Customer Reviews

Krzysztof Penderecki: Te Deum

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Although the works on this CD are disparate, and from widely separated phases in the great composer's career, they were clearly chosen to provide a bouquet of Penderecki's most accessible shorter compositions.

The Te Deum is a magnificent example of Penderecki's liturgical music, full of power and glory. Secular listeners sometimes complain that Penderecki's religious music is "dark" and "not exactly cheery;" but it should be noted that for this deeply religious composer, being in the presence of God is not the sentimental glow of a religious card, but an experience filled with overwhelming, unearthly sensations of awe akin to terror.

This holds true for Polymorphia, which dates from the period when the composer declared, "I want to liberate sound beyond all tradition." This is a seminal work which everybody ought to listen to at least once in a concert hall, rather than as the backdrop to a horror film.

The beautiful Hymne opens other and more rarefied vistas, and the Chaconne is a seductive neoclassical work unlikely to challenge even the most conservative listener.

I think that many people are going to find this an excellent introduction to the thrilling, terrifying, sublime world of Penderecki. Nobody will regret buying it.

Penderecki's Te Deum was written in 1979, some 15 years after the St. Luke Passion, and just a year before the Polish Requiem. It greatly resembles the most exciting moments of the Polish Requiem, compacted into about 35 minutes. It is full of action, very interesting, and very exciting.

The other two major works on this CD are actually even better. The Hymne is stunningly beautiful, and Polymorphia, from Penderecki's early avant-garde period, is simply incredible in its chaos. It deserves to be just as well known as the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.

I have always had a fascination with 20th-Century Classical Music. Ever since I first discovered Igor Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring)," I wanted to go further into this particular era. Now, composers like Stravinsky, Debussy, Respighi, Holst, Glass, Tavener, Ligeti, Kodaly, and Vaughan Williams have become some of my favorites of all time. I'm always enthralled whenever I hear works from the eras of Impressionism, Minimalism, and Avant-garde. Krzysztof Penderecki, on the other hand, was someone that I had overlooked for a brief period of time, and now that I have finally had the chance to listen to his St. Luke's Passion for the first time, I have officially become an admirer.

Penderecki's own music can be quite diverse: he has created avant-garde works as well as neo-romantic. Te Deum, a 35+ minute choral work leans more toward latter rather than former. Some of the atonal techniques remain, but the expressions are purely neo-romantic. Same goes for Hymne an den heiligen Daniel, but this one is a bit more tonal than Te Deum. It is also more gently meditative, sounding more like a composition from American composer Morten Lauridsen. Nonetheless, these are two astonishing works from Penderecki, and they prove that he can do more than just the St. Luke Passion.

If you have seen the movie, "The Shining," then you might recognize Polymorphia right away. It's an 11-minute work from the composer's avant-garde period, and it requires a large handful of strings. Filled with plucking and clanking and various other effects, it's something that you would typically hear in a horror film. As for Chaconne, this could very well be an excellent introduction to the composer's Polish Requiem, in which this later became a part of. This 7-minute work was performed as a tribute to Pope John Paul II, who died back in April of 2005.

The performances.....well, what can I say? Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra have done a spectacular job with all four works featured here on this Naxos CD. The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir is a powerful delight for the ears with Te Deum & Hymne. The soloists for Te Deum have the right voices for this sort of choral work. Finally, the sound quality is unbelievably outstanding for its budget price.

If you are currently fascinated with Penderecki's work, buy this CD. If you have never heard of Penderecki and would like to explore into his world of music, then buy this CD. If you are interested in 20th Century Classical Music in general, then buy this CD. You'll be amazed at the avant-garde & neo-romantic qualities of these compositions.

Grade: A


NOTE: The quote for the title of this review is from the liner notes to this CD.

Like all of Penderecki's music, everything here is very "serious." So if you're looking for a pick-me-up, don't look here. Even the Te Deum, which is supposed to be a hymn of praise, isn't exactly cheery.

Fortunately, even though the music is very solemn, it is all very well done. Like the St. Luke's Passion, the Polish accents of the choirs come through pretty thickly when they sing in Latin in the first 2 works, but the intonation of the singing and orchestra performances are top notch. So it's really not a big deal. Latin's a dead language -- how is it really supposed to sound, anyway? I usually don't consider his church works in general to be his strongest because they can get tedious, but these works' relative brevity especially when compared to his Passion and Requiem make them better than most.

I think the work that really steals the show here is Polymorphia. It has been featured in horror movies, and it does have a creepy feel to it at first -- meanacing rumbling in the lower strings, upper pizzicato, glissandi, col legno, and other unusual techniques. The whole work unfolds in waves and the different sections flow much better than in Threnody; Polymorphia struck me immediately as a masterpiece and is arguably Penderecki's finest work from his avant-garde period. It also doesn't hurt that the Warsaw Philharmonic sounds much more polished on this CD than the Katowice Radio Orchestra did on earlier CDs with other early works (Threnody, De Natura Sonoris II, Fluoresences). It is astounding to think he wrote this work at the age of 28.

The Chaconne for strings ends the disc. It's an addition to the Polish Requiem after Pope John Paul II died. It's pleasant enough and very richly scored (Penderecki truly plasters the "neo-Romantic" label on all his new works), but coming right after Polymorphia, it really sounds like an afterthought.

This is probably the best CD of Naxos's Penderecki set to date. Don't miss it!