Penderecki reviews

Penderecki reviews

Penderecki: St Luke Passion

Kraków Philharmonic Choir; Warsaw Boys' Choir; Montreal Symphony Orchestra/Kent Nagano, et al (BIS)
more

Hommage à Penderecki

Anne-Sophie Mutter, Roman Patkoló, Lambert Orkis; London Symphony Orchestra/Krzysztof Penderecki (DG)
more

Lutosławski • Penderecki: Complete music for violin and piano

Foyle-Štšura Duo (Delphian)
more

Dreamtime

Emmanuel Pahud (flute); Munich Radio Orchestra/Ivan Repušić (Warner Classics)
more

The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra perform Penderecki

'The music is attractive but never obvious'
more

Penderecki

Antoni Wit’s impressive Naxos survey of the large-scale works of Krzysztof Penderecki may well one day come to be regarded as definitive, but not until Poland’s leading composer puts down his pen. For now, the series will always be playing catch-up, since Penderecki keeps adding substantial pieces to his output. This latest release is a case in point: 35 years separate the Magnificat, a seminal work in the composer’s stylistic evolution, and Kadisz, one of his most powerful scores of recent years.

more

Penderecki: Piano Concerto & Flute Concerto

 

Krzysztof Penderecki’s prolific output is rich in concertos, many of them written for the biggest names in the business – Mstislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern and Anne-Sophie Mutter among them. It was Emanuel Ax who gave the premiere of the Piano Concerto in Philadelphia in 2002, but the work was substantially revised and ‘re-premiered’ by Barry Douglas in Cincinnati five years later.

more

Penderecki • Lutoslawski

 

more

Greenwood • Penderecki

 

This programme has been gathering fame since it was first performed in Poland last September, and the recording is not the end of the project: there was even a dedicated www.pendereckigreenwood.com website trailing a performance in July at the Open’er Festival in Gdynia, Poland’s answer to Glastonbury. It brings together Krzysztof Penderecki and Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who cites Penderecki as a long-standing influence.

more

Penderecki: Sinfoniettas Nos 1 & 2; Oboe Capriccio; Three Pieces in Old Style; Serenade; Intermezzo

Krzysztof Penderecki’s music for string orchestra spans almost his entire output. Though none of the pieces on this disc counts among his major works, it adds up to an attractive portrait of the composer. Some of his most famous scores seem to carry ‘baggage’, while these pieces represent a purer side of his art; all of them are well written and effective.

more

Penderecki: Credo

Krzysztof Penderecki’s many detractors routinely accuse the now senior Polish composer of having retreated into an unadventurous and conservative musical language. But it is a style that has served him well, especially in his choral writing.

more

Penderecki: Music for Chamber Orchestra

 This disc brings together works by Penderecki for small string orchestra – augmented by Albrecht Mayer’s singing cor anglais in a new version of the solemn 1979 Adagietto for the opera Paradise Lost. It’s a pity Mayer didn’t also play the 1965 Capriccio for oboe and strings, because there’s a shortage of music from the composer’s most exciting period of experimental soundscapes: as it is, there’s just the 1973 Intermezzo, full of slithering quarter-tone scales.

more

Penderecki: Utrenja

Something of a sleeping giant in Penderecki’s output, Utrenja is a sequel in more ways than one to the better-known St Luke Passion.

It was written soon after it, in 1970 and ’71, and it reflects on the events following the Crucifixion: its two parts are called respectively ‘The Entombment of Christ’ and ‘The Resurrection of Christ’. But the texts here are mostly in Old Slavonic, culled by Penderecki from Orthodox Easter liturgies – an early sign of his long engagement with Russian church tradition.

more

Penderecki –Symphony No. 2; Te Deum; Magnificat

A sombre Te Deum, dark Magnificat (and unchristmasy Christmas Symphony); only the Lacrimosa and Kanon fulfil titular expectations! Despite fuzziness of detail, Penderecki’s personality shines through. Paul Riley

more

Penderecki: Te Deum; Hymn to St Daniel; Polymorphia

Penderecki’s 1979/80 Te Deum is a setting of the great Christian hymn of praise, and marked the election of a Polish compatriot as Pope. But it’s a surprisingly un-celebratory piece, incorporating a solemn Polish hymn asking God to protect the Fatherland, and couched – apart from a few flashes of the younger Penderecki’s vivid aural imagination – in the kind of freely chromatic counterpoint that you call ‘searching’ if you respond to it, and ‘meandering’ if you don’t.
more

Penderecki: Cello Concerto No. 2; Partita

Exemplary performances of three masterworks by the man who popularised the avant-garde. The mesmerising emotional power of these ear-grabbing sonorities simply has to be experienced. Julian Haylock
more

Penderecki: Ubu Rex

Alfred Jarry’s anarchic farce Ubu Roi tells how a blustering Polish aristocrat, egged on by his ambitious wife, bludgeons his way to the throne, bleeds the country dry, then flees from the invading Russian army. Penderecki’s operatic version was written for Munich in 1991, but his interest in setting the play goes back nearly 30 years. One can’t help imagining what a sensational Ubu he could have written in the 1960s, a thud-and-blunder comic counterpart to The Devils of Loudon. The one he eventually did write is a much
more

Penderecki: Te Deum; Lacrimosa

Penderecki’s Te Deum, composed in 1979/80 in response to the election of the first Polish Pope, is a notably un-celebratory piece, with a darkly chromatic opening reminiscent of late Liszt, some solemn Wagnerian harmonies, a dramatic central section reverting to the composer’s earlier ‘crowd scene’ manner and a hushed C major ending. The ambivalent message is clarified by the addition to the Latin text of an old Polish hymn asking God to protect the fatherland.
more

Hindemith, Penderecki

This second set of Sony's valuable Isaac Stern retrospective (also a nine-disc box on Sony SX9K 67194, K565) moves from the safe harbours of the first edition's core repertoire into the rewarding but choppy seas of the 20th century. What an indisputable accolade for Stern, therefore, that he meets every test with passion, commitment and all of his accustomed musical integrity.
more

Vassiliev, PŠrt, Penderecki, Langer, Lutoslawski, Gubaudulina & Schnittke

Russian violinist Roman Mints brings together an imaginative mix of 20th-century chamber music on this debut recital disc. Charismatic and stylistically diverse, these works are presented with great interpretative flair, Mints given eloquent support by pianist Evgenia Chudinovich.
more

Sallinen, Takemitsu, Penderecki

Once more Kamu is revealed as a distinguished conductor of Sallinen’s works with this compelling interpretation of the Flute Concerto (Harlekiini). His clear vision of its overall architecture (it flows continuously) allows Alenko and the Tapiola Sinfonetta to feel free to exploit to the full the regular mood shifts. Utilising the solo flute, four string quartets, six brass players, wind and a large percussion unit to engaging effect, Sallinen’s soundscape is by turns exquisite (shimmering note clusters), amusing (funfare-like chases), cocky (a triumphant flute theme) and sleazy (jazz band).
more

Lutoslawski, Penderecki

Despite his well-deserved reputation as the Sixties avant-garde iconoclast with the popular touch, critical heavyweights, unwilling to forgive his subsequent backtrack into so-called neo-Romanticism, have tended to place Penderecki on a rather lower rung than his older compatriot Lutoslawki, whose popular Cello Concerto, at least in this rather underwhelming account, emerges as less the protest against totalitarian rule it’s purported to be, than urbane comedy of manners.
more

Penderecki: Lacrimosa for Soprano, Chorus & Orchestra; Flute Concerto; Violin Sonata; Sinfonietta for Strings

This generously filled CD is an excellent way of getting to grips with the Polish composer Penderecki’s more recent work, with a broad range of expression as well as genre apparent in the music assembled. In many ways the most substantial piece is the Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio of 1993, which encompasses both gentle whimsy and profound exploration.
more

Berio, Cerha, Dittrich, Kopelent, Harbison, Nordheim, Rands, Weir, Dalbavie, Penderecki, Rihm, Yuasa, Schnittke/Rozhdestvensky & Kurt‡g

On 16 August in Stuttgart there occurred something extraordinary: the first performance of a Requiem of Reconciliation written by 14 composers from countries involved in the Second World War. Fifty years after the end of hostilities, and even while the former Yugoslavia festers in the obscenity of conflict, the motivation for the commission was abundantly clear. This is the rush-released recording of that momentous event.
more
This website is owned and published by Our Media Ltd. www.ourmedia.co.uk
© Our Media 2024