Thoughtful Program for Pearl Harbor Day

Krzysztof Penderecki

This weekend’s Cincinnati Symphony concerts might have been authorized by an act of Congress.
Friday is “National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day” and according to 36 U.S.C. §129,  “The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.”
The CSO, led by Polish guest conductor/composer Krzysztof Penderecki, will do just that at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Music Hall.
Penderecki, one of the pre-eminent composers of the last half-century, will lead his “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” and the world premiere of his newly revised Piano Concerto, “Resurrection.”  Soloist in the concerto will be Irish pianist Barry Douglas.

Barry Douglas

“Performing “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima’” on the Pearl Harbor anniversary weekend is no accident,” said CSO music director Paavo Järvi.  “There is a deliberate irony with the timing, a historical reflection of sorts.”
As the artistic head of the CSO, Järvi is ultimately responsible for selecting the programs.  He has shown a flair for linking repertoire with history and current events, as shown in CSO concerts he conducted last season coinciding with Election Day and Veterans Day.  The former included Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony, a 1941 composition that landed the composer on the cover of Time magazine and helped spur the war effort against Nazi Germany, and the light-hearted “Slava: A Political Overture,” dedicated to the late Russian cellist and Soviet dissident Mstislav Rostropovich.  Järvi’s Veterans Day program went even deeper, contrasting Mahler’s questing, valedictory Symphony No. 9 with Olivier Messiaen’s unquestioning affirmation of faith, “L’Ascension.”
This week’s Penderecki pairing is equally interesting from a purely aesthetic point of view.  (The CSO has dubbed it “The Bold and the Beautiful.”)  “Threnody,” which vaulted Penderecki to fame in 1960, represents mid-century modernism at its height.  The Piano Concerto, written in response to 911, reflects the return to tonality that took place in classical music in general during the last quarter of the 20^th century.
The concert will open with one of history’s great experimenters, Beethoven, in this case his Symphony No. 4.
“Between my two pieces are actually 40 years, but it sounds like 100 years maybe,” said Penderecki, by phone from Warsaw last week.
The contrast between “Threnody,” where a string orchestra spends nine minutes trying not to sound like one, and the Piano Concerto, a sort of updated late romanticism, could hardly be greater.
Despite their titles, neither work began life with any extra-musical associations.
Composed when he was 26, “Threnody” is actually an abstract work.  Its original title was 8’37” (“Eight Minutes and Thirty-Seven Seconds”) after the famous 4’53” by American composer John Cage.  It has no program.  After rehearsing it, Penderecki recognized its emotional impact and decided it needed a contextual reference.  The victims of Hiroshima (and universal suffering in general) came to mind.  The work won UNESCO’s International Rostrum of Composer’s award in 1961 and remains his most often performed work.  Erich Kunzel conducted the CSO premiere in 1970.
“Threnody” is a “sonic” work not based on the traditional building blocks of melody, harmony and rhythm.  Scored for 52 solo strings, it utilizes the instruments in unconventional ways.  Sound masses and pointillistic layers are organized into segments measured in seconds.  The final 30-second tone cluster has all 52 players on different pitches fading from very loud to very soft, simultaneously moving their bows from the bridge to over the fingerboard.
Even the notation, Penderecki’s own using graphics instead of bar lines and measures, was novelty for its time.  There are symbols for altering pitches, tapping the instrument, bowing behind the bridge and so on.
“I had to invent this notation to be able to write this piece, which actually was influenced by electronic music,” he said.  “I was working in an electronic studio and I wanted to transcribe sounds which were impossible to produce on stringed instruments.  The result is that the string orchestra doesn’t sound like a string orchestra.  It sounds more electronic.”
Some conductors use a stop watch to conduct “Threnody.”  Penderecki does not.  “This piece has changed in my mind many times through many performances.  I like to be free conducting, not just to count seconds.  That would make it impossible to make music.  The proportions remain the same.  I always need time to explain the notation, but it is actually easy to play.  It doesn’t require technique, really. I did it also with children’s orchestra.”
During the late 60s and 70s, Penderecki turned away from severe modernism and began cultivating a more tonally based, neo-romantic style.  He became known for large choral orchestral works like the “St. Luke Passion” and “Polish Requiem,” which also reflected his support of the freedom movement in Poland.  He wrote symphonies and instrumental concertos, but none for piano until 2001, when he began sketching a “Capriccio” for piano and orchestra.  “It was very virtuoso, very light and brio (spirited),” he said.
Then 911 happened.
“It was a shock for me. After that, I was not in the mood to write a capriccio.  I decided the piece had to be serious.  I wrote a chorale and called it “Resurrection’ (without a text).  I started to write it from the beginning.  It is a completely different piece.
Though inspired by 911, the work is universal in its meaning, he said, as “a symbol of life’s victory over death” and the consolation of faith.  The chorale -- not a quotation, but written in the style of 17^th-century Lutheran chorale -- plays a larger role in the new version, which has an expanded finale.
“I decided after the premiere that the piece was too short.”  The Concerto grew by about eight minutes, “an essential change,” he said.  “Now it will be 36 or 37 minutes.  It is not a typical three movement concerto, but a kind of symphony concertante.  The orchestra has equal parts as the piano.”
Douglas, who has played the Piano Concerto all over the world, calls the new ending “rousing” and “almost swing-like.  A truly great concerto just got greater.”
Penderecki, 74, has won the Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition twice (in 1988 and 1998, for his second cello and violin concertos).  He is often asked about his evolution from 1950s avant garde to his current, more accessible style.
“I don’t like to stay in the same musical idiom.  I’m always trying to find something new.  To find something new, you have to go back sometimes and be inspired by it.”
Commentators have remarked that Penderecki’s embrace of more traditional forms coincided with the beginning of his career as a conductor in the 1970s.  Or that his borrowing from the past reflects a conservationist instinct analogous to the arboretum he maintains at his country home near Krakow, where he has cultivated over 1,000 species of trees.
“I like to write music there.  It is a remote place, a big park, about 70 acres.  I am collecting trees almost 35 years (his German great-grandfather was a forester).
Penderecki has guest conducted in Cincinnati several times, most recently in Feb. 2002 (with violinist Julian Rachlin in his Violin Concerto No. 2).  He is currently artistic director of the Sinfonia Varsovia (Polish Chamber Orchestra) and guest conducts all over the world.  As former artistic director of the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, he invited the CSO to perform there in 1998.
“I like this orchestra.  It’s like returning home,” he said.
Guest conductor/composer Krzysztof Penderecki leads the CSO at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Music Hall.  On the program are Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima,” the 2007 version of his Piano Concerto, “Resurrection” (world premiere) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4.  Tickets are $12-$75.25, $10 for students, half-price for seniors, at (513) 381-3300, or visit www.cincinnatisymphony.org.  There will be a pre-concert “Classical Conversation” at 7 p.m. both nights with Penderecki, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music assistant professor of musicology Jeongwon Joe and host Julie Eugenio, CSO manager of artistic planning.

(first published in The Cincinnati Post Dec. 6, 2007)