The first performance in Munster Cathedral in 1966 of Penderecki's Passio et mors Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Lucam brought overnight fame and world recognition to the then 33-year-old composer, and succeeded, where many others had failed, in bringing the methods and language of the avant-garde to a much wider and respective audience. Part of its immediate success, I guess, must surely lie in his skilful fusion of past musical techniques (renaissance-like polyphony, Gregorian melismata and Venetian cori spezzati) with the colouristic avant-garde devices that he had been developing in the years preceding its composition. Mind you, it was not without its detractors. Some critics, for the very reasons stated above, accused Penderecki of ''courting the masses'' and of ''pure sensation-seeking'', not to mention the fact that here was a young composer who had the audacity to court comparison with the sublime creations of Bach. Time, however, has proved some justification for the initial enthusiasm as the many hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of performances since its premiere testify—no mean feat for a contemporary work of these proportions.
It has been a number of years since I last heard this work, and I must admit that it still creates an impressive impact on the listener with its dramatic energy and waves of tension, even if some of its language does sound a little dated. The performance, under the guiding hand of the composer, is all one could wish for with splendid performances from orchestra, chorus and soloists alike, while the recording, made in the Cathedral of Christ the King, Katowice, has a beautifully spacious and resonant sound that gives the work a somewhat timeless quality.
The Polish Requiem is a much more recent work (1980-84), and is very much a product of what is now referred to by some as Penderecki's late-romantic style, eschewing the progressiveness that was so much a feature of his earlier works. It could be said that the Polish Requiem is to his current style what the St Luke Passion was to his first, and if the Passion is indebted to Bach, then the Requiem clearly takes as its antecedent the romanticism of Verdi, though echoes of Shostakovich (the Fourteenth Symphony for example) and of Schnittke are prominent too. There's something vaguely predictable about this music. The intensity found in the Passion is for me diffused, and replaced here by a rather congested, heavily textured sound, and a little over a quarter of the way through I found my ears beginning to yearn for the added spice of the colouristic devices of the early works.
Like the Passion, the Requiem has a somewhat piecemeal history, and rather than being prompted by one specific event draws its inspiration from various political and religious sources. The Lacrimosa came first in 1980 and is dedicated to the massacred stevedores of Gdansk, and was followed in 1981 by the Agnus Dei written for the funeral of Cardinal Wyszynski. These were followed in 1983 by the later part of the Dies irae and the Recordare, written in memory of the Franciscan monk Father Kolbe who died in Auschwitz. The opening of the Dies irae and the Libera me date from 1984 and are dedicated to the martyrs of the 1944 Ghetto uprising and the victims of Katyn respectively.
The fact that Penderecki should conduct and record both of these works within months of each other (both were recorded in 1989) proves that his loyalties remain as firm to his earlier large-scale declaration of faith as they do to his more recent, stylistically different Requiem, though there are many (myself included) who find his transition from contemporary prophet to 'born again' romantic more difficult to come to terms with. Those who fall into this category would probably be wise to avoid the cloying textures and over protracted length of the Requiem, but if you've enjoyed his more recent music then I imagine this issue will be much to your liking. Neither the performance nor the recording (taken from a public concert in the Jesuitenkirche, Lucerne in 1989) match the quality of Argo's recording of the Passion; soloists here are poorly focused and the recording on the whole lacks the depth and spaciousness that this work requires, and though the performance itself is committed enough, there are times when string ensemble and intonation leave much to be desired.'