"The results are ear-tingling," says NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas of the record. "What we hear on this album is a meeting of two artistic visionaries connected in a real dialogue, the decades separating their work and their chronological ages all but collapsed and deflated". The US-based National Public Radio has hosted the tracks on streaming on its Internet radio service as part of the First Listen series.
The two musicians couldn't seem more distinct, and yet they have embarked on a highly creative journey of performance and interpretation of some of Penderecki's most powerful works of the past five decades. The result of their efforts is Krzysztof Penderecki And Jonny Greenwood - an album of intense resonance, emotion and musical technique.
The two composers first performed the works that were to be found on the album in September of 2011 as part of the European Culture Congress in Wrocław, together with Aphex Twin. 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".
The concert presented two works from the 1960s, including the highly emotional Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Polymorphia (for 48 strings). Greenwood, who is better-known as a member of the band Radiohead, was particularly inspired by the latter, using it to create his own composition 48 Responses to Polymorphia. Greenwood also performed his signature piece Popcorn Superhet Receiver, which he included in the award-winning score of There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson in 2008. All the pieces were performed by the Katowice-based AUKSO ensemble, led by Marek Moś. Filip Berkowicz, artistic director of the Sacrum Profanum, Misteria Paschalia, and Opera Rara festivals and curator of the Penderecki concerts in Wrocław, took on the role of producer for the album when it was clear that the next step off the stage was into the recording studio.
Philip Berkowicz remarked to Polish Radio that the collaboration made such works as Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Polymorphia "surprisingly revolutionary and current", with its echoes "still to be found in the achievements of contemporary artists of alternative and electronic music. Greenwood has long looked upon Penderecki as an icon, as he avers in an interview with The Guardian's Tom Service. "His pieces make such wonderful sounds. And it is a beautiful experience to hear them live". He takes on accusations that Penderecki's work can for some sound dissonant or even painful, explaining that in the music hall that dissonance is revealed in all its complexity. What he enjoys most of all is the more traditional aspects of the performance - with all his experience with digital manipulation, he gets his kicks from "people making music by taking these instruments out of boxes and playing them. That's a very bizarre and modern thing". And precisely the sort of thing Penderecki is so very adept at.
As for Penderecki, in the same interview he expresses delight and gratitude for Greenwood's introducing his music to a new generation. He himself is no stranger to avant-garde forms of music, having always pushed the envelope in his own career, reaching towards electronic techniques and other devices to create new, contemporary sounds. His sound is indeed complex, full of tumult and pain, with a sometimes flash of harmony that soothes everything back into position.
Andy Gill of The Independent writes 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.
NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas asks "How do you capture the energy - both positive and negative - of the past 50 years by using instruments perfected in the 18th century and made of wood, glue and horsehair? It appears that Penderecki and Greenwood together come closest to capturing that energy.
Listen to the full album on NPR at www.npr.org
Purchase the album at www.nonesuch.com
Tracks from the album are to be performed live in concert on the 22nd of March 22, 2012 at the Barbican Centre in London. The Aukso ensemble will perform the works of Krzysztof Penderecki conducted by Penderecki himself, while Marek Moś will conduct the works of Greenwood. The concert comes as part of the 10th Kinoteka Polish Film Festival, which runs between the 8th-22nd of March 2012.
Krzysztof Penderecki And Jonny Greenwood
Release date: 13th of March, 2012
AUKSO Orchestra
Krzysztof Penderecki, conductor (tracks 1, 6)
Marek Moś, conductor (tracks 2-5, 7-15)
Produced by Filip Berkowicz, Michał Merczyński
Associate Producer: Barbara Orzechowska
Recorded, Edited, Mixed and Mastered September/December 2011 at Alvernia Studios, Krakow, Poland
Engineers: Ewa Guziołek-Tubelewicz, Piotr Witkowski
Studio Coordinator: Leszek Iwaniuk
Consultant Engineer: Graeme Stewart
Recorded in association with the National Audiovisual Institute of Poland as part of the European Culture Congress in Wrocław, Poland in September 2011
Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Polymorphia written by Krzysztof Penderecki; Popcorn Superhet Receiver and 48 Responses to Polymorphia written by Jonny Greenwood
Artwork by Shin Katan
Design by Dustin Stanton
Author: Agnieszka Le Nart. Sources: NPR, Nonesuch, The Independent, The Guardian
Thumbnail photo courtesy of the National Audiovisual Institute (NINA)