Favourite Penderecki Works

[Thatfabulousalien]

What is your list?

Devils of Loudrun
Symphony no 1
Utrenja
Paradise Lost
Dream of Jacob
Kosmogonia

[kishnevi]

As it happens, I am listening to Penderecki this very moment.  The Wit recording of Symphonies 2 and 4: I have been going through the Naxos set of symphonies and other works, and this will finish it.

Almost all of the set was new to me, even the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (or at least I don't remember hearing it before), and there is loads of his stuff I have never heard.

I probably won't like Devils of Loudon for an extramusical reason:. I very much like the Huxley book, and like the book precisely because of the part which probably is nontranslatable to the stage. (If you have never read it, try to find and read it.)

Generally, with Penderecki, I seem to connect better with later works, not earlier ones.

And there is one chamber work I think is truly great, the Sextet.
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The other stuff on that CD is pretty good, too.

[Brian]

Generally, with Penderecki, I seem to connect better with later works, not earlier ones.

Agree entirely - my top three would be the Sextet, the French Horn Concerto "Winterreise", and the String Quartet No. 3 (which he later arranged for string quintet with double bass, an arrangement the composer is reported to prefer).

[some guy]

Up to and definitely NOT including the christmas symphony, which horrified all of us (modern music listeners) at the time, and which we all (I speak for the four of us I definitely know about) saw (heard) as a huge betrayal.

Some of us (I speak only for myself now) have never forgiven him.

[kishnevi]

The horror!  The horror! A symphony people might actually like listening to!!

In truth, the Second Symphony did seem to be a bit too simple and too easy on the ears.  As if in correcting himself he first went too far past the target. The later symphonies had a more Pendereckian tone (meaning, one could hear the earlier style mixed in.)

[Mahlerian]

I'd never actually heard the "Christmas" Symphony before.  I'm listening now.  I probably will never listen again.

[Karl Henning]

The horror!  The horror! A symphony people might actually like listening to!!

Reminds me of Phil Collins' wry remark about how So was a watershed album for Peter Gabriel. "I mean, look at that cover: such an attractive photo."

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[Mirror Image]

I'd never actually heard the "Christmas" Symphony before.  I'm listening now.  I probably will never listen again.

+1 He's a composer I struggle with and have never understood the appeal, but different strokes for different folks.

[Karl Henning]

To judge by, say, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Nielsen, & al., my ears typically pursue to the end the work of composers who interest me. But, while there is a work or three of Penderecki's for which I have unalloyed musical respect, somehow I've shied away from looking closer, in the way that I am wont with a composer who grabs me by the collar.

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[relm1]

My favorite of his is Symphony No. 6.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

The following still sound good to me:

St. Luke Passion
The Dream of Jacob
Symphony #3
Sextet
Clarinet 4tet

I'm glad someone else mentioned The Dream of Jacob. It's a little gem, similar to Ligeti's "atmospheric" pieces but with a clear narrative structure derived from the Biblical story. It was memorably used in the "Room 237" scene of The Shining, and much to my surprise is on the CSO's schedule for next season (conducted by Muti, believe it or not).

I also rather like the late, somewhat Bergian Symphony #8 (actually an orchestral song cycle), but I don't think it's a favorite. The 3rd Symphony is the only neo-romantic symphony that I like without serious reservations.

But worldfamous works like Threnody for the..... for example, sound more like study pieces than mature statements. There was a point before his switch into full-time neo-romanticism that he fully utilized the stuff he was doing

I agree with this assessment.

[Turner]

Te Deum and the Polish Requiem, though they have a very intense expression.

The 1st symphony, an unusually funny start. Some of the shorter, avant-garde period, orchestral pieces (Anaklasis for example, as far as I remember - but not Threnody).
And the heavy-metal-like Partita for Harpsichord & Orchestra.

[some guy]

The horror!  The horror! A symphony people might actually like listening to!!

Hmmm. I am a person. I don't like listening to Penderecki's symphony number 2.

I am a person. I do like listening to Penderecki's first symphony. And De Natura Sonoris (I and II), Threnody, Emanations, Fluorescences, Anaklasis. The horror! The horror! Music that (some--it's never anything but some) people actually like listening to.

[kishnevi]

Hmmm. I am a person. I don't like listening to Penderecki's symphony number 2.

I am a person. I do like listening to Penderecki's first symphony. And De Natura Sonoris (I and II), Threnody, Emanations, Fluorescences, Anaklasis. The horror! The horror! Music that (some--it's never anything but some) people actually like listening to.

Tranquilo!  My tongue was firmly in my cheek when I said that...and if you read the rest of my post, you will have noticed that I don't care for the Second Symphony myself, and for about the same reasons as you.

[aesthetic]

Re: the Symphony No. 2, is it the piece of music itself or rather its symbolization of a composer's radical stylistic move away from 'modernism'?

I wonder whether people have similar problems with works like Górecki No. 3, Pärt No. 4 or Rautaavaara No. 7, purely on the basis that these works turn their back on the earlier 'avant garde' aesthetic of the composers' earlier symphonic efforts.

[kishnevi]

Re: the Symphony No. 2, is it the piece of music itself or rather its symbolization of a composer's radical stylistic move away from 'modernism'?

I wonder whether people have similar problems with works like Górecki No. 3, Pärt No. 4 or Rautaavaara No. 7, purely on the basis that these works turn their back on the earlier 'avant garde' aesthetic of the composers' earlier symphonic efforts.

My problem with the Second is that it sounds as if it was composed by Andre Reiu or Richard Clayderman. Purely musical, iow.  (In fact, I am not keen on avant garde, including earlier Penderecki.)

[some guy]

Re: the Symphony No. 2, is it the piece of music itself or rather its symbolization of a composer's radical stylistic move away from 'modernism'?

I wonder whether people have similar problems with works like Górecki No. 3, Pärt No. 4 or Rautaavaara No. 7, purely on the basis that these works turn their back on the earlier 'avant garde' aesthetic of the composers' earlier symphonic efforts.

Well, first of all (depending on the proximity of your tongue and your cheek, of course), I don't think that anything is "purely."

The symphony no. 2 is a piece of music, with identifiable characteristics. And it did come after some other pieces that were different from it. It's difference from them is not that it's going on to something new but going back to something old, something older than anything else he had done before. There is really no "or" about it. It's bad because it's specifically a rejection of Penderecki's former career and of the music of the present that that was. And it is bad as music, because it is little more than a mimicry of a sound from a past time. The two badnesses are related, sure. They're both manifestions of going backwards rather than forwards.

Forwards, of course, can be any number of different and unrelated things. (That is, "modernism" is either not really a thing, or it's a term for all the different and unrelated things going on now.) Backwards is only going to be one thing, a redo of something already done.

[kishnevi]

Well, first of all (depending on the proximity of your tongue and your cheek, of course), I don't think that anything is "purely."

The symphony no. 2 is a piece of music, with identifiable characteristics. And it did come after some other pieces that were different from it. It's difference from them is not that it's going on to something new but going back to something old, something older than anything else he had done before. There is really no "or" about it. It's bad because it's specifically a rejection of Penderecki's former career and of the music of the present that that was. And it is bad as music, because it is little more than a mimicry of a sound from a past time. The two badnesses are related, sure. They're both manifestions of going backwards rather than forwards.

Forwards, of course, can be any number of different and unrelated things. (That is, "modernism" is either not really a thing, or it's a term for all the different and unrelated things going on now.) Backwards is only going to be one thing, a redo of something already done.

May I suggest you are mistaking dogma for fact?

There is nothing wrong per se with returning to the past, as long as that return is either for the purpose of exploring hitherto unexplored potentials, or enriching the past with the fruit of present knowledge. It does not necessarily imply a mere redo. I suppose I should invoke Schoenberg's remark that there were still plenty of things remaining to be written in C major.  But going forward for the sake of going forward is not always laudable.

It is bad when it is a mere redo, a mimicry, as you term it, and the Second is just that.  The later works don't suffer from that flaw.

[Maestro267]

I enjoy the Symphony No. 2 a lot, contrary to many here so it seems. Seems like people are just against it because it made its composer popular. Like a progressive rock artist having a popular hit single. Why does popular acclaim and artistic seriousness always seem to be polar opposites with many people?

Anyway. We need the text of Utrenja to be made available. It's a huge challenge when you don't have the libretto to follow along with.

[kishnevi]

If we can stop arguing about the (awful) Symphony no 2, I'll shout you all to a St Luke Passion. How about that? 

We aren't actually arguing about the symphony at all. Someguy and I actually have the same opinion of it!