Vendégünk Krzysztof Penderecki • 3.1 /CAFe Budapest 2016

Krzysztof Penderecki: Siedem bram Jerozolimy (Seven Gates of Jerusalem)

Featuring: Hungarian National Choir (choirmaster: Csaba Somos)

Conductor: Krzysztof Penderecki

This choral symphony, which Penderecki composed to commemorate the third millennium of Jerusalem, had its premiere in Israel in 1997. The libretto, which comprises extracts from psalms and the Books of Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel and Jeremiah, inspired the composer to a monumental work, which employs three choruses, a narrator and solo singers, and which is often compared to Mahler’s Symphony No. 8.

Penderecki earned fame in the early 1960s with works that relied on radically new, unusual sounds, elicited from string instruments in unconventional ways. It soon became evident, however, that the composer did not consider stylistic extremes an end in itself, and was far more attracted to a new synthesis of avant-garde means and the tradition – it being a deep tradition composers had already forgotten about by the middle of the 20th century.

From the late 1970s, Penderecki turned to late Romantic models with great gusto, altering them and conjoining them with the achievements of 20th-century music, presenting the old expressivity in a new, individual form.