Krzysztof Penderecki - Orchestral Works

Information

Composer: Krzysztof Penderecki

CD1:

1. Anaklasis, for strings and percussion
2. Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima
3. Fonogrammi
4. De Natura Sonoris No. 1
5. Capriccio, for violin and orchestra
6. Canticum Canticorum Salomonis
7. De Natura Sonoris No. 2
8. The Dream of Jacob

CD2:

1. Emanationem, for two string orchestras
2. Partita, for harpsichord and chamber orchestra
3. Cello Concerto No. 1
4. Symphony No. 1: I. Arche - Dynamis I
5. Symphony No. 1: II. Dynamis II - Arche II
6. Three Miniatures, for clarinet and piano: I. Allegro
7. Three Miniatures, for clarinet and piano: II. Andante cantabile
8. Three Miniatures, for clarinet and piano: III. Allegro ma non troppo

Siegfried Palm, cello (2.3)
Sabine Meyer, clarinet; Alfons Kontarsky, piano (2.6-2.8)

London Symphony Orchestra (1.1, 2.4-2.5)
Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (1.2-1.8, 2.1-2.3)
Krzysztof Penderecki, conductor

Date: 1973, 1976, 1989
Compilation & Release: 2012
Label: EMI Classics

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Review

These 1970s analogue recordings were digitally remastered and reissued on separate mid-price CDs in the mid-1990s. It makes good sense for EMI to pair them, since together these compositions define the range – the strengths and weaknesses – of Penderecki’s early style.

From the late 1950s to the mid-’70s he was one of the most successful of contemporary modernists, though modernism in his case was always more a matter of being consistently up-to-date than of reflecting the fragmentation and plurality of 20th-century culture. In retrospect, it seems surprising that his turn to neo-romanticism didn’t happen sooner. Perhaps it was only after he had tried to deploy his expressionistic idiom on a larger scale than usual, in the Symphony No 1, that he felt unable to continue along the same road.

The length of this two-movement Symphony highlights Penderecki’s reliance on texture and colour more than harmonic evolution or thematic argument. All in all, it’s quite an achievement that the piece avoids stagnation as successfully as it does. Nevertheless, several of the earlier, shorter compositions included here are more effective in providing appropriate contexts for Penderecki’s typically hectic, clamorous intensity.

Emanations and The Dream of Jacob still deserve to be heard in the concert hall, as does Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. These performances underline the composer’s strengths as a conductor concerned to bring out the dramatic immediacy of his scores, and the recordings remain almost excessively bright and detailed, with textures approaching electro-acoustic distortion in places (the Cello Concerto No 1). In the early 21st century, this music has acquired genuine historical interest, and the recordings should be taken in that light.

-- Gramophone

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Krzysztof Penderecki (23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) is a Polish composer and conductor. He studied music at Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Music in Kraków. Penderecki has composed four operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works. Among his best known works are Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Symphony No. 3, his St. Luke Passion, Polish Requiem, Anaklasis and Utrenja. In 2012, The Guardian called him the Poland's greatest living composer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krzysztof_Penderecki
http://www.krzysztofpenderecki.eu/en/

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