Krzysztof Penderecki - Symphony No. 8; etc. (Antoni Wit)

Information

Composer: Krzysztof Penderecki

• (01) Symphony No. 8, 'Lieder der Vergänglichkeit'
• (13) Dies irae
• (16) Aus den Psalmen Davids

Michaela Kaune, soprano; Agnieszka Rehlis, mezzo-soprano
Wojtek Drabowicz, baritone; Anna Lubańska, mezzo-soprano
Ryszard Minkiewicz, tenor; Jarosław Bręk, bass-baritone

Warsaw National Philharmonic Choir
Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra
Antoni Wit, conductor

Date: 2008
Label: Naxos
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.570450

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Review

Early Penderecki still packs a punch but the symphony veers towards stagnation

The contrast between early and recent Penderecki is extreme. This disc centres on Dies irae, one of his strongest works from the 1960s, composed for a memorial event at the Auschwitz site. It sets a miscellany of texts – not including the Latin hymn suggested by the title – in a generally fierce, expressionistic style that unsparingly depicts a season in hell. Subtlety is not called for and here, as in the earlier Psalms of David (1958), Penderecki unfurls his youthful rhetoric of protest in ways which might have been derivative but still pack a considerable punch half a century on. The dependable Antoni Wit and his assembled forces dig into the scores with relish, and even with a rather pallid acoustic the recordings convey the music’s rich colours and textural weight. Fast forward to 2005 and the Symphony No 8 is a very different proposition. These “songs of transience” to some marvellous German poetry promise an experience along the lines of Mahler’s Song of the Earth or Shostakovich’s Symphony No 14. But despite occasional passages of vocal and instrumental bravura, the effect is woefully bland – anodyne when the texts cry out for something closer to Penderecki’s earlier idiom. There are would-be grand climaxes, but they are invariably unconvincing, out of proportion, grafted on to a structure which can’t accommodate them. The soloists, especially the eloquent baritone Wojtek Drabowicz, who died in March 2007, and the orchestra’s featured bass trumpet player, do what they can, and Wit makes sure that complete stagnation is avoided: but the music remains stubbornly inert.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 10 / SOUND QUALITY: 10

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/feb/08/classicalmusicandopera.shopping6

https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.570450&languageid=EN

https://www.amazon.com/Penderecki-Symphony-Dies-Psalmen-Davids/dp/B0012JJOQY

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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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