Krzysztof Penderecki worked mostly on the larger canvases of orchestral and choral music, writing chamber music only occasionally. This is apparently the first recording of the composer's complete string quartets, with a string trio added for good measure, and it all fits on a single CD. However, the music does reflect Penderecki's larger compositional thinking admirably. The first two quartets, from 1960 and 1968, are saturated with the hard atonality and the avant-garde influences of the time, showing traces of Berio and ...
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Krzysztof Penderecki worked mostly on the larger canvases of orchestral and choral music, writing chamber music only occasionally. This is apparently the first recording of the composer's complete string quartets, with a string trio added for good measure, and it all fits on a single CD. However, the music does reflect Penderecki's larger compositional thinking admirably. The first two quartets, from 1960 and 1968, are saturated with the hard atonality and the avant-garde influences of the time, showing traces of Berio and Xenakis, respectively. The first quartet is an impressively elegant marriage of rather hair-raising extended techniques with pitch indeterminacy. The last two quartets show the composer's turn toward neo-Romanticism, with the possibly incomplete final work of 2016 incorporating the folk rhythms of Penderecki's youth. Beyond these general categorizations, though, is the fact that the pieces all reflect the composer's personality in full. Penderecki has been among the most popular...
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