Krzysztof Penderecki - A sea of dreams did breathe on me... (Antoni Wit)

Information

Composer: Krzysztof Penderecki

• (01) Part I 'The enchanted garden'
• (07) Part II 'What is the night saying?'
• (12) Part III 'I visited you in these near-final days...'

Olga Pasichnyk, soprano

Ewa Marcinie, alto

Jarosław Bręk, bass-baritone

Warsaw Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra

Antoni Wit, conductor

Date: 2015

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.573062

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Review

Commissioned for the final concert of the Chopin bicentenary celebrations in Warsaw five years ago, Penderecki’s extended song-cycle takes time to establish its connection with the great Polish composer himself. But several numbers in the final section are drawn from Cyprian Norwid’s celebrated poem Chopin’s Piano, in which Poland’s sufferings are symbolised by the fate of the composer’s piano – thrown out of a first-floor window by tsarist troops – and which also invokes in the enduring spirit of his music itself.

This is the most monumental section of a work that right from the almost impressionistic lightness of its opening lives up to its subtitle, ‘Songs of reflection and nostalgia’. Arranged with gathering intensity, the 21 numbers comprising the cycle are all drawn from Romantic and contemporary Polish poetry, much as German poems served as the foundation of Penderecki’s Eighth Symphony of 2005.

Scored for soprano, mezzo, baritone, chorus and orchestra, the music is attractive but never obvious; as the tone darkens, especially in some of the baritone solos, the music almost recalls the vocal settings of late Shostakovich. The mezzo is heard first, and Ewa Marciniec sings warmly, yet it is perhaps Olga Pasichnyk who makes the most moving impression with her searing soprano. Antoni Wit and his Warsaw Philharmonic forces once again serve the composer strongly. The work can also be recommended as an attractive anthology of Polish poetry: Adam Mickiewicz, no less, is included, but fewer listeners will be familiar with Tadeusz Miciński, from whose lines the piece draws its title.

-- John Allison, BBC Music Magazine

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Krzysztof Penderecki (23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. He studied music at Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Music in Kraków. Penderecki 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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