Composer: Krzysztof Penderecki
Performer: Johanna Rusanen, Agnieszka Rehlis, Nikolai Didenko, Warsaw Philharmonic Choir
Orchestra: Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Krzysztof Penderecki
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Warner
Catalogue: 2564603939
Release: 2016
Size: 221 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Dies Illa
01. I. Mors Stupebit
02. II. Liber Scriptus
03. III. Quid Sum Miser
04. IV. Rex Tremendae
05. V. Recordare
06. VI. Juste Judex
07. VII. Qui Mariam
08. VIII. Lacrimosa
09. Hymne an den heiligen Daniel
10. Hymne an den heiligen Adalbert
Psalms of David
11. Psalm XXVIII
12. Psalm XXX
13. Psalm XLIII
14. Psalm CXLIII
This album contains a selection of Poland’s greatest living composer’s vocal-instrumental works on religious subjects, representing different artistic responses to the challenge expressed above. Our selection also provides proof of the special importance that the composer attaches to what he considers as “the most difficult of instruments”– namely, the human voice.
Penderecki shot to notoriety in the musical avant-garde in 1960 with the haunting string music of his Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. He remains a doyen of contemporary music alongside Arvo Pärt and the late, lamented Henryk Górecki. Here, the 82-year-old composer conducts his own music with his national orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic. He also gives the triumphant premiere of a powerful new sacred work, Dies Illa, for soloists (Johanna Rusanen, Agnieszka Rehlis and Nikolay Didenko), choir and orchestra, composed to mark the centenary of WWI in 2014.
This Grammy-winning, major-label release featuring Krzysztof Penderecki himself as conductor, leading an enthusiastic Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, may be taken as an official offering of Penderecki’s choral music on the part of the composer, and it fills the bill in this regard. The program features a new work, the Dies Illa for three soloists, choir, and orchestra (2014), a pair of pieces from the mid-1990s, and a 1958 set of Psalms from the composer’s serialist period. Penderecki goes in reverse chronological order: the program opens with the Dies Illa, which was written in memory of the victims of World War I and commissioned by the Flanders Festival. The work is a full-fledged, neo-Romantic, choral piece, with plenty of brass depicting the day-of-judgment themes of the text. The two orchestral hymns, to St. Daniel and St. Adalbert, are much quieter, with mood and texture both influenced by Orthodox church music, and the four Psalms are spare works showing the impact of Webern, the model for idealistic Poland in the 1950s. What makes this collection compelling is that there’s a distinctive Penderecki personality, big yet meditative, that runs through all three of these works. It has something to do with the fact that, as a Pole, Penderecki did not have the luxury of ignoring history and retreating into academic subcultures the way some of his Western counterparts did. Who better to capture that personality in performance than the composer himself? A recommended Penderecki release.