K. Penderecki - Te Deum / Lacrimosa - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

After rediscovering the music of Giovanni Croce, maestro di cappella at St Mark's cathedral in Venice, Ensembles Voces Suaves & Concerto Scirocco take us to Salzburg and put the spotlight on the Verona-born composer Stefano Bernardi, a contemporary of Monteverdi. Bernardi reached the peak of his career in Salzburg, when he was appointed the first Kapellmeister of it's newly constructed cathedral, a position he held from 1628 to 1634. Bernardi contributed greatly to the integration of the Italian nuovo stile in Salzburg, especially of features such as polychordality and the stile concertato, and may therefore be seen as the musical forefather of later, more famous Salzburg musicians. The outstanding stature of his music is clearly evident from his majestic Requiem, the manuscript of which is still preserved in the Salzburg cathedral archives. Particularly impressive is the Sequentia, which forms the core of the work and opens with an elaborate Dies irae section, based on the famous chant melody. The Requiem, as well as a number of Motets by Bernardi, is recorded here for the very first time.

Five compositions from three decades are brought together here representing all of Penderecki's creative periods. This provides an interesting possibility for reflection. The series of works begins with the 1983 Concerto for Viola, music by the composer at the age of 50, reflecting the current position of his compositional work a pluralism which combines all the possible aspects of his earlier writing experience. This began in 1959 with InchStrophesInch, his first point of contact with the west European avantgarde. This however had no further consequences, because Penderecki had already in 1965 in his Capriccio for Oboe condensed his very personal and bold experiments with material in the border region between sound and noise. Similarly in 1973 at the age of 40 when he wrote his little Intermezzo for Strings, he had already written his First Symphony, the emphatic work of his middle period. Only thereafter came the surprising shift in style - Penderecki's Inchromantic phaseInch - one of the results of which is the Concerto for Viola. Tabea Zimmermann viola / Mariusz Pedzialek oboe / Olga Szwajgier soprano / Amadeus Kammerorchester Posen / Agnieszka Duczmal conductor.