Customer Reviews

Panufnik: Symphony No. 9 (Sinfonia della Speranza); Piano Concerto

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Panufnik's music is modern, but not aggressively so. It isn't Boulez, Xenakis, Carter, it isn't the Penderecki from the 1960s and early 1970s, let alone Ferneyhough. Panufnik's music is bound in tradition (the motoric and nervous scherzo that forms the Symphony's middle section harks back to a tradition originating in the one from Beethoven's 9th, and exemplified by Bruckner, Walton (in his 1st Symphony), Britten (in the Sinfonia da Requiem for instance), Tippett, Simpson), but it isn't backward-looking either: it isn'the music of, say, David Diamond or of the later Penderecki. I'd rather put Panufnik in a broad category including composers like Robert Simpson, William Schuman, Alan Pettersson. I wouldn't say that Panufnik's personal mixture of tradition and modernism attains results as original and personal as Lutoslawski's or Dutilleux', but his music is highly dramatic, effective and enjoyable, and the two works contained on this disc are two good examples.

This Catalyst CD is the welcome reissue of a Conifer recording from 1991 (Andrzej Panufnik: Symphony No. 9 / Piano Concerto), but unfortunately the liner notes of the reissue are very disappointing, giving only general considerations on Panufnik and his compositional attitude but very scanty on the specifics of these two works. The original Conifer had fascinating explanations by the composer himself, including a diagram of the Symphony's highly elaborate rainbow-shaped architecture. Playing by ear the lengthy (40+ minutes) 9th Symphony (1986/90) consists of long adagio sections, some of great dramatic impact and high-octane intensity, others more mysterious and mystic, framing a motoric, nervous, sardonic, brassy scherzo (16: 25 to 23:23), all playing without break. These long adagio sections may be somewhat too long-drawn for their basic material, but they do elicit a mood of lulled fascination. On Catalyst as well as on Conifer the Symphony has only one cue point, which is ridiculous.

Dating as it does from 25 years before the Symphony (1962 - it was revised in 1982), I half-expected the Concerto to be a step back stylistically - but it isn't really. The nervous, pounding and busy (and also short: 4:20) first movement and the violent and motoric framing sections of the finale announce the Symphony's scherzo, while the sparse and mysterious instrumental filigree of the central slow movement (brooding mood, sparse textures, minimal events) and the finale's middle section (an adagio rising to an intense climax announcing the return of the motoric music) are very much in the same mood as the Symphony's framing adagios. They also establish a nice bridge to the composer's earlier compositions, as his 1947 Nocturn (Andrzej Panufnik: Nocturn / Rhapsody / Symphony 2). The Concerto is not extraordinarily original, but very pleasant. Peter Mennin's Piano Concerto comes to mind.

These composer-conducted recordings were made a few months before Panufnik's death. Needless to say, they are authoritative. But the original liner notes make the original Conifer release preferable if you can find it at affordable prices.