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The second half of the disc takes us back to Penderecki's radical work of the 60s. The Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima is a modern classic, scored for 52 strings, though you will swear you hear woodwinds and percussion through Penderecki's revolutionary performance instructions. Their is little melody to be found in the work, but it is intense, harrowing, and gripping. Wit's performance may not be quite as wrenching as Penderecki's own with the same orchestra, but Wit brings out some details I had not heard in this dense score. The two remaining works, Fluorescences and De natura sonoris II, are not as intense as the Threnody, but are similar in their exploration of using unusual sounds in musical ways. Fluorescences features a brief appearance by a typewriter(!), the pounding on its keys in a catchy rhythmic pattern that will make you reassess where noise ends and music begins!
Special note has to go to conductor Antoni Wit and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. They play these works like men possessed, adding to an already impressive recording resume that includes the orchestral works of Lutoslawski, and concertos by Shostokovich and Prokofiev.
Finally, a word of thanks to the recording company, Naxos. Penderecki has been underserved on CD, and I am glad to see any new recordings, let alone at budget price! Why it took this long to get a work as exciting, melodic, and expressive as the 3rd Symphony to reach CD is nearly criminal.
Needless to say, I highly recommended purchasing this disc.
(*) released by EMI on a CD (Matrix series no.5, with superb cover art by artist Peter Nevin) together with some other fine works as "Anaklasis", "Capriccio" and "De Natura Sonoris" I & II; and more recently on a 2-CD set (Double Forte series) together with also "Emanations" and the First Symphony (excellent works previously available separately in Matrix series no.17)
I had listened to that performance quite a lot of times, I knew the whole work by heart (and I had also read its ground-breaking graphic self-speaking score). Then I bought this disc, and I must say I was highly disappointed with Wit's rendering. Well, some timbral aspects of it aren't that bad (in fact, really interesting), but his overall comprehension of the work seems to me quite poor. He and the string orchestra didn't get the right dynamics and seem lost in details while losing the tremendous impact of the whole, as you can get in Penderecki's fabulous rendering. Penderecki's is an overwhelming and neatly tied performance, Wit's one sounds rather like a bundle of lost-in-labyrinth cries.
On the counterpart, I must say that his reading of "Fluorescences" is certainly the referential one. Here Wit really got it right. Every aspect of his performance here is excellent.
For the other two works: the Third Symphony is well performed, but the work itself is not at all comparable to such masterpieces as the "Threnody" and "Fluorescences" (Penderecki's best orchestral scores, along with "Polymorphia"). "De Natura sonoris II", on the other hand, has again been better performed by Penderecki himself in the already-mentioned recording.
So, buy this disc!! Its price is almost laughable, and some of its performances are first-class. But if you're interested in the amazing "Threnody", buy the one in EMI (which is mid-priced, even the Double Forte). And if you can afford it, you'd better buy both!!
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