Jan Krenz was one of the most prominent Polish conductors, but he first debuted as a composer. In 1943 his String Quartet No. 1 was performed at an underground concert in occupied Warsaw. Later on, his brilliant career as a conductor did not allow for intense creative work; there were often long breaks between compositions, until Jan Krenz did the same as... Gustav Mahler: he divided the year in two and dedicated seven months to conducting and the remaining five to composing. As a result, new compositions have appeared on a regular basis since 1982. At the same time, Jan Krenz never stopped conducting, and while he saw himself equally as a conductor and a composer, he was certainly more famous as the former.
Krenz was a highly versatile conductor. This is what he said about himself:
I have sometimes been called a conductor of contemporary music. After all, I have often performed at the Warsaw Autumn, I conducted so many premieres of contemporary works, I am a contemporary composer. Other times, I have been considered an expert on Viennese classics, because I have conducted many classical performances. But a real conductor should have the widest possible repertoire. Karajan was one such conductor. He conducted so many contemporary music concerts! The earlier generation, the generation of Furtwängler, Mitropoulos or Ansermet, had a much narrower repertoire. I am interested in different eras, styles and music sheets. There is nevertheless one period – Monteverdi, later Handel and Bach, i.e. baroque – that I decided to ignore. This is music for real experts. You need to stay in that epoch, it has many secrets. From the Viennese classics, from ‘Papa’ Haydn – as he was once called – through the nineteenth century and the classics of the twentieth century to the present day – this is the repertoire of the contemporary conductor. And it is a wide repertoire. This does not prevent me from focusing on certain composers from time to time, most recently on the works of Mozart and Beethoven. But I am also intrigued by the late Romantics, who took music to extremes. This was first of all Mahler, but also Scriabin, even Rachmaninoff, who I am particularly fond of. I am continually interested in the classics of the twentieth century with Bartók at the front.
Unfortunately, concert halls deal with a rather limited repertoire, without pieces from earlier times, nor contemporary music which is unknown to most of the audience.
At present, about 90 percent of the performed music is from the Classic and Romantic periods. This is an anomaly, it is strange. Such a narrow repertoire closes the listeners’ ears, the fondness for Brahms and Tchaikovsky does not allow them to hear the melody in Lutosławski or Messiaen. I always explain that there is a melody there, it is just different. I hear: ‘No, Szymanowski did not have any melody.’ God, his music is so wonderfully melodic. Different, that’s true – vehement, capricious, uneven, with broad intervals, rich. But we cannot base melody only on seconds and thirds; we must open our audience’s ears!
(quotes from an interview printed in Studio 1993 No. 7)