The new album pairing works by Krzysztof Penderecki and the works they inspired by Jonny Greenwood is due out next week and is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen. "The results are ear-tingling," says NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas. "What we hear on this album is a meeting of two artistic visionaries connected in a real dialogue, the decades separating their work and their chronological ages all but collapsed and deflated."
The new album pairing works by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and the works they inspired by composer/guitarist Jonny Greenwood is due out on Nonesuch next week, March 13. But you don't need to wait till then to hear it. The album, comprising Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Polymorphia (for 48 strings) and Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver and 48 Responses to Polymorphia, is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen.
"How do you capture the energy—both positive and negative—of the past 50 years by using instruments perfected in the 18th century and made of wood, glue and horsehair," asks NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas, host of NPR's Classical Music blog, Deceptive Cadence, of the task undertaken by the two composers on the pieces heard on the album. "Here, they both choose to use a seemingly antiquated vehicle—orchestral strings—to convey the noise, chaos and energy of our time. The results are ear-tingling."
What may seem to some an unusual pairing of Penderecki, described by the Independent as "Poland's godfather of the musical avant-agrde," with Greenwood, known best for being Radiohead's guitarist and the composer of film scores like There Will Be Blood (which incorporates material from Popcorn Superhet Receiver), proves a match well made.
"What we hear on this album is a meeting of two artistic visionaries connected in a real dialogue," writes Tsioulcas, "the decades separating their work and their chronological ages all but collapsed and deflated."
Read more and listen to the album in full at npr.org.
Concertgoers in London can hear the complete program performed live by the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra—the group featured on the Nonesuch recording—led by Penderecki and Marek Moś in a concert at Barbican Hall in London on Thursday, March 22, as part of the tenth Kinoteka Poilsh Film Festival. For more information, go to barbican.org.uk.
To pre-order the album, head to the Nonesuch Store, where orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album available starting release day.
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