Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020)
Theatre and Film Music
A Tale of Five Brothers (1967)
Tom Thumb and the Wolf (1961)
Undivine Comedy (1965)
Adventures of the Warsaw Bear (1958)
There is No End to the Great War (1959)
Little Orphan Mary and the Dwarves (1957)
Forefathers’ Eve (1963)
Annika Mikołajko-Osman (soprano)
Jacek Wróbel (baritone)
Cracow Singers
Polish Radio Choir
Beethoven Academy Orchestra/Maciej Tworek
rec. 2020, S-3 Studio of Polish Television TVP Cracow, Poland & Church of the Resurrection in Katowice, Poland
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
DUX 1864 [80]
Although Krzysztof Penderecki owed his international fame to cinema, which permitted him to make inroads with audiences who normally recoil at anything labeled “classical,” none of the works that the medium made famous were expressly composed for it. Not that he was a slouch, because in his early maturity he composed a sizable body of incidental music for feature films, documentaries, cartoons, and stage productions. They all not only confirm the composer’s mastery, but also his stylistic versatility; the latter a valuable quality in communist Poland where artists, as elsewhere in the former Eastern Bloc, were encouraged to fulfill their civic duty to be responsive to the needs of their audience.
Dux offers on this album, the second volume in their ongoing The Musical Trace of Krakow series, a well-filled selection of Penderecki’s music for stage and screen. The good-natured diatonicism of his scores for Tom Thumb and the Wolf, Adventures of the Warsaw Bear, and Little Orphan Mary and the Dwarves—all three composed for various puppet theatres in Poland—are like nothing else in the composer’s mature work. Harmonically and rhythmically straightforward, they tartly subvert the salon and folk music tropes they use as inspiration; such as in the sentimental waltz for Tom Thumb and the Wolf, which keeps tripping itself up on the same “wrong” note. The most ambitious of these is the music for Little Orphan Mary and the Dwarves, composed in 1957. Scored for a small group of winds, augmented by piano and percussion, it contains some very attractive music, the best of which ought to be compiled into a suite. Penderecki deftly shows his prowess here for caricature and skillful manipulations of instrumental color. Strutting little marches, polkas, and waltzes jostle the ear, spiked with just enough harmonic twists and instrumental tanginess to captivate listeners, whether young or experienced.
The final puppet theatre score on this album, A Tale of Five Brothers, comes from a decade later. Scored for wordless choir acapella, its style is a bit like Old Slavonic chant by way of Gesualdo and Schnittke. Passages of solemn beauty alternate with the sinister, spliced together by transitions that sound as if the ink were slipping off the score.
Penderecki’s incidental music for the play Forefathers’ Eve, one of his first scores for serious theatre, inhabits a similar universe, this time evoking the sound of Gregorian chant. A later score for the stage, The Undivine Comedy, sounds more characteristically Pendereckian, forecasting his opera The Devils of Loudon, especially its first act. Unsurprisingly, both works share similar themes, including exploring aspects of morality, as well as the clash of good and evil, and how these play out in the totalitarian state. Tone clusters lunge at the listener, choral glissandi evoke howling, while webs of harmonium chords hang static in the air, punctuated by the thumping of tom-toms and timpani. It is brilliant, powerful, almost visceral music.
The sole film score, for the 1959 documentary-drama There is No End to the Great War, is an eclectic and acerbic work for chamber ensemble that would not sound out of place in the music William Lava composed for the late Looney Tunes shorts.
Performances by the Beethoven Academy Orchestra conducted by Maciej Tworek are sprightly and impeccably characterized, with their winds sounding delectably fruity. Soprano Annika Mikołajko-Osman and baritone Jacek Wróbe sound eager to dig into their brief turns in Tom Thumb and the Wolf, though one wished the former curbed her tendency to croon.
It is a pity that such a fine production is let down by its booklet. Even though Magdalena Figzał-Janikowska’s liner notes leave one wishing she had described in greater detail the plays and films Penderecki’s music was composed for, this can be overlooked. The lack of sung texts and translations for Tom Thumb and the Wolf, however, are truly regrettable. It would have also been helpful had the numbers for each of these incidental scores been individually tracked, rather than lumped together in a single track.
Despite these flaws, this Dux collection makes for rewarding listening. Those who know Penderecki only from his thorny, avant-garde Romanticism of the 1960s and early 1970s may be in for a pleasant surprise.
Néstor Castiglione
