This release draws on live London Philharmonic Orchestra recorded performances from 2013 and 2015, all of them, except for that of the Violin Concerto No. 1, conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki, the composer of all four works. It pairs a Penderecki classic, the hair-raising Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960) with three newer works: the Violin Concerto No. 1, the Adagio for Strings (a transcription of the slow movement of the Symphony No. 3), and the Horn Concerto of 2008. While it's true that composers don't necessarily make the best conductors of their works, these are exceptionally compelling performances. Penderecki's career, even according to his own testimony, is conventionally divided into avant-garde and neo-Romantic phases, but what the composer-conductor shows here, is that the division isn't as thorough as it may seem. The Horn Concerto, not a commonly played piece, contains all of the blocks of sound and the structural use of texture that earlier Penderecki works do, and, of course, the grim pictorial quality of the "avant-garde" Threnody has an expressive Romantic aesthetic. All of these works get at another aspect of why Penderecki remains one of the most frequently played contemporary composers: he gives orchestral players a great deal to do, and they consequently play his music enthusiastically. As good a place as any to start with the more recent Penderecki.
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