Customer Reviews

Krzysztof Penderecki: Concerto for Violin & Orchestra No. 2 "Metamorphosen" (1992-95) / Béla Bartók: Sonata for Violin & Piano No. 2, Sz 76 (1922) - Anne-Sophie Mutter / London Symphony Orchestra / Krzysztof Penderecki / Lambert Orkis

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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I'm no expert on classical music (I'm basically a jazz fan), but I know what I like, as they say. Penderecki's second violin concerto--Metamorphosen--is my very favorite piece of classical music. Penderecki wrote it for, and dedicated it to, the performing violinist, Anne-Sophie Mutter. It is a piece in six movements, with a well-defined opening theme which is repeated in the final movement. Overall, the piece is intense but at once hauntingly beautiful. I would not say that you can sing along, but almost. Mutter, the violinist, writes in the liner notes that the piece ends "with a scene of burial, in which the soul triumphs over the body and soars aloft to heaven." Indeed! I had listened to Penderecki before (the Hiroshima composition), but this piece is much different. Mutter's violin is intimate, almost fragile, in the high registers, yet insistent in the lower. The orchestra is dialogic even supportive, but not overwhelming. A remarkable composition that comes alive by means of an incredible performance.

Though I somehow always think of Penderecki as a composer of vocal works, here his voice is the violin, in one of the most astounding pieces for the instrument I have ever heard. It has mystery, drama, and intense beauty, and rather than six separate movements, it stretches from mood to mood, segueing into them. My favorite is the transition from the fifth to the sixth, with the orchestra sounding more like the rumblings of nature than instruments.
The concerto was dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter, who was the soloist in the enthusiastically received first performance in 1995. The extreme difficulty of the concerto must be daunting for a violinist, but Mutter's technical mastery equals her sensitivity and artistry. Of special note is the 5th movement cadenza, which is enthralling.
Like most Penderecki works, this is a composition that gets better with every hearing; one has to get to know this piece, for it to reveal the full magnificence of its soul.

The Bartok Sonata # 2 takes us into far different territory: Angular, harsh and energized, it's a whirl of virtuoso technique and dynamic sound. Lambert Orkis on piano counterbalances Mutter's violin, producing varied tones and rhythms.
Anne-Sophie Mutter has been an award-winning soloist with major world orchestras since her teens, making her Berlin debut with Karajan and the Philharmonic when she was only 15, and her wide range of repertoire is impressive. Penderecki writes of her in the liner notes, that he was inspired by her "...sublime art of interpretation". The Penderecki was recorded in 1997, the Bartok in '95. The sound is excellent and total playing time is 58'01

Being a young composer and pianist I have spent the last 10 years of my life studying scores and recordings by various known and unknown composers of the 20th Century. Discovering the Mutter recording of Penderecki's 2nd Violin Concerto was the pinnacle of my treasure hunting! After hearing Penderecki's intensely moving composition, "The Polish Requim", I thought their would be no space left for maturity in this composer, Im glad I was wrong. The Penderecki is by far the greatest 20th Century work for violin and orchestra if not the greatest overall violin concerto ever written. The intesity in mood, character, melody, harmony (which tends to be intensely hyper-romantic as well as modern), dynamic range, technical demand, counterpoint and orchestration are unsurpassed in this composition. Mutter is like a window to the music, her sense of interpertation, spiritual expression and understanding is so dramatic and intense that it becomes shocking at times! The 2nd violin concerto titled "Metamorphoses" is aptly named for the listener truly finds him or herself on an emotionally and spiritually induced celestial journey through the stars and heavens! Mutters technical abilities are extremely prominent through the use of extreme accuracy in intonation, extreme ranges in dynamics as well as use of harmonics to achieve extreme overall range, multiple stops which really sound like multiple violinists due to sheer accuracy and expression, as well as use of special effects so tastefully and naturally done that the listener is left with the sense of true astonishment! This recording is one of the most emotionally moving pieces in classical music history. EXTREMELY recommended to all classical music lovers especeially those of you have not found 20th century classical music appealling, this recording will surely change your mind!

I was familiar with some of Penderecki's earlier works of which were much more atonal than the later - he made a change in the 1970's. I quote from a reviewer (Nicholas Reyland) who describes Penderecki's later music as "The music firmly posits itself in a tradition stretching from Brahms through Bruckner, Mahler, Wagner and Sibelius to Shostakovich, and now to Penderecki."

I am blown away by this composition and performance. I am still digesting the performance, but it is colorful, tragic, meaningful, and so on. Penderecki uses clearly recognizable themes througout the composition that are interesting (for me) to follow. The performance by Mutter is intesley passionate, soulful and masterful. The composition has much color and drama.

I highly recommend this recording!

For most musicians, "interpreting" a given works means doing their best to realize faithfully what the composer has written out in his score: pitches, but also time signatures, rhythms, tempos, articulation, dynamics, expression marks. Experience shows that this "subservient" attitude can result in vastly different interpretations, as there can be many different understandings of and approaches to many of those parameters, and especially tempo, dynamics, articulation and timbre.

But apparently Miss Mutter doesn't fight in that category. The time signatures and pulses indicated by Bartok seem of no great importance to her, just general indications that can be approached with much freedom. In the first movement she constantly twists and jerks the tempo and not one bar seems to retain its basic pulse. Granted it is nothing you are likely to notice without a score, and it is probably best to approach this recording without one - best way not to notice that Mutter gets so carried away that she falls out of sync at 6:30 in the first movement. As I cannot imagine, in a musician of Miss Mutter's artistry and experience, that this is the result of an inability to clearly sort out Bartok's ever changing meters and rhythms - admittedly more complex than those written by Mozart and even by Brahms, but nothing susceptible of scaring off an accomplished instrumentalist at the dawn of the 3rd Millenium, some 70 years after completion of the composition - I must conclude that it is an interpretive choice on her part, presumably with the intent of pressing the last drop of expression out of the piece - as if it didn't contain enough on its own. Depending on one's mindset, one may consider it a wonderful interpretive freedom and inventiveness - or just reject it as fussiness and a blamable lack of simplicity. As no doubt the reader will have understood, I count myself in the second category, and it is a feature of Miss Mutter's playing that I have had other occasions to remark: she seems to strive so hard at adding her own new personal slant to the music she plays rather than letting it, so to speak, play for itself. No one would say that Gidon Kremer is a lesser artistic individuality than Anne-Sophie Mutter, yet in Kremer's recording of Bartok's 2nd Sonata, interpretive imagination is plentiful but never comes at the expense of exactness and rigor (Enescu: Impressions d'Enfance; Schulhoff, Bartok: Violin Sonatas). Granted, not everything deserves criticism, and much calls for plaudits. Miss Mutter produces wonderful sounds, mesmerizing glissandos, and pianist Lambert Orkis proves himself an admirable partner, with many peculiarities of staccato articulation whose ear-catching power derive precisely from the extent they stray from tradition - mind you, not a Mahler-scorned "Schlämperei"-tradition that is only ossified bad habits, but the one established by the composer himself in his seminal live recording at the Library of Congress in 1940 with Josef Szigeti (Beethoven, Debussy: Sonatas; Bartok: Rhapsody / Szigeti, Bartok), and pursued by such eminent partners as Isaac Stern and Alexander Zakin (Bartók: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2; Webern: 4 Pieces, Op. 7). Mutter and Orkis' second movement is truly excellent, very dynamic and highly expressive (try the passage starting at 3:24 - never since Szigeti and Bartok have I heard it so clown-like).

In the late 1970s Penderecki, who in the Sixties and Seventies had spearheaded the Polish and European modernist trend with works that were both on the cutting edge in their orchestral language and of great power and drama, turned conservative, if not reactionary. That new , neo-Romantic style was heralded by such works as the First Violin Concerto (1976-7, dedicated to IsaacStern), the Polish Requiem (1980-4), the Second Symphony "Christmas" (1980), the Second Cello Concerto (1982). The Second Violin Concerto, "Metamorphoses" (or "Metamorphosen" as it is called in German) was written for Anne-Sophie Mutter and completed in 1995. It can be described as "brooding and dramatic" - a description which seems to fit just about every work I've heard that Penderecki composed in this new style of his - although the Concerto's language and material offers more rewards than the trite gestures of the 2nd Symphony (see my review of Penderecki: Symphony No. 2 "Christmas Symphony" / Bruzdowicz: Concerto for Double-Bass, Concerto for Violin). The soloist is entrusted with lines that are in turn powerfully dramatic, broodingly lyrical and zanily whimsical, and most of the time highly virtuosic. Mutter plays them with unfailing beauty of tone. Still the piece is quite predictable, conservative in its musical language, not very demanding (at least for those attuned to contemporary classical music) and often verging on the bombastic - at times it sounds like Penderecki is more than ready to write music for the next Peter Jackson or George Lucas film. This kind of music, when it was written in the late 50s to 70s, came as a refreshing counterpoint to the more radical Darmstadt-Donaueschingen style then prevalent in the avant-garde circles: one thinks of Hartmann's "Concerto Funèbre", for instance - actually written as early as 1939, and revised in the fifties - of which there exists a Penderecki-conducted recording: Karl Amadeus Hartmann / Karol Szymanowski: Violin Concertos - Christiane Edinger / Kattowice Radio Symphony Orchestra / Krzysztof Penderecki. But written now, what is it a counterpoint to? To John Adams lush tonal repetitive harmonies? To more Big and Bombastic neo-Romantic statements of the same ilk, as they seem to be flooding these days? I personally don't find it very memorable. But of course, those who have enjoyed some of Penderecki's later compositions will love it.

Unlike his immensely dissonant works like the "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" this work is quite pleasant and melodic. It is not however to be confused with easy listening. The work isn't accessible per se, but it certainly isn't unaccessible either. Let's just say that it is a splendid piece of music that will require a little effort on the listener's part, but hey, anybody reading this review is probably willing to put in the work. I think you'll enjoy it greatly. Mutter's playing is quite notable too.

"Metamorphoses" is a major work in the tragic mode by the renowned Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, written for and dedicated to Ann-Sophie Mutter, who performs it here with the London Symphony Orchestra, Penderecki himself conducting. If you enjoy the dark music of Dmitri Shostakovich, you are sure to appreciate this violin concerto. A central element is an ominous, descending orchestral theme which sounds very much like the opening themes of DSCH's Symphonies 5 and 8. Penderecki doesn't follow the common pattern of setting the orchestra against the solo protagonist, though -- violin and orchestra are more often complementary than contradictory. I find this work to be consistently riveting and engaging, and the virtuosic violin playing is stunning. (Penderecki's concerto for Mutter follows by several years the concertos written for her by Witold Lutoslawski -- "Partita" and "Chain 2." I find "Metamorphoses" to be a much more compelling, dramatic work.)

After the tense, dark drama of "Metamorphoses," Bartok's "Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2" is a complete change of pace. It is a far brighter, sunnier work, and while excellent in its own right, I don't often listen to it following the concerto -- the mood shift just doesn't work.

A note on the name "Metamorphoses" -- that is how it is spelled in the liner notes, and on the spine of the disc. I'm not sure how or why it came to be spelled "Metamorphosen" on the front cover -- the German plural, perhaps?

Those unfamiliar with Krzysztof's work will take this as a very good modern composer writing vibrant and exciting orchestral music for Violin solo and orchestra. Those familiar with the microtonal and extended technique work of the Dies Ire and "Religious" works will find this album an Immense departure from that style. The composer shows great compassion and sensitivity to the conducting, as well as a sheer volatility of timbre. A beautiful album.

Well, what can you say about this recording other than it was fantastic. No doubt about it, this was a flawless recording. I have been listening to Penderecki's works no for some time, and this is one of the best. This isn't just because of his excellent writing for the solo violin, but the way he blends the violin with the orchestra. Unlike a lot of violin concertos, which sole purpose is to show off the skills of player, and secondly to make good music (so it seems), this recording is more like just a symphonic work with a featured violin solo, as a wind or brass instrument would have solos. In other words, the orchestra is not merely a background and support group, but instread is an entity in itself, that, at times, is the most important unit, with the violin accompanying. This a masterpiece of new music, which deserves more credit than it as gotten already. I highly recommend it, not only to violinists, but to those who appreciate great music.