Krzysztof Penderecki

condition (records/cover): NM / EX+

The composer at the podium, in the studio, with the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki, and soloists Wanda Wiłkomirska (violin) and Siegfried Palm (cello). The two names are not incidental: Wiłkomirska had performed the premiere of the Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra at Donaueschingen in 1967, and Palm had premiered the Cello Concerto No.1 at the Edinburgh Festival in 1972 - the first performers, brought back into the studio to record what they had helped bring into existence. Both works come from the decisive middle period: the Capriccio (1967) is among the most demanding ten minutes in the late-avant-garde violin repertoire - a concentrated spectacle of extended technique in which, as one performer put it, Penderecki attempted "to include every known effect and add a few more." The Cello Concerto No.1 (1967-73), adapted from the earlier Concerto per violino grande, was dedicated to Palm, whose advocacy of the piece shaped both its final form and its reception.

De Natura Sonoris No.2 (1971) completes the program - the second of two orchestral studies in the physics of sound, extending the sonic mass techniques of the early works into a structure of greater length and formal ambition. Conducted by Penderecki with the authority of someone who knew exactly what he had written and what it required. Original Argo pressing.