For listeners enamored of the icy-cold string scrapes and screeches of Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, this double-disc set devoted to his orchestral and choral music is probably not for you. In the 1970s and into the ’80s, the composer abandoned that sort of avant-garde shock-value aesthetic for an Eastern European neo-romanticism, something like Bruckner-meets-Kancheli, and this collection of works (mostly) reflects that. The music is primarily slow (even the fast portions feel ponderous) and solemn. When the tempo does liven up, it is mostly as a contrast to the pervasive funereal dirge-like atmosphere.
This is not to say it isn’t gorgeous. Penderecki has a way with pacing, and a gift for orchestral sonority–the terrifying sonic furor toward the end of the last movement of the Magnificat is potent and wonderful, the set’s high point. More avant-garde than the symphony or the gossamer-like Te Deum, this Magnificat is effective and chilling. The soloists are all excellent, though Ewa Podles’ voice does wear out its welcome. When it’s just her, she sounds ravishing; when she has to blend, her vibrato overwhelms and doesn’t match.
The Christmas Symphony, so called because it quotes “Silent Night”, is a beautiful, sonorous piece, but glum–which makes you wonder at the turgid nature of the composer’s Christmases. Those expecting upbeat Yuletide spirit should look elsewhere. The disc’s last piece, Kanon, is the oldest and most “experimental”–a string orchestra playing against a digitally recorded version of itself, which is strange to hear after all the romantic works. Nevertheless, it’s effective in a very different way.
The composer himself takes the podium, conducting various orchestras with uniform success–he draws out the moody, dense sound that his work requires and brings to life even the most sober, plodding chords. The quality of sound on these discs is excellent, and at the bargain two-for-one price, it is certainly a worthwhile purchase.
