Krzysztof Penderecki

* Violin Concerto No. 1
* 'Metamorphosen' Violin Concerto No. 2*

Konstanty Kulka (violin)
*Chee-Yun (violin)
Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Antoni Wit
Naxos 8.555265 TT: 77:32

Summary for the Busy Executive: One of Naxos's best.

Volume 4 in Naxos's survey of Krzysztof Penderecki's orchestral works
gives us the composer's two violin concerti.  Penderecki's sun shone
most brightly in the Sixties and early Seventies, as far as critical
opinion mattered.  A large Romantic artistic nature had allied itself
with avant-garde techniques in such works as the Threnody for the Victims
of Hiroshima, Polymorphia, and St. Luke Passion.  I must admit that
while I recognized the effect these works had on audiences -- Penderecki
became on U. S. college campuses an almost iconic figure, a badge of
Good Taste and General Cool, like William Golding, Bob Dylan, and J. R.
R. Tolkien -- I never particularly cared for the works themselves.  I
didn't mind the avant-garde part.  I loved Elliott Carter, Edgard Varese,
and late Stravinsky.  Penderecki's music at that time, however, struck
me as unfocussed, great baggy monsters and a bit facile besides.

Around the mid-Seventies, Penderecki began a stylistic transformation.
The harmonies became less nebulous and the rhythms more regular, even
traditional.  The first violin concerto, from this period, aroused
controversy at its premiere.  The hard-core with-its screamed sell-out.
Those less doctrinaire (on both sides of the radical-conservative divide)
decided to wait and see.  After all, style doesn't mean quality, and
most active artists don't want to continue turning out what they've done
before.  Just writing down music -- that is, the physical act of putting
dots and lines on a page -- is fairly tedious work, even with software
help.  There's enough of the Same Old Thing in that activity for composers
to demand a treat for themselves: the excitement of writing down something
new they can't wait to hear.  From our current vantage, I think it pretty
clear that Penderecki felt he had exhausted the radical path and that
he turned to the western European tradition (and to some extent Polish
national sources), not for appropriation or imitation, but for inspiration
-- prods to get going.

I still find him hit-and-miss, focus-and-blur, from work to work and
sometimes within a work.  The ability of, say, a Stravinsky always to
say the real right thing at the real right time eludes him.  Part of
this may stem from his rather garrulous nature.  He doesn't seem able
to say anything except at length.  I've never come across a genuine
Penderecki miniature.

However, the violin concerti are among his best works.  They both play
out over rather long spans.  Premiered by Isaac Stern, the first (for
many years, the only) uses mainly three basic ideas -- a held note or
chord, an upward chromatic run, and a downward chromatic run, often
functioning rhetorically as a "sigh." Penderecki treats each idea like
a dramatist, assigning each mainly to either the soloist or the orchestra.
For instance, the held note usually appears in the orchestra.  The violin
usually states the upward run, giving its music the quality of yearning.
The orchestra usually gets the sigh.  The composer generates a host of
variations from this extremely simple material.  More important, he
builds a convincing rhetorical structure from one long movement: an
introduction of the basic ideas, exposition, funereal slow movement,
scherzo (which owes something to Shostakovich), a "recitative," a toccata,
a short revisiting of each section, and a more-or-less traditional solo
cadenza before the wind-up, a beautiful, haunted epilogue for the solo
violin, solo viola, and in general the low instruments of the orchestra.
Even without the presence of hummable "tunes," the composer comes up
with such distinctive ideas that listeners should have no trouble finding
their way through the piece.

Penderecki wrote his second violin concerto for Anne-Sophie Mutter.  The
subtitle, "Metamorphosen," refers to a technique of continual variations
of a basic idea: in this case, a minor third.  The first statement of
this is an upward chromatic run to the minor third and then a fallback
to the tonic note.  A second statement is an upward diatonic run to the
minor third.  A third statement is simply a leap to the minor third,
fallback to the tonic, and leap to the augmented fourth -- which is, if
you think about it, simply two minor thirds, one superimposed on the
other (eg, C - E-flat - G-flat).  And so on.  Variations and decorations
quickly enter the argument.  If not a minor third, why not a downward
major third or an upward minor sixth?  Like the first concerto, the
one-movement second falls into several major sections.  It differs from
the first in that the writing is more focused and more lyrical and
dance-like.  The orchestra plays a larger role in the second.  Although
it has plenty of opportunity to shine, the violin isn't so obvious a
"star" as in the first.  I think of the first as "Dionysian" and the
second as "Apollonian." Both, however, inhabit the same emotional
territory: struggle and lament.  I slightly prefer the second, but for
no really good reason.  They both stand among the best of the twentieth
century.

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, although I miss sometimes the passion in the part.  On the
other hand, 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.

Steve Schwartz