Now spinning here:
Penderecki Orchestral Works.
Passacaglia and Rondo, Christmas Eve, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Anaklasis
- my purchase of which was the result of an interesting (if slightly bumpy!) thread at TOP the other day discussing the merits and otherwise of Brahms and Penderecki.
I found the Threnody, (which as I understand it was dedicated to the victims of Hiroshima after he had written it, rather than specifically being a response to the horrors of that event) an extraordinarily striking and strong piece.
It is a strange thing but in all the clusters of tones and clatterings of bows and wooden casings one hears in this music, I find an incredible clarity. Both of sound and of feeling. One of the things that excites me about some 'dissonant' music, is that the contrasts and nuances of texture etc. seem so well defined, in a way that makes it seem almost similar to baroque/medieval music at times.
Why a 'pile' of microtonal sounds can seem to have a much clearer texture, or effect, than say a big 'romantic' chord, I'm not sure - perhaps in one way I am hearing the cluster as a single tone really. For example if I heard a crowd of ants scurrying over a metal-casing in steel-capped stilettos (a common problem round our way
) or a hundred birds all chirping a different note simultaneously, that would probably come across to me as very vivid and uncluttered sound in one way, despite the tangle of noises, and one of the thrills for me of being in the kind of sound world that
Threnody and also
De Natura Sonoris (not on this disc) provide is that such things
can almost be heard. These new territories of sound and their possibilities of expressivity are one of the wonders of new music to me and, in the case of Threnody, incredibly and memorably desolate too.
I didn't really get into the two pieces on the cd in his later style after listening to Anaklasis and Threnody, I may do at another time, but to me the Threnody seemed by far the strongest piece.
