Penderecki, Dvořák

Sinfonia Varsovia’s new album on Warner Classics is a musical birthday gift for Maestro Krzysztof Penderecki – the orchestra’s artistic director. On the album, he conducts Antonín Dvořák’s heroic and elegiac Symphony No. 7 in D Minor Op. 70 (1885), as well as his own Symphony No. 2 Christmas Symphony (1980).

“The Polish premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Symphony No. 2 (commissioned by Zubin Mehta and first performed in May 1980 by the New York Philharmonic), which took place during the 1981 “Warsaw Autumn” – caused some dismay among both the audience and critics. Here was a composer who in the early years of his career was considered an icon of the Polish and international avant-garde – and presented a work pervasively looking to the past, close to the traditional (though significantly extended) tonality, and most of all – abounding in an exuberant neo-Romantic type of expression.” (Piotr Maculewicz)

By juxtaposing Penderecki’s Symphony No. 2 “Christmas Symphony” with Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D Minor on this album, the artists have come up with a fascinating record of the evolution of music composition in the Slavic world. Both Penderecki and Dvořák consciously draw on the heritage of their own national music, while engaging at the same time in a creative dialogue with the achievements of modernity. This is why their music has extraordinary culture-building quality and value, as well as a direct emotional impact on the audience.