Warm and romantic Polish avant-garde

The music of Krzysztof Penderecki, one of the leading lights of the Polish avant-garde in the 1960s, took an unexpected turn …

The music of Krzysztof Penderecki, one of the leading lights of the Polish avant-garde in the 1960s, took an unexpected turn in the 1970s. By the time his work of the 1960s was being used as a scare-tactic in Stanley Kubrick's film, The Shining, Penderecki was writing music in an altogether warmer, romantic mould. It was sometime in the 1970s, too, that Irish audiences lost any sort of contact with his larger works. In the 1990s, RTE programmed some more recent Penderecki, with the composer conducting, into one of their ill-fated Music Now festivals. But illness, sadly, prevented his appearing. So next Friday's Penderecki concert with the Ulster Orchestra at the Ulster Hall will mark his conducting debut in Ireland, as well as affording an opportunity to hear some of his most recent works, De Profundis and the Symphony No 3. Also in the programme is Shostakovich's Second Violin Concerto (soloist Gregor Zhislin), and on Saturday night at the Waterfront Hall Studio, the Arditti String Quartet include Penderecki's Second Quartet alongside works by Ligeti, Carter, Hosokawa and Dillon.

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor