Krystof Penderecki Talks about the Polish Requiem by Philip Anson
/ October 5, 2006
Polish composer Krystof Penderecki
[pronounced Pen-der-ET-skee] returns to Montreal on April 8 to conduct
the North American premiere of the complete version (including the recently
composed “Sanctus”) of his massive Polish Requiem. Who better
to lead the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Chorus than the composer
himself, who has conducted over 100 performances of his Requiem
around the world? La Scena Musicale
spoke with Maestro Penderecki about the Polish Requiem last October
in New York.
We met in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel
where the Maestro was staying with his wife. At 65, Krystof Penderecki
looks every inch the well-tailored Mitteleuropean cultural icon, with
heavily accented speech, white goatee, and an owlish professorial gaze.
He is a charming and well practiced interviewee, kindly answering questions
he has probably heard a hundred times before.
Penderecki explains that the Polish
Requiem was written in stages over a period of several years, like
all of his large compositions. “That is my method. I always seek the
form first. That is the most important thing. Then I sketch in details,
themes, motifs and development. You can see the complete form better
this way than if you start at the beginning and write through to the
end.” Penderecki has no problem maintaining the creative impulse over
months and years. On the contrary, he finds that his compositions “crystallize”
over time.
The Polish Requiem, which Penderecki
dedicated to his country’s sufferings, grew from a number of originally
unrelated occasional pieces and commissions. It began back in 1980 when
Solidarity leader Lech Walesa commissioned a piece for the unveiling
of a monument to the victims of the Gdansk uprising. Penderecki recalls,
“Just one month before the unveiling I still had not found the right
text to inspire me. I was conducting in Baden-Baden when I came across
a score of Verdi’s Requiem. The “Lacrimosa” seemed the
perfect text and I wrote it in one month.” Was he influenced by Verdi’s
music? “Of course not!”
In 1981 Penderecki’s friend Cardinal
Wyszynski died. “I got the news in the morning and I wrote the “Agnus
Dei” by that afternoon.” The “Dies irae” was commissioned in
1984 to commemorate the Polish resistance to Nazism. And so Penderecki’s
unorthodox mass for the dead came into being. He even incorporated an
old Polish hymn tune in the “Recordare, Jesu pie”, while omitting
parts of the “Offertorium” and adding a big “Finale: Libera Animus”
recapitulating all the themes. The optimistic “Finale” promises
an end to Poland’s suffering. “Those were troubled times, times
of change, but we felt that things had to get better,” the composer
recalls. The complete Polish Requiem (1984 version) was premiered
by Mstislav Rostropovich in Stuttgart on September 28, 1984, and recorded
for Deutsche Grammophon. For the 1993 Penderecki Festival in Stockholm
on the composer’s 50th birthday he wrote a new “Sanctus”. The
1995 Chandos recording of the complete 1993 Requiem remains definitive.
Though born a Roman Catholic, Penderecki
wouldn’t call his Requiem religious music. “In the past I
have used Hebrew and Russian Orthodox Church music but my main inspiration
is the solid German 19th-century symphonic tradition and Renaissance
polyphony.” Despite the historical and patriotic significance of the
Polish Requiem, Penderecki denies it is a political piece. “I
don’t write political music. Political music is immediately obsolete.
My Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima
remains important because it is abstract music. The Requiem is
dedicated to certain people and events, but the music has a broader
significance.”
Stylistically the Polish Requiem
bears little relation to Penderecki’s wild years of innovation in
the 1960s. “My Threnody is still avantgarde, but the age of
experimentation is over. We discovered everything!”
The Requiem reflects Penderecki’s
new pluralism. Audiences will hear passages of pure tonality as well
as noisy sound clusters and polyphonic atonal chromaticism. The score
calls for a big orchestra with quadrupled winds, six horns, heavy percussion,
mixed chorus and four soloists. Penderecki will bring several eastern
European soloists who have sung the Requiem before.
MSO Choirmaster Iwan Edwards, who has
never conducted a work by Penderecki, calls the Requiem one of
the most difficult pieces his choir has ever tackled. “Technically
it is very challenging because of the dissonances, the division of voices
and the rhythm. When the choir members first saw the score they were
a bit unhappy but now they are coming to appreciate it. The Requiem
is frighteningly expressive and emotional but also melodic and accessible.”
Penderecki is confident that the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Choir
are up to the challenge: “I can only perform my Requiem with
a really excellent orchestra and chorus. From my previous conducting
experience in Montreal I know they are perfectly capable.” n |