Quartetto per archi

Kronos revisits a group milestone—the quartet's first staged production (designed by Larry Neff), Live Video (1986)—in this reprise performance of Penderecki's early work for string quartet. One in a series of early '60s pieces that would garner the young Polish composer an international reputation, the Quartetto per archi overflows with musical events and textures. Layers of lightly tapping bows give way to the crackle of plucked strings, barely audible bowed harmonics, sudden low-register growls, and more. This is tantalizing music, the sound of intriguing extremes: high and low, gentle and harsh, explosive and hushed.

Penderecki also brought this fearlessly inventive approach to writing for strings to his large-ensemble works of the period, including 1959's critically acclaimed Anaklasis (featuring 42 strings) and the harrowing Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1959-61), a ten-minute piece for 52 strings that remains one of the most popular of Penderecki's works throughout the world. It was also with the Threnody that the composer debuted a new form of optical notation for his work. Like so many inventions, this one was born of necessity.

“I had to write in shorthand,” Penderecki says, “something for me to remember, because my style of composing at that time was just to draw a piece first and then look for pitch. … I just wanted to write music that would have an impact, a density, powerful expression, a different expression. … I used to see the whole piece in front of me—Threnody is very easy to draw. First you have just the high note, then you have this repeating section, then you have this cluster going, coming—different direction from the one note, twelve, and back—using different shapes. Then there is a louder section; then there's another section, then there is the section which is strictly written in 12-tone technique. Then it goes back to the same cluster technique again, and the end of the piece is a big cluster, which you can draw like a square and write behind it fortissimo. … I didn't want to write in bars, because this music doesn't work if you put it in bars.”

Born in Debica, near Krakow, in 1933, Krzysztof Penderecki was introduced to music at an early age by his father, a lawyer and violinist. Enrolling at the Krakow Conservatory at the age of 18, he graduated in 1958 and was soon appointed professor at the Musikhochschule.

In 1959, Penderecki's works Strophes, Emanations, and Psalms of David won first prizes in the 2nd Warsaw Competition of Young Polish Composers of the Composers' Union. Following the subsequent successes of Anaklasis and Threnody, Penderecki went on to compose such major works as the multiple award-winning St. Luke Passion (1966) and the opera The Devils of Loudon (1967), based on Aldous Huxley's book of the same title. His extensive body of work now boasts four operas and seven symphonies, including 1996's Seven Gates of Jerusalem (a.k.a. Symphony No. 7), commissioned by its namesake city for the “Jerusalem—3000 Years” celebrations.

The recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, Penderecki numbers among his most recent honors a 1998 “Foreign Honorary Membership” in the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the 2000 Cannes Classical Award for “Living Composer of the Year”; the 2001 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts; and the 2002 Romano Guardini Prize of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria.

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