naxos projects that's unlikely to get the attention it deserves. The music isn't easy, or popular, but Wit is a marvellous conductor in this repertoire, and his unfailingly intense and idiomatic performances look to become the standard by which all others will be judged. This new release just may be the best so far.


The Seven Gates, though largely unthreatening in its use of consonant harmony, is a very difficult work to perform. The choral and solo writing is tiring (if often incredibly moving and impressive), and the presence of a lengthy narration may bother some listeners. In my opinion Penderecki is one of the very few composers who can pull it off, and here he does so magnificently.


Perhaps the most wonderful thing about this recording is its ability to be serious (isn't Penderecki always?) without sounding labored, or relentlessly heavy. Partly it's a function of really exceptional choral singing and a uniformly high-quality bunch of soloists. The rest, though, is Wit's ideal pacing and that feeling for timbre and texture that made his Messiaen Turangalila-Symphonie so memorable. In short, even if you don't normally warm to Penderecki, you probably will find this disc surprisingly appealing. The sung texts are available on Naxos' website, but it's just as much fun to simply wallow in the evocative sonorities that Penderecki gets from his very large vocal and instrumental forces. Excellent engineering makes the music both rage and shimmer as it must. A splendid release in every way! [1/24/2007]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Krzysztof Penderecki is one of the world’s great contemporary composers and a Polish classical music icon. His 80th birthday in November 2013 occasioned an extraordinary gathering of the world's most significant musicians and his most important interpreters. Companions and long-time friends of the composer presented their homage to Penderecki with some of his most famous works being performed: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, the Duo Concertante, the Concerto Grosso No. 1 and the unique Credo.

Krzysztof Penderecki’s works for string instruments constitute a rather abundant group of compositions of different forms and genres. The selection presented on this release comprises concerto pieces created at various stages of Penderecki’s creative path. The Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra was established in 2007. The Orchestra’s mission is to bring together the most talented students and graduates of musical academies who are under thirty years of age. They are deeply convinced that an opportunity to cooperate with outstanding artists will inspire many talented musicians and make them more eager to continue to develop as artists, and the personal artistic responsibility of each musician will translate into shared responsibility for the shape and quality of the orchestra. They believe that the Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus will be perceived by young musicians not so much as an institution, but as a community of shared objectives.

Best known for his choral and symphonic works, Krzysztof Penderecki has also written many fascinating concertante pieces. His Concerto Grosso No. 1 makes full use of the potential for interplay between three solo cellos and orchestra.

Florian Uhlig has often played the concerto under the direction of Penderecki as well as with other conductors throughout the world. Uhlig gives an exceptional interpretation of this successful contemporary work that is particularly close to his heart.

Prophets of the New is a series from Sony focusing on classic recordings of the 20th century's most revolutionary works.

Penderecki wrote music for string quartet over a period of 56 years. His StringQuartetNo.1was written in the same year that he achieved international success with Threnody (Naxos8.554491), and includes a wide range of playing techniques reflective of the avant-garde. String Quartet No. 2 reveals the influence of Ligeti, while No.3is a personal, even autobiographical work. In No. 4 there are modal or even folk inflections, in writing that is both limpid and abrasive. The eventful Derunterbrochene Gedanke completes Penderecki’s music for quartet, while the String Trio exemplifies his music’s motoric energy.

REVIEW:

Penderecki's First Quartet pointed to his fascination with hard-edged atonality and 12-note influences, the one movement score expressed in pizzicato and lasting just a little over six minutes. With his Second Quartet he had begun to move away from astringency to a more legato quality but with atonality to signpost things to come. There was to be a gap of twenty years before the more lengthy Third appeared in 2008, and it was period when he ‘took stock’ of the way music was going. At the same time his music was moving to an even more communicative melodic period we experience to a final degree in the Fourth of 2016. Now in a more ‘traditional’ two movements, and with a Vivo finale, its style has a melodic starting point. Integrated into these changes were two further works for strings, an extremely brief String Quartet from 1988 given a title Der unterbrochene Gedanke (The Interrupted Thought), and a String Trio from 1990. Both fit neatly into the changing moods of the quartets that surround them. They are here performed by the much acclaimed British-based Tippett Quartet who encompass these changes with a conviction that would place the performances as my number one choice and in quite superb sound.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Recording information: Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, Poland.

Penderecki deserves a great deal of credit for turning his back on the avant-garde of the 1960s and '70s, recognizing much of it for the music dead-end that it has turned out to be. His "return to Romanticism" was prophetic, but at the same time we must remember that there really are only two kinds of music: good and bad, and the fact that some music might be more conventionally listenable doesn't make it inherently better. On the whole, Penderecki always has been a very talented composer, deeply concerned with serious expressive issues, but this hasn't prevented some of his neo-Romantic works from sounding relentlessly heavy, grey, and dull, nor does his change of style diminish the sonic thrill of his earlier, more radical pieces. He did excellent work in all periods, as you can plainly hear on this marvelous new release.

The Eighth Symphony, "Songs of Evanescence", actually is a cycle of 12 German poems by the likes of Rilke, Goethe, Eichendorf, and Hesse. Far from being uniformly grim, the texts (available on Naxos' website) speak of the cycle of life, death, and renewal in a manner not too dissimilar from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (save that the entire work lasts scarcely longer than Mahler's last song, "The Farewell"). The music is beautiful: lyrically melodic, sumptuously scored, and highly varied, with harmony that ranges from the sweetly diatonic to ferociously dissonant, everywhere responsive to the text. This piece, which requires solo soprano, mezzo, baritone, and full chorus, must rank among Penderecki's finest recent creations, and I easily could see it becoming a repertory item.

Dies Irae, dating from 1967, is a work of Penderecki's radical phase. As the title suggests, it's a dark, menacing, but sonically enthralling piece that forces both vocal and orchestral forces to make some of the most hair-raising sounds in Western music. It's interesting how with the passage of time much of the music's perceived difficulty has evaporated, leaving behind a raw-nerved, expressionistic intensity that's quite special and all the more moving for being very much of its time and place (aren't all classics?). The brief Psalms of David, from the late 1950s, helped to establish Penderecki's credentials as a major composer. The percussive last movement might strike today's listeners as almost Latin-sounding, though of course the harmonic language is more acerbic, but the music exudes the freshness of a powerful new voice on its first flights of fancy.

Antoni Wit's Naxos recordings, particularly those of contemporary music, have been almost uniformly splendid, and this one is no exception. He summons terrific playing from the orchestra, has a brilliant and enthusiastic choir at his disposal, and has assembled a very impressive team of soloists, especially soprano Michaela Kaune, baritone Wojtek Drabowicz, and tenor Richard Minkiewicz. Singing this stuff isn't easy, but they make it seem so. The sonics capture the music's massive climaxes as well as its more ethereal moments in natural balance, and with plenty of head room. In short, this disc makes an ideal introduction to Penderecki's art, and to his vocal music in particular. It covers his entire creative life thus far, and offers compelling evidence of just how fine a composer he was, and remains.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Directed by Anna Schmidt. Starring Julian Rachlin, Jonny Greenwood, Andrzej Wajda.

SYMPHONY NO. 4 - ADAGIO

Krzysztof Penderecki is one of the most famous and prominent living Polish composers. Symphonies have a special place in his legacy, but until now have never been recorded in a series under his artistic direction. In celebration of his 80th birthday, DUX presents the best performances of his works with the Sinfonia luventus. His great musical authority influences the young musicians' energetic and fresh sound.

Each of these six orchestral works bears the imprint of Penderecki’s greatness as a composer. Fonogrammi alternates piquant sonorities, pulsating vehemence and moments of great intimacy. Intensity accompanied by neo-Romantic elements can be heard in The Awakening of Jacob whilst Anaklasis is a stunning example of juxtaposed, multiple sound patterns. De natura sonoris I explores more improvisational, jazz-influenced areas, as does the richly orchestrated Partita. The Horn Concerto, composed in 2008, offers an evocative landscape, glacial, powerful, yet wistful.

Penderecki's Concerto doppio per violin e viola was composed in 2012 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Wiener Musikverein. The Concerto doppio is a piece with a clearly outlined neoromantic architecture. Although the composer often uses semitones as form shaping means, the Concerto is also saturated with many consonant solutions mitigating tensions. Penderecki's Concerto per viola ed orchestra has been transcribed for a variety of instruments. The original version was created in 1983 as a result of a composing commission by the Venezuelan government in the context of commemorating the bicentenary of birth of the hero of the fight for independence of South America- Simon Bolivar. Completed in 2003, the Concerto Grosso No. 2 for three clarinets and two basset horns, apart from the Spanish premiere has not been presented to a wider audience for 15 years. It is a composition that is difficult to consider only in the context of the inspiration with the form of musical expression developed in the Baroque.

PENDERECKI: Sextet / Clarinet Quartet / Cello Divertimento

PENDERECKI: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2

PENDERECKI Piano Concerto, “Resurrection.” Flute Concerto • Barry Douglas (pn); ?ukasz D?ugosz (fl); Antoni Wit, cond; Warsaw PO • NAXOS 8.572696 (60:30)

It is fascinating to trace the development of Penderecki’s compositional style, as he seems to become more conservative the older he gets. The Piano Concerto, composed in 2001/02 and revised in 2007, is a work that the Penderecki of the 1960s and the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima probably never dreamed of writing. In fact, nothing in Penderecki’s canon, not even his recent works, prepared me for this concerto. After several auditions, I’m not sure it’s even a successful work (I’ve seen the adjective “kitschy” applied to it), but if it’s not, it is, in today’s popular terminology, a hot mess, and a fascinating one at that.

In this work, Penderecki has channeled the romantic piano concerto. In the words of annotator Richard Whitehouse, it renews “Penderecki’s direct involvement with the ‘grand’ concerto tradition—notably of the Russian lineage that had its culmination in Rachmaninov and Prokofiev.” Granted, the work is not as lyrical as, for example, Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, or even Prokofiev’s Third, but there’s no missing the size and the strength of the emotional gestures, and the respect for virtuosic display. For the first time ever (in my experience, anyway), Penderecki has even included passages that a reasonable person might describe as “pretty”—for example, at 2:30 into the second section, and that passage returns near the end. (The work is in 10 continuous sections, and Naxos has tracked them separately.) Granted, the concerto’s overall mood is more tense than pretty, and there are violent climaxes. I have to say, though, that the music that kept coming to mind as I heard this concerto was Bernard Herrmann’s Concerto Macabre, a work that he composed for the 1954 film noir Hangover Square—and I intend that as a compliment. “Resurrection,” the concerto’s subtitle might be understood as a Christian reference, but apparently it is not meant to be taken too literally. Whitehouse indicates, however, that a “plainsong-like idea (which was conceived in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack) . . . only gradually makes its way into the foreground before emerging at full strength during the climactic stages.” Barry Douglas, whose name now comes up less often than it did at the start of the CD era, plays the heck out of this 37-minute concerto, and does not stint on its steel, drama, and emotional power. The engineering, by the way, is outstanding—this is a sonic showpiece. I’d be interested to hear an earlier recording (on Dux), conducted by the composer, with pianist Beata Bili?ska.

The Flute Concerto dates from 1992, and is more in line with what we have come to expect from latter-day Penderecki. It is, in other words, an anticlimax to the piano concerto, but worthwhile nevertheless. Like the piano concerto, it is a single-movement work, but that single movement contains several clearly contrasted sections. If the piano concerto is unexpectedly emotional, the flute concerto is in keeping with the composer’s familiar style, which I would describe as intellectual and objective, gaining its interest from the way in which Penderecki develops his material, and creates interesting instrumental timbres. The word “eclectic” keeps coming up, which I suppose is another way of saying that the music is modern, but not too modern. It was composed for Jean-Pierre Rampal, who did record it, with the composer, for Sony, but I have not heard that version. There’s also another Dux disc, with the composer conducting, and flutist David Aguilar, but the version I know, also on Naxos, is with flutist Petri Alanko and the Tapiola Sinfonietta, conducted by Okko Kamu. Alanko and Kamu pare more than three minutes from the score’s total length. Their reading is more dramatic than the new one, and Alanko emphasizes the lyrical aspects of the music more than Dlugosz does, wherever he can. Compared to Wit, Kamu is more precise, and creates more focused sonorities with his ensemble, but I do like the lush sound that comes out of the Warsaw Philharmonic, and I feel that Wit is a superior story-teller to Kamu.

Although neither of these works is new to CD, the combination is unique, and the performances are very strong. I see no reason not to be enthusiastic about this release, and the piano concerto is growing on me. Let’s see if this makes it onto my Want List in the next issue!

FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

The Silesian Quartet sprang to international attention with its award-winning recordings of chamber music by Grazyna Bacewicz. Its latest project – the complete quartets of Penderecki – was started in 2012, but not completed until January 2021. Presented chronologically, the works on the album take us on a journey from Penderecki’s early avant-garde ‘sonoristic’ style of the 1960s – the first and second quartets – to the later neo-romantic style of the third and fourth quartets, composed in 2008 and 2016 respectively. Of all Penderecki’s output, the Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio shows the strongest links to the chamber music of the nineteenth century. Penderecki was inspired to write the piece by the 1992 recording by the Emerson String Quartet and Mstislav Rostropovich of Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, D 956. Here the Silesian Quartet is joined by the clarinetist Piotr Szymyslik.

REVIEW:

The works on this superlative new recording of the Complete Quartets date from 1960 to 2016, and some of his finest music is here. As the Silesian Quartet shows in their chronologically presented survey, the earliest music holds up well.

–BBC Music Magazine (5 stars)

The Double Concerto for Viola and Cello was written in 2012 to mark the bicentenary of the Musikverein in Vienna. It is a work with a clearly defined, neo-romantic architecture. Even though the composer employs profuse semi-tones as a form-shaping element, the music also abounds in consonances that soften the many tensions therein. The narration’s starting point is determined by the opening cantabile for the two solo instruments, which is of a romantic character. As the music proceeds, the two architectural planes start to be mutually interwoven, with a free dialogue between them lasting until the end of the piece. It is worth drawing the listener’s attention to the highly inventive solo cadenzas that are introduced by the composer in order to differentiate the mood of the work’s various sections. The version for accordion and orchestra which is featured in the present recording casts a fresh light on the composition. All the contrasts that are responsible for the structural fragmentation unexpectedly gain even sharper contours. Moreover, all the solo interludes, in view of the distinctly different character of the accordion, make the polemics between the neo-romantic and playful aesthetics even more exciting. Concerto per flauto ed orchestra da camera was written in 1992. Commissioned by L’Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, it was dedicated to flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal. The work falls into two extensive movements: Andante and Allegro con brio. Lyrical fragments of a somewhat impressionistic provenance predominate in the first movement. In contrast to the Double Concerto for Viola and Cello, this work is notable for its highly autonomous solo part, which on the one hand constitutes an intriguing counterpoint with the orchestral interludes, while on the other being very much to the forefront. Brief but strongly chromaticised melodic motifs are an important element that shapes the architecture of the first movement.

It is a trite assumption that by association with Krzysztof Penderecki's Polish identity, a performance of his work by a Polish conductor and orchestra suggests itself to be naturally definitive. In this case however, it may be true. As a former student of Penderecki's, Antoni Wit brings authoritative insight to his direction of the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra on this three volume set of Penderecki's orchestral works. The pieces are not presented chronologically. Instead, each disc pairs earlier and later works, which provides a good comparison of the composer's earliest groundbreaking work to his later neo-romantic symphonies.
The first volume is an interesting mix of music, matching the retrospective Third Symphony with earlier and more innovative works such as 'Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima,' 'Flourescences,' and 'De Natura Sonoris 2.' These are pieces of great sonic and formal experimentation. 'Threnody' uses microtonal wails in the strings to deeply disturbing but beautiful effect. In 'Flourescences,' Penderecki uses percussion and polyrhythm sculpturally as much as to define rhythm. Strange metallic rumbling, a typewriter, and droning glissandi in the strings add to the atmosphere of a world where sounds, not pitch or harmony, govern form.
REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (5-6/00, pp.165-66) - Recommended.

Krzysztof Penderecki’s works for (string) quartet neatly encapsulate the stylistic breadth and trace the development of Poland’s most important modern composer throughout his six-decade-long career. From the avantgarde rhythmical study that is Quartet No.1, via an ode to Webern, to the neo-romantic elder Penderecki’s Schubertian Clarinet Quartet, this collection covers all his chamber music for three and four strings, even the early neo-baroque outlier of his Three Pieces adapted from his film music for the steamy 1964 movie, The Saragossa Manuscript.

REVIEW:

From wild child of the experimental avant-garde to luscious neo-Romantic, Krzysztof Penderecki had an unusually profound stylistic transformation across his career. When his string quartets neatly encapsulate that trajectory, written as they were between 1960 and 2016, it’s no mean feat to pull off the entire cycle in consistently convincing and compelling fashion. Yet, that is what the Meccore Quartet has done here.

-- The Strad

Despite their different musical languages, all works by the Polish composers Karol Szymanowski and Krzysztof Penderecki presented on this album have in common the inherent character of a lament: Szymanowski’s Stabat mater, which was completed in 1926 and is based on a Polish translation of the Latin medieval poem, is considered as one of the most important compositions of the 20th century. Penderecki’s three-part oratorio Dies Irae was commissioned for a commemoration day in remembrance of the murder victims at the former concentration camp in Auschwitz, and hence carries the epithet “Auschwitz Oratorium”. The album closes with a Threnos for 52 string instruments dedicated to the Victims of Hiroshima. The final haunting bars of this composition present a tutti cluster, starting in a triple forte and fading out to quadruple piano.

Britten, B.: War Requiem / Penderecki, K.: Threnody To the V