Krzysztof Penderecki - Sinfoniettas; Oboe Capriccio (Antoni Wit)

Information

Composer: Krzysztof Penderecki

• Three Pieces in Old Style
• Serenade
• Sinfonietta No. 1
• Intermezzo for 24 strings
• Capriccio for Oboe and String Orchestra
• Sinfonietta No. 2

Jean-Louis Capezzali, oboe

Artur Pachlewski, clarinet

Warsaw Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra

Antoni Wit, conductor

Date: 2012

Label: Naxos

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Review

Placing the earliest (1963) and most recent (1997) works together at the beginning of this programme neatly confirms that Penderecki didn’t simply regress from radical to conservative during these three decades. Even though the Three Pieces in the Antique Style are film-music pastiche rather than a fully fledged concert item, they convey a relish for decorous late-Romantic expressiveness that eventually supplanted the modish avant-garde alarms and excursions for which he was best known in the 1960s.

The Capriccio for oboe and strings (1964) represents Penderecki’s personal angle on Sixties modernism and packs a considerable punch despite its derivative qualities. As late as 1973, the Intermezzo for 24 strings projects an expressionistic attitude to texture and structure that still impresses today, especially in a performance as full-blooded as this one. After that, the two Sinfoniettas – the first (1992) adapted from a String Trio, the second (1994) from a Clarinet Quartet – seem much more pallid, all too prone to the kind of nondescript, quasi-improvisatory lyric rambling that is occasionally interrupted by something more energetic but which never builds into the kind of truly postmodern evolutionary design that might have been the intention. Only in the second movement of the Sinfonietta No 1 does something approaching a strongly shaped musical argument emerge. As for the two-movement Serenade (1997), there’s plenty of fervent intensity in the way Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra put the music across but that can’t compensate for lack of energy and personality in the actual ideas.

— Arnold Whittall

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Krzysztof Penderecki (23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer. After graduating from the Academy of Music in Kraków, he began teaching there and gained international recognition. His innovative compositions, characterized by experimental sonorities and distinctive orchestral techniques, include Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, St. Luke Passion, Anaklasis, Utrenja and Polish Requiem. His output also include 5 operas, 8 symphonies, concertos, chamber works and numerous choral compositions. Penderecki received many prestigious honors, including 4 Grammy Awards.

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Antoni Wit (born 7 February 1944) is a Polish conductor. Educated in conducting at the Academy of Music in Kraków and in Paris under Nadia Boulanger, he also holds a law degree from Jagiellonian University. Following success at the Herbert von Karajan Conducting Competition, he led major Polish orchestras, serving as director of the Warsaw Philharmonic from 2001 to 2013 and later as music director of Spain's Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra. Wit has made over 200 records, earning numerous international awards, including a GRAMMY Award, for his acclaimed interpretations of Polish and classical repertoire.

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