Krzysztof Penderecki

* Sextet (2000)
* Clarinet Quartet (1993)
* Three Miniatures for Clarinet and Piano (1956)
* Divertimento for Solo Cello (1994)
* Divertimento for Solo Clarinet (1959)

Michel Lethiec (clarinet), Regis Pasquier (violin), Bruno Pasquier
(viola), Arto Noras (cello), Markus Maskuniitty (french horn), Juhani
Lagerspetz (piano).
Naxos 8.557052  Total time: 67:48

Summary for the Busy Executive: Very moving.

With only a couple of exceptions, most of Penderecki's chamber music
comes from the first or the latest part of his career.  The period of
work he's best known for -- his avant-garde years, with scores like the
Threnody and the Passion According to St.  Luke -- has almost no chamber
music in it at all, the composer concentrating on items for large forces.
The early chamber music, from the Fifties, shows traces of Bartok, a
tremendous influence at the time among the more talented composers of
Eastern Europe.  In the work of the last twenty or so years, the influence,
though still present, has been completely absorbed.

The big work on the program, the Sextet, shows the mastery of an original
voice.  Penderecki, unlike many former radicals, doesn't repent.  One
still hears the debt to his own Threnody phase in various passages, but
he has brought that rhetoric in line with more traditional procedures.
Indeed, one also hears echoes of his early, Bartokian work.  In short,
in his latest work Penderecki has achieved stylistic integration.

The composer lays out the sextet in two large movements, with the
second movement about twice as long as the first.  An outstanding feature
of the work is the instrumentation: clarinet, french horn, piano, violin,
viola, and cello.  It affords a wide range of color - wind, brass,
strings, and percussion.  It tends to give off a big sound, more like a
small orchestra than the intimacy of most chamber groups, and Penderecki
sometimes writes for it as if it were an orchestra, pitting masses against
masses, or juxtaposing planes of sound, rather than striving for the
conversational interplay of individual voices.  The first movement, a
tromping, acidic dance -- "peasant" music stylized in a Bartokian way
--becomes increasingly frenzied, with little islands of rest, as the
music gathers up its breath for another whirl.  The end of it summarizes
the two main rhetorical elements -- the tromp and the whirl, before
ending on the whirl.  The second movement begins with a long introduction,
before it settles into a lament.  The lament gets interrupted three times
in the course of the movement with more jagged, faster music, but these
storms soften with each appearance, while the lament becomes more singing,
heartfelt, and - I'll say it - noble.  Throughout, Penderecki's superb
sense of instrumental drama keeps things moving and interesting.  On
their face, these are very simple strategies, and yet one confronts a
work of unconventional and thoroughly convincing shape.

The slightly earlier Clarinet Quartet, on the other hand, is terse and
tight, and as nearly as I can tell, monothematic.  We've traveled a long
way from the sprawl of Penderecki's middle period.  Again, Penderecki
comes up with an usual structure: three "bagatelle" movements preceding
a "farewell" larghetto, longer than the three other movements combined.
The first three movements, though stunning, appeal more to my intellect
than to my passions, unlike the sextet.  All the "heart" of the piece
comes in the final movement.  One finds oneself in an extended Mahlerian,
Lied von der Erde moment, which seem to suspend time.  Indeed, hardly
anything at all seems to happen, and yet one is moved all the same, like
looking out over a still lake and held by the occasional ripple.  To me,
this shows a master composer: eight minutes of incredibly slow which
keep your interest.

Although very well-written, the other three pieces on the program don't
aim as high.  The Three Miniatures for clarinet and piano are a little
fast-slow-fast suite, again heavily indebted to Bartok's take on folk
music, especially in the last movement.  The Prelude for solo clarinet
carries off the feat of filling a compelling four minutes with just one
melody instrument.  Penderecki doesn't even get to write the occasional
chord, as Bach does in his suites for solo strings.  Paradoxically,
Penderecki's Divertimento for solo cello, written for Rostropovich, does
less with greater resources at hand.  I find this the weakest piece on
the disc.  To me, it comes across as noodling around.  Your mileage may
vary.

I've no such reservations about the performances.  The players work as
one -- smooth, even suave when called upon, and deliberately rough where
they need to be.  Above all, they convey the shape of entire movements
without sacrificing the drama inherent in Penderecki's artistic makeup.
The recorded sound is a little harsher (brighter) than I like it, but
in all this is one of best Naxos releases I've heard, an outstanding
item in the company's intriguing catalogue.

Steve Schwartz