De Profundis - Krzysztof Penderecki
Violin Concerto No 2 - Shostakovich
Symphony No 3 - Krzysztof Penderecki
A friend once told me he heard Elliott Carter describe Penderecki as the Respighi of the 1960s avant-garde. Today, with the sixties and the avant-garde out of the picture, the reference to Respighi, with all that it implies in terms of immediacy of effect and highly-targeted short-term goals, still holds.
Gestural strength, sureness of emotional purpose, and virtuoso handling of instrumental textures are hallmarks of the latter-day Penderecki. And as a conductor of his own music, he's clearly a charismatic individual. In his performing debut in Ireland last Friday, the members of the Ulster Orchestra played for him like a group of angels, responsive to his every whim and demand.
Whether it was in the string orchestral layerings of De Profundis or the rather sprawling canvas of his 1995 Third Symphony, he galvanised the players to give of their utmost.
The achievement of Penderecki the conductor, however, seems a lot more impressive than that of Penderecki the composer. For all its moment-by-moment, high-octane delivery, the symphony has something of the perfectly-manicured Hollywood drama about it. With the full catalogue of romantic rhetoric at his disposal, Penderecki has opened up a well-rutted terrain to explore. And, as with the safe Hollywood drama, there was a feeling at the end that the journey, though supremely well-crafted, had somehow avoided the major issues that were there to be confronted.
The performance of Shostakovich's Second Violin Concerto showed a disturbing divergence of approach between the conductor and the soloist, Grigori Zhislin, Penderecki seeming to want an altogether softer-contoured finish than the violinist.
