Thanks to Arkivmusic.com’s “on demand” program this Japanese RCA title is available domestically, and it’s an important one. Yes, the sonics are nothing to write home about, but they get the job done adequately. Both works were written for Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphians, and many U.S. listeners got their first taste of Penderecki’s gripping modernist style through this recording of Utrenja. On first hearing it may strike you as alternately screechy and miserable, with its tone clusters and huge aglomerations of sound alternating with magical, harmonically pure interludes, but as time has passed this music has worn well, sustaining repeated listening and revealing an unexpected variety within its chosen idiom.
Persichetti’s Roman-inspired Ninth Symphony couldn’t be more different, though oddly enough its spiky, dissonant character might be harder for some to take if only because its forms and modes of instrumental writing suggest a result more traditional than it turns out to be. Still, it’s exciting to have this excellent performance available once again; the coupling, though odd, is still more enticing than the original (William Schuman’s dreary Ninth Symphony). There are better versions of Utrenja out there now (Antoni Wit’s, on Naxos, for example), particularly as performers have grown more comfortable with the demands made on them; but the Philadelphia players sound fine, and the choirs perform gamely, all things considered (the soloists are also very good). Whoever thought “The Entombment of Christ” could produce a warm, snuggly feeling? Recommended.
