Krzysztof Penderecki - A Polish Requiem (Antoni Wit)

Information

Composer: Krzysztof Penderecki

• A Polish Requiem

Izabela Kłosińska, soprano; Jadwiga Rappé, alto
Ryszard Minkiewicz, tenor; Piotr Nowacki, bass

Warsaw National Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra
Antoni Wit, conductor

Date: 2005
Label: Naxos
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.557386-87

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Review

An all-Polish team find the fervour in Penderecki’s heartfelt Requiem

When Krzysztof Penderecki conducted the first complete recording of his Polish Requiem, the soloists were Polish but the orchestra and chorus were Swedish. This new recording, an all-Polish affair, certainly can’t be faulted for lack of fervour, and the work’s origins in a setting of the Lacrimosa dedicated to Gdansk shipyard workers who died during clashes with the Communist authorities in 1970, helps to explain the mixture of intensity and deliberation with which Penderecki approached his task.

I was fairly dismissive of the work in 1997, and I can’t say that I’ve warmed greatly towards it since. At worst, there’s a tendency to swing between bombast and sentimentality which makes one long for the austerity of an Arvo Pärt. Nevertheless, if you approach it as a valid attempt to continue the tradition of 19th-century concert Requiems – Verdi’s, above all – then you might feel that it has much to offer.

This performance is well played and conducted, Antoni Wit ensuring that the big climaxes make their effect without labouring the less eventful episodes. The choral singing is robust, though the sustained high writing is demanding enough to give the Polish Philharmonic Choir some anxious moments. Of the vocal soloists, both Jadwiga Rappé (also on the Chandos recording) and Piotr Nowacki are excellent, but the normally reliable Izabella Kosinska was clearly under strain, and Ryszard Minkiewicz also sounds out of sorts in places. Finally, the sound is typical of Naxos’s Polish recordings in being rather too bright and generalised for music which depends for its effect on such strong contrasts between the very quiet and the extremely loud.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2005/Mar05/Penderecki_Polish.htm

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2005/Apr05/penderecki_requiem_855738687.htm

https://www.allmusic.com/album/krzysztof-penderecki-a-polish-requiem-mw0001851262

https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.557386-87&languageid=EN

https://www.amazon.com/Penderecki-Polish-Requiem-Krzysztof/dp/B000675OFS

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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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Antoni Wit (born February 7, 1944 in Kraków) is a Polish conductor. He studied with Henryk Czyż, Krzysztof Penderecki and Nadia Boulanger. He has recorded over 90 albums, most of them for the Naxos label, and many of them with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, of which he managed and was artistic director from 1983 to 2000. Since year 2002 he has been music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. Wit specializes in the works of Polish composers such as Henryk Gorecki, Witold Lutosławski, Karol Szymanowski and Krzysztof Penderecki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Wit

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