Krzysztof Penderecki (b.1933)
Chamber Music
Chamber music has featured intermittently in the output of
Krzysztof Penderecki. Born in Krakow in 1933, he was an accomplished violinist
as a student, and a Sonata for Violin and Piano from 1953 was finally published
some four decades later. He wrote numerous works for small instrumental
ensembles up until the First String Quartet of 1960. Thereafter, with the
exception of a Second String Quartet in 1969, the emphasis was firmly on
operatic, choral and orchestral works. Chamber composition was restricted to
short ‘homages’ to friends and musicians until, in the 1990s, he returned to
the medium in earnest. Apart from the virtuosic String Trio (1992), the present
disc features the two most significant chamber works of that decade, as well as
several shorter pieces from either end of the composer’s career, which place
his approach to instrumental writing in context.
Written for clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello and piano,
the Sextet (2000), in two contrasting movements, is Penderecki’s most
substantial chamber work to date. The first movement opens understatedly, as,
over tramping piano, the other instruments introduce a number of salient motifs
with a Shostakovich-like ironic tinge. The music gathers rhythmic momentum,
twice interrupted by cello and horn with a more expressive idea, the second
time leading to a return of the tramping motion. This draws the instruments
into a fearsome whirling motion, presaging the most intensive instrumental
interplay yet heard. From here, the music drives to a forceful and decisive
ending. The second movement opens with sonorous, elegiac music for the strings
over a rhetorical-sounding piano. The clarinet enters with an unwinding melody
line, and the music settles into a mood of pensive melancholy, clarinet and
horn carrying the brunt of the melodic writing. Dramatic intensity is
maintained through some typically Pendereckian ‘stepwise’ chromatic ascents,
while several brief but jagged climaxes undermine the mood of regret. Gradually
the expression becomes more animated and ironic, making the cello’s impassioned
threnody, taken up by viola and then clarinet, all the more heartfelt. From
here the music draws itself out in a conclusion of sombre, even funereal
intensity, becoming increasingly spare and inward as the final bars are
reached.
First given in Lübeck in August 1993, the Clarinet Quartet
is both more concise and more succinct in expression. In the preludial
Notturno: Adagio, the solo clarinet introduces the main melodic material in the
opening bars, with cello, viola and violin almost an atmospheric backdrop.
After a pause the Scherzo: Vivacissimo opens with aggressive repeated patterns
in the strings, provoking a strident response from the clarinet. The process is
repeated, before moving straight into the brief Serenade: Tempo di Valse, with
its lightly ironic gait. The motion stills, and the finale begins. Marked
Abschied: Larghetto, this is as long as the previous movements combined,
another example of the sustained elegies that feature prominently in
Penderecki’s later output. Strings open up a wide harmonic space in which the
clarinet musingly pursues its melodic line. A single cello pizzicato ruffles
the prolonged fade-out.
Composed in 1956, while Penderecki was still a student at
Krakow University, the Three Miniatures for Clarinet and Piano give little hint
of the radical features the composer was soon to introduce into his music.
Indeed, the influence of Bartók is a reminder that the Dance Preludes (1954) by
Witold Lutoslawski were then current in Polish new music. The Allegro opens
with lively piano writing, with which the clarinet pursues an engaging
discourse. There follows a plaintive Andante cantabile which wanders towards a
questioning pause, from which the closing Allegro ma non troppo launches itself
in a vigorous and decisive rounding-off of the sequence.
Written for and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, the
Divertimento for Solo Cello (1994) honours a creative association going back
over two decades, including the notable première of the Second Cello Concerto
in 1982. After a nobly-wrought prelude, the scherzo is of a capricious nature,
with much use of pizzicato and col legno, playing with the wood of the bow, in
the writing. There follows a strenuous toccata, Penderecki’s distinctive
chromatic writing allied to cello playing of bracing virtuosity. An
introspective yet intense elegy concludes this wide-ranging portrait of a great
artist.
A précis of Penderecki’s melodic expression, the Prelude for
Solo Clarinet, written in 1987 as a fortieth birthday tribute to the British
composer Paul Patterson, takes the B flat instrument on a thoughtful journey
which remains true to the Lento sostenuto marking at the beginning of the
score.
Composed in 1959, just before the start of his international
career, the Three Miniatures for Violin and Piano suggest the influence of
Webern in their concision, expressive intensity and dynamic subtlety. No. 1
contrasts detached piano chords with extended violin techniques, No. 2 is a fractured
violin solo, while No. 3 goes some way towards reconciling the instruments in a
dialogue of often unpredictable contrasts. Although wholly abstract in their
musical import, each piece is intriguingly prefaced in the score with a poem
from Jerzy Harasymowicz’s cycle Genealogy of the Instruments.
Richard Whitehouse