About Rohatyn, trees and transience

“Transience is a theme of the mature age, when a man does an examination of conscience, summing up what happened in his life,” says Krzysztof Penderecki.
The composer celebrates this year the jubilee of his 80th birthday, and on this occasion the festival in his name is taking place in Warsaw.

Krzysztof Penderecki wrote String Quartets No. 1 and 2 during the turbulent period of the 60’s. String Quartet No. 3 was created half a century later. It is a very important piece for Penderecki, personal, one can even say sentimental. For in it appears a folk melody – a Hucul theme, which the composer’s father, who was originally from Rohatyn, used to play. Penderecki wrote the last notes of this piece exactly a couple of days before his previous jubilee festival, five years ago. It was then performed by the excellent Shanghai Quartet, which also this year will appear in Warsaw. This time however, the ensemble, created in 1984, will play all three Quartets of the master.

In the program of the concert, which will take place in the Chamber Hall of Warsaw Philharmonic on Wednesday, 20th November at 5 p.m. are also: Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio (the musicians of Shanghai Quartet will be joined by Michel Lethiec), Cadenza per viola sola, which will be performed by the phenomenal Russian violist Grigori Zhyslin, and Baumgesang mit Epilog dedicated to Krzysztof Penderecki by the Finnish composer Aulius Sallinen. The work of this composer, who is two years younger than Penderecki, will be performed by a star duo – Arto Noras (cello) and Barry Douglas (piano).

On the same evening, at the Warsaw Philharmonic (7 p.m.) there is another concert which awaits us, in which The Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra will perform with three different conductors. In the interpretation of De Natura Sonoris III the youngest Polish symphonic ensemble will be led by the young Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare, Flute Concerto will be conducted by the Spaniard Jesús López-Cobos (with Łukasz Długosz in the solo part) and in Largo for Cello and Orchestra behind the conductor’s stand will appear Maximiano Valdés, while the soloist will be Claudio Bohórquez.

The evening will end with Symphony No. 8 „Lieder der Vergänglichkeit” (Songs of Transience), delighting with its delicate lyric, in which the composer reached for the texts of German poets such as Joseph von Eichendorff, Reiner Maria Rilke, Karl Kraus, Hermann Hesse, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Achim von Arnim. “Transience is a theme of the mature age, when a man does an examination of conscience, summing up what happened in his life (…) At the beginning I wanted to write a cycle of songs about trees. It turned out however, that something more than only music about trees is being born. That in this period of life the main theme for me is in fact transience. I think that at a certain age a man begins to have distance to everything: to things, to people, to literature and to music. I surely would not have written such a piece when I was 30 or 40,” Penderecki admitted in an interview for “Rzeczpospolita”. The world premiere of the Symphony took place on 26th June 2005 at the Josephine Charlotte Philharmonic Hall in Luxembourg. During The Krzysztof Penderecki Festival the work will be performed by: Michaela Kaune – soprano, Agnieszka Rehlis – mezzo-soprano, Mariusz Godlewski – baritone, the Krakow Philharmonic Choir and The Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra. The ensemble will be conducted by Łukasz Borowicz.