Penderecki wrote his Piano Concerto, subtitled “Resurrection”, in 2001/02 and revised it in 2007. It was premiered in this latest version by Barry Douglas, who plays it with proprietary zeal. It’s a fabulous addition to the repertoire, a grand piece nearly 40 minutes’ long in a single movement divided into 10 subsections. The thematic material is very strongly profiled: a driving march eventually gives way to a massive chorale that emerges tentatively about midway through the work. How wonderful it is that Penderecki not only has rediscovered the joy of melody, but has the imagination to write really good ones. His scoring is also stunning, and it goes without saying that Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic do him proud.
The Flute Concerto is an earlier work, from 1992, and compared to the Piano Concerto it’s a bit of a letdown. Despite excellent playing from Lukasz Dlugosz, the work itself has a rather dry character, abetted by mostly atonal tunes and jumpy rhythms that, however well written for the instrument, fail to engage the way the piano concerto does. Although it is arrestingly scored for chamber orchestra, and it only lasts 23 minutes, it’s not a piece that you will likely return to often. Still, for the piano concerto alone this well engineered disc is an important, indeed mandatory acquisition for collectors of first-rate contemporary music.
