Deemed an iconic figure in the struggle for freedom behind the Iron Curtain from the 1960s until the fall of the Wall and a leading composer in the international landscape of avant-garde classical music, Krzysztof Penderecki makes his first Barbican appearance in over 12 years. He joins an unlikely musical partner - by Radiohead guitarist and radical innovator Jonny Greenwood - for an outstanding collaboration that celebrates the most forward-thinking orchestral music of the past fifty years.
The two composers first performed together in September of 2011 as part of the European Culture Congress in Wrocław, produced by the National Audiovisual Institute. The experiment with joining together classical masterworks of the last century with the most innovative music of the present proved a fruitful gamble, with London’s Independent calling Penderecki "Poland’s godfather of the musical avant-garde" and Greenwood "the doyen of English art-pop", ultimately describing their concert as "rapturously received".
This special concert - which is accompanied by a striking contemporary video and lighting design - celebrates the strong influence Penderecki's music has had on Greenwood's compositional career, featuring two pieces from the Polish master's avant-garde period - Polymorphia and Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima - which inspired Greenwood to write the other two pieces performed tonight, Popcorn Superhet Receiver and 48 Responses to Polymorphia. A recording of these pieces was released as an album by Nonesuch Records in early March.
Greenwood has often said he looks to Penderecki as an icon and mentor, drawing a great deal of inspiration from his music. In an interview with Tomasz Handzlik for the online magazine biweekly.pl, he explains,
This piece by Penderecki ends with a big block of white noise created by 2 octaves of quartertones (48 individual notes each half a semi-tone apart). I took this as a starting point, treating this as a solid three-dimentional white cube, like plaster or stone – something that could have shapes carved out of it.
Andy Gill of The Independent has given the album a glowing review, writing that
Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima establishes the tone, its shrill discords and furtive rustlings furnishing a prickly emotional patina, in which the shifts from dissonance to consonance wield a powerful impact. Similarly smeared glissandi characterise Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver. The melancholy mood pervades throughout, into the itchy, insect flurries of Penderecki's Polymorphia, for 48 strings, and Greenwood's 48 Responses To Polymorphia.
The concert in London has been produced by the Barbican in association with the Polish Cultural Institute in London, The National Audiovisual Institute in Warsaw and Event-factory s.c. The event also serves as the ceremonial closing gala for the 10th Kinoteka Polish Film Festival. It takes place on the 22nd of March at 8:00 pm at Barbican Hall at the Barbican Centre.
Programme:
Krzysztof Penderecki, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960-61)
Jonny Greenwood, Popcorn Superhet Receiver* (2005)
Krzysztof Penderecki, Polymorphia (1961)
Jonny Greenwood, 48 Responses to Polymorphia* (2011)
Artists:
AUKSO Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy
Krzysztof Penderecki conductor
Marek Moś conductor*
Grzegorz Barszczewski lighting design
Marcin Bania and Maciej Malinowski video
Barbican Hall
Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London EC2Y 8DS
www.barbican.org.uk
Source: Polish Cultural Institute in London
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Listen to the full album on NPR Radio at www.npr.org