Penderecki: Krzysztof Penderecki

Inspired early on by the experimental pieces of Krzysztof Penderecki, Radiohead's guitarist and composer Jonny Greenwood has pursued the idea of shaping orchestral sounds in enexpected ways to produce startling and innovative works. Just as Penderecki wrote for conventional instruments and turned dense bands of microtonal dissonances and extended techniques into the agonized cries of Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and the pulsating roars and shrieks of Polymorphia, Greenwood achieves comparable effects in his multilayered and highly varied orchestral music. The massed harmonies and swooping glissandi of Popcorn Superhet Receiver owe a considerable debt to Threnody, which Greenwood would gladly admit; because the title 48 Responses to Polymorphia openly acknowledges the connection to that work, it is easy to identify Greenwood's raw materials and how he brilliantly reworks them to his purposes. This 2012 release from Nonesuch consists of recordings made with the Aukso Orchestra in Kraków, Poland, with Penderecki conducting his own works and Marek Mos conducting Greenwood's compositions.

This 2004 survey of modern settings of the medieval sequence Stabat Mater Dolorosa is part of conductor Marcello Viotti's project to record the little-known but worthy sacred works of the twentieth century, in conjunction with the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Chorus for their concert series Paradisi gloria. The four works by Francis Poulenc, Karol Szymanowski, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Wolfgang Rihm are dramatically different in conception and musical content, and may be regarded more as reflections of personal faith than as practical works for ecclesiastical purposes.

The instrumental concerto occupies a very prominent place in the music of Krzysztof Penderecki. This fact is related to the great life force exhibited by this genre in twentieth century and in contemporary music. It is stimulated by commissions from virtuosos and by audience expectations; also favourable is the composers’ flexibility in approaching the form, whose chief idea continues to be the juxtaposition of the solo instrument and the orchestra. The violin and viola works presented on this CD are not only interesting, concrete realizations of the concertare idea in Penderecki’s music, but also examples of this composer’s sonic language and style in the period of his creativity which Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski called a "time of dialogue with the regained past".

Krzysztof Penderecki (Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki), born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these works exhibit novel compositional techniques. Since the 1970s Penderecki's style has changed to encompass a post-Romantic idiom.

The violin is Penderecki’s own instrument (he studied it during his youth), it can therefore be argued that he has a special relationship with the instrument, perhaps it was this relationship that was the spark of inspiration that led to him writing the Concerto after he and Anne-Sophie Mutter performed the Violin Concerto No. 1 of Prokofiev together in 1988, with the resulting Concerto described as creating an “impression of a vast labyrinth” in the booklet notes.

The Silesian Quartet sprang to international attention with it's award-winning recordings of chamber music by Grazyna Bacewicz. It's 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.

The calendar year 2023 marks the 90th birthday of Krzysztof Penderecki (1933–2020), one of the most prominent 21st Century Polish composers. Sacred themes and texts surround the creative work of Penderecki, including many of his large-scale works. This album consists the majority of his impressive sacred a cappella choral works which are mainly written in Latin. These deeply religious choral works are modern classics which will, no doubt, remain in the choral repertoire for years to come.

This beautifully programmed CD presents three settings for viola and orchestra and a more eloquent statement about the beauty of the viola as an instrument would be hard to imagine (except for perhaps including Vaughan Williams' 'Flos Campi'). The viola finds that middle voice between violin and cello, a rich tone with a built in quality of mournfulness. That quality has inspired the works on this recording and the result is some of the more wistful music ever written. Dennis Russell Davies conducts the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra with the superb violist Kim Kashkashian.

Carl Reinecke is famous for his beautiful melodies and amazing fondness of classical forms, to the point that his oeuvre comprises nearly all such forms that were practiced in his time. Krzysztof Penderecki, on the other hand, was an icon of the avant-garde and definitely preferred avoiding convention, rather than following the mainstream. The two had never met, which would have been impossible, as Carl Reinecke died 23 years before Krzysztof Penderecki was born. Nevertheless, flutist Krzysztof Kaczka has made the improbable come true - thanks to his efforts, the two musicians do finally meet, more specifically, two of their major pieces come together on one album. Both compositions are highly esteemed by critics and flutists alike, who gladly include them in their repertoire.