The many young people who came to the National Philharmonic in Warsaw to hear the final concert of the 2002 Warsaw Autumn festival, however, made their presence known in a rather special and categorical way - by loud booing at the end of Krzysztof Penderecki's Piano Concerto. They must have disliked the fact that this new work of Penderecki's does not have much in common with new music. Interestingly, many grown up listeners did not like it, either, and some critics tore it to pieces.
For indeed the Piano Concerto is a collection of loosely related fragments that bring to mind either other Penderecki works or the music of the more or less prominent composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All this is marked by a romantic or, to be more precise, neo-romantic expressiveness with antiterrorist (!) overtones. This is what Penderecki himself had to say on his Piano Concerto in the Warsaw Autumn 2002 programme booklet:
"I set about writing the 'Concerto' in June and was half-way through it after a few months; it was something like a capriccio. But after 9/11 the conception changed completely. I decided to write a darker, more serious work. I cut out some of the material, went back to a certain point in the structure and added a chorale which first appears roughly at one-third of the music and reappears twice, the last time at the end of the Concerto. It is then played rather slow, allegro moderato, and after a few faster strokes the Concerto ends."
Another addition was that of church bells (played from the tape) and three trumpeters, placed separately, on the upper circle of the National Philharmonic hall.
Penderecki's Piano Concerto has been accused of being "social-realist", a charge made on the grounds of its simple and catchy form and sound. Such characteristics, though, are not only typical of harvesting cantatas and mass songs, and if this work is to be called "social-realist", then the term "liturgical social realism" would be more appropriate. Coined by Stefan Kisielewski, it highlights the non-music connotations, the "blackmailing" of the listener by the composer with the theme of his work that is usually quite distinct from the music itself. It would not really be appropriate to criticize a composition dedicated, say, to the Pope, would it? Kisielewski was right in pointing out the ethical thinness of this practice, although whether he got the wording right is another story.
Piano Concerto was premiered at New York's Carnegie Hall on 9th May 2002 and was presented at the Warsaw Autumn Festival later that year. It will be interesting to follow its career. It might be its simplicity of form and sound and neo-romantic expressiveness which will make it popular with pianists and concert goers.
Prepared by the Polish Music Information Center, Polish Composers' Union, June 2002.
