As Poland’s most famous living composer, Penderecki might expect to have been feted on his 80th birthday, as indeed it proved with this ambitious concert given in Warsaw last November. It opened with his most (in)famous piece: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960) fairly catapulted the composer to the forefront of the European avant-garde and, over five decades on, its extremes of timbre and texture still leave a fearsome impression – not least in a reading as unsparing as that which Krzysztof Urban´ski here obtains from the Warsaw Philharmonic strings. Forward almost to the present, and Duo concertante (2010) is among the most tensile and virtuoso of his recent chamber pieces – Anne-Sophie Mutter and Roman Patkoló taking all its demands effortlessly in their stride. As do the three cellists in the First Concerto grosso (2001), with Penderecki delving into Baroque procedures between the concertante group and vis-à-vis the orchestra in an idiom well within the ambit of that post-Romantic ideal he has pursued over 40 years. Charles Dutoit draws a sumptuous response.

The second half consisted of Credo (1998), which the composer considers to be one of his most important works. An extended and elaborate setting of the liturgical text, this contains its fair share of the plangent outbursts such as characterise his large-scale choral pieces, yet there are also several passages of inwardness and contemplation that open out the expressive range accordingly. The five soloists are comparably dedicated in their response, with Gergiev encouraging the massed choirs to project their contributions with a suitably baleful intensity and the orchestra (offstage brass et al) to play with burnished eloquence. The concert is filmed in the opulent ambience of Polish National Opera’s new venue, with the camerawork as attentive to incidental detail as to the bigger picture. The booklet essay has a pertinent overview of the event, while the bonus feature finds Penderecki commenting on each of the works with deprecating immodesty – which might just be the best means of approaching this always unequivocal music in the first place.