Penderecki: Violin Concerto No. 1, Horn Concerto

“Robert Kabara has the full measure of the solo part's mercurial character as well as of its technical demands, and the recording is robustly well centred, neither swamping the soloist nor unduly damping down the rich orchestral sonorities.” --Gramophone. October 2010

“[Winterreise] is both a real feel-good piece, and a superb virtuoso entertainment. Recorded with state-of-the-art sonics, Penderecki conducts both performances himself. The Sinfonia Cracovia is his keenly responsive orchestra. Both soloists – violinist Robert Kabara and horn player Radovan Vlatkovic – are phenomenal.” --The Guardian, August 2010

IT ALL BEGAN WITH THE VIOLIN...

‘As a young boy I always dreamt of becoming a violin player, I wanted to be a virtuoso. It was the violin, not the piano that inspired me to compose my first pieces, which I used to practice my technique. I devoted myself to composing and neglected playing the instrument, as it is impossible to excel in both of these artistic activities. To this day, I feel I have not fulfilled my potential as an instrumentalist. Still, when I am travelling around the world and am forced to compose in hotel rooms, even though the piano remains the crucial element of my creation, I find it extremely useful to keep a violin-fingering chart close at hand. Many a time when taking notes with my right hand, in my mind’s eye I instinctively visualize violin strings to make certain I have achieved the effect I was aiming for.’ from: a composer’s reflection by Krzysztof Penderecki

Penderecki's international recognition began in 1959 at the Warsaw Autumn with the premieres of the works Strophen, Psalms of David, and Emanations, but the piece that truly brought him to international attention was Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, written for 52 string instruments. Penderecki's compositions include operas, symphonies, choral works, as well as chamber and instrumental music. He has won many prestigious awards including Grammy Awards in 1987 and 1998 and 2001, and the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1992.

The Violin Concerto was a turning point in Penderecki’s career, as he started to embrace romanticism and reject the extreme modernism of his early career.

The Horn Concerto is receiving here it’s premier recording.

Krzysztof Penderecki and Jonny Greenwood

“This programme has been gathering fame since it was first performed in Poland last September...Penderecki's old-fashioned radicalism is perhaps echoed in Popcorn Superhet Receiver, and the AUKSO Orchestra plays everything with conviction.” --BBC Music Magazine, September 2012 ***

“The AUKSO Orchestra again impresses with its fearless unanimity and attack, abetted by sound of unsparing immediacy.” --Gramophone Magazine, June 2012

Nonesuch Records releases an album of works by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and composer/Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood in March 2012. The artists' work was presented side-by-side in two concerts in September 2011, highlighting Penderecki's influence on younger composers, at the European Congress of Culture in Wroclaw. In its report on the Congress, which celebrated Poland's presidency of the European Union, London's Independent called Penderecki "Poland's godfather of the musical avant-garde" and Greenwood "the doyen of English art-pop," describing their concert as "rapturously received." The composers went to Kraków's Alvernia Studios immediately after the performances to oversee the recording of the same music, along with one other piece by Greenwood.

The Wroclaw concert included two works by Penderecki dating from the early 1960s: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Polymorphia (for 48 strings), the latter of which inspired the Greenwood piece on the program, 48 Responses to Polymorphia; all three are on the Nonesuch record. An additional piece by Greenwood, Popcorn Superhet Receiver, which was inspired by Penderecki's Threnody, also was recorded for the album. (Greenwood incorporated material from Popcorn Superhet Receiver in his award-winning score for the 2008 film There Will Be Blood, which was also released on Nonesuch.)

For both the concerts and the recording, the pieces were performed by the AUKSO ensemble, which comprises graduates of Poland's Katowice Academy of Music. Penderecki conducted the ensemble in his works and AUKSO's artistic director-the violinist, chamber musician, and conductor Marek Mos-led the group for Greenwood's pieces. The record was produced by Filip Berkowicz-artistic director of the Sacrum Profanum, Misteria Paschalia, and Opera Rara festivals and curator of the Penderecki concerts in Wroclaw-and made in association with the National Audiovisual Institute of Poland.

A concert featuring all of the music on the album will take place at Barbican Hall in London on March 22, performed by the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra - the group featured on the Nonesuch recording - led by Penderecki and Marek Mos. The concert forms part of the 10th Kinoteka Polish Film Festival.

Penderecki: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4

"Penderecki shocked the world with the sonic experiments of his avant-garde Sixties before adopting a neo-Romantic idiom in his First Violin Concerto (1977) and Second Christmas Symphony (1980), thereafter gaining attention for timely nationalistic pieces like the Polish Requiem and operas exploring expressionistic themes. The catalogue contains a mere handful of his symphonic works. ... Antoni Wit's readings [of the symphonies] are a genuine alternative to the composer's and an important addition to the catalogue." --BBC Music Magazine, October 2000

"As always, Wit gets magnificent performances from his Katowice orchestra, and the sonics are everything you could want them to be. Wit has done no less than cleanse these scores, presenting them as pristine and transparent utterances that beg to be heard again and again." --American Record Guide, August 2000

Penderecki: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5

"The superb new Naxos survey of [Penderecki] immensely conceived orchestral music is an opportunity to come to grips with this important composer, as his style evolved from enfant terrible to mature symphonist." --Fanfare

"These CDs come at a bargain price, but they don't skimp on anything other than the cost. They are excellent readings of this 'modern' music by Anton Wit and his National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, who are probably very familiar with this stuff - because it shows in their passionate performances. The CDs have excellent sound, too." --Tom Lyle, Sensible Sound, January/February 2002

Anne-Sophie Mutter plays Rihm, Penderecki & Currier

August 23rd 2011 will see Anne-Sophie Mutter’s 35th anniversary on stage. Anne-Sophie Mutter is not only one of the world’s top violinists but an international bestseller, having sold more than 5,000,000 units worldwide − and counting.

In celebration of this achievement, Deutsche Grammophon releases a new album featuring world-premiere recordings of two new works written for Mutter: Wolfgang Rihm’s Lichtes Spiel and Sebastian Currier’s Time Machines, recorded with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

“Lichtes Spiel features an evanescent, will o' the wisp quality to Mutter's lines, threatened by darker, steely shades in the orchestral arrangement. But it's light in not just the visual sense, but also the spiritual. Dyade is a more subtle, flowing piece bereft of rests, but no less unsettling” --The Independent, 2nd September 2011 ***

Penderecki: Symphony No. 3, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, Etc

“The performances, as led by Penderecki student Antoni Wit, are lusty and vigorous. It is easy to imagine that the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra plays this music with the same personal identification that the Leningrad Philharmonic under Mravinsky played Shostakovich. Between these two CDs, there is a trove of modern classics that cover a great range of style, yet taken as a whole stamp a deep impression on the musical world of the late 20th century.” --Fanfare, July/August 2000

"...the early modernist pieces-the dense tense Threnody, the atmospheric if unfocused Fluorescences and the simplistic De natura sonoris II offer new aural experiences... They are given strong performances...with the detail of this difficult music well observed." --BBC Music Magazine, June 2000

"This is not only a usefully inexpensive introduction to the music of Krzysztof Penderecki; it also includes the only available recording of his Third Symphony. ...

The other three works were composed in the early 1960s, well before Penderecki's change of style, and all three demonstrate his remarkable ear for innovative sonorities. Fluorescences draws a prodigious range of colours and textures from a gigantic orchestra, but the well-known Threnody is even more remarkable in the way that it convinces you that wind, percussion and electronic sources are present, although it is scored only for strings. ...The performances are remarkably fine, the three earlier pieces at least as eloquent as the symphony; the recording is both clear and ample." --International Record Review, May 2000

Penderecki: Violin Concerto Nos. 1 and 2

"These are knock-out performances. Antoni Wit hasn't had a superstar career, but I like him better than at least some of the current Big Deals. He knows how to bring out the emotion behind the notes without stepping over into wallowing. He allows the music to retain its architectural shape. You always know where in the piece you are. Neither performance is a "read-through." The Poles play with an incisiveness born of great familiarity. Kulka is a solid, even elegant soloist...Chee-Yun in the second gets sparks to fly. You can take her intonation for granted, but not her big, heroic tone and incredible rhythm. She may very well become the next violin superstar...One of Naxos's best." --ClassicalCDReview.com, June 2003

"Full marks to Naxos for being the first company to couple the two concertos. Chee-Yun can boast of having performed the work on several occasions with the composer during a celebrated tour a few years back, and it shows here with what is by any standards an engrossing, masterly performance...Konstanty Kulka proves no less persuasive or technically adroit in the First Concerto, enhanced by a first-rate accompaniment and atmospheric recording, with the soloist gently spot-lit." --The Strad, July 2003

Penderecki: Music for Chamber Orchestra

“The performances, conducted by the composer, are generally good...The recording flatters everything with generous resonance.” --BBC Music Magazine, June 2010 ****

As one of the most significant figures of modernism, Krzysztof Penderecki is immediately associated in the public mind with his groundbreaking compositions, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, St. Luke Passion, and De Natura Sonoris I and II, which were among the most innovative and challenging works of the 1960s and '70s. However, Penderecki adopted a neo-Romantic style that has dominated his music from the late '70s onward, and many of his pieces were composed for strings or small orchestra and last under 10 minutes.

This 2008 album by Penderecki and the Varsovia Symphony Orchestra explores some of his music from 1963 to 2005. There is one example of music from his avant-garde period, namely the Intermezzo for 24 strings (1973), which is a study of close-knit contrapuntal repetitions of short figures. 

Other than that, the music is fairly conventional in harmony and stylistically quite accessible to most listeners. The Pieces (3) in Baroque Style date from 1963 and may have the strongest appeal to casual classical listeners, but they are pastiches of 18th century style and have an artificial quality, unlike the rest of the selections that are recognizably Penderecki's from their predominantly minor-key tonality and brooding lyricism. 

Highlights of the album include the Chaconne in Memory of John Paul II, "De Profundis" from Seven Gates of Jerusalem, the Serenade for string orchestra, and the Sinfonietta per archi, which all give a balanced impression of Penderecki's expressive musical language and eclectic ideas in his post-modern phase. --Blair Sanderson