Dux’s Penderecki edition continues apace with these two impressive surveys of concertos for string and wind instruments, both of them bringing together a wide chronological spectrum of music. The string concerto collection ranges from the Capriccio for violin and orchestra from 1967 to the Largo for cello and orchestra from 2003. The Capriccio was itself based on an earlier work, a concerto from four years previously that the composer withdrew, and, in its ironic stance, its closest relatives are probably works by Schnittke from the same period, though its vocabulary is very different. It nevertheless shares the Russian composer’s sense of the dramatic, and this performance by Patrycja Piekutowska, under Penderecki’s own direction, is attentive to every nuance, something greatly helped by Dux’s outstandingly clear recording. The Cello Concerto from 1972 is a paradox, as Iwona Linstedt points out in her booklet-notes, in that, in spite of its standard three-movement form, it is less conventionally a concerto than the earlier Capriccio. It is, nonetheless, a tremendously exciting, colourful work that convinces not only on account of colour but of its musical argument. Jakob Spahn is a soloist who follows that argument from beginning to end not only with conviction but with clear enjoyment.

Ivan Monighetti is the soloist in the cello version (1989) of the Viola Concerto, and I think he has a harder task. This is a work of the ‘new’ Penderecki, the gestures still rather fragmented and the melodic content not hugely expansive, but nevertheless a milestone on the road to the composer’s post-tonal second period. The soloist’s task is hard, it seems to me, precisely because there is a contradiction between form and content, and there is no irony as there would have been in Schnittke – it is heart-on-sleeve. Nevertheless, if you are going to listen to the work, this version is more than highly recommendable. The Largo, from 2003, written for Rostropovich to play in his last public concert, is very different, constructed as it is using long cantilenas in a way that seems far more structurally consequent than in the preceding piece. Here the soloist is the remarkable Claudio Bohórquez, who more than has the measure of the work: it would be hard to imagine a more convincing performance.

The wind disc also begins with a lesser-known classic from the early period, Fonogrammi (1961). A striking, beautifully orchestrated work, it’s not really a concerto in fact but has a substantial intervention for solo flute about halfway through. The Capriccio for oboe and 11 strings, from four years later, is quite different in character, a genuinely virtuoso piece, as much for the string players as for the soloists, but that provides no problems for the outstanding Sinfonia Iuventus, and Arkadiusz Krupa is a commanding soloist. The epic Horn Concerto, subtitled Winterreise though devoid of any quotations from Schubert, dates from 2008 and is naturally utterly different in style. Its opening, mysterious and portentous, may well constitute the most beautiful two minutes of music the composer has ever written; the work subsequently takes us on a historical tour of the horn’s character, as it were, glimpses of frozen beauty suddenly appearing in the midst of music that can often be surprisingly jocular. It’s intriguing but I don’t feel that it really hangs together as a whole, convincing though the case made for it by soloist Kateřina Javůrková undoubtedly is. The Sinfonietta No 2 (1994) is a much tighter work, once again a reworked transcription, in this case of the Clarinet Quartet. It plays, rather enigmatically, with the idea of intimacy between the instruments, in a kind of homage to the Viennese musical tradition, though of course that intimacy takes on different aspects in the new version.

These two discs inevitably make one reflect on Penderecki’s musical journey; and while that seems to me a somewhat uneven trajectory, one could hardly ask for better materials with which to study that journey than these superbly performed and recorded discs, under the direction of the composer himself.