This important release continues the extensive series of Penderecki recordings by Antoni Wit with his latest symphony, the mysterious Sixth, revealed just before his death by a CD by Wojciech Rajski. Penderecki, who wanted to compose an “elegy for a dying forest”, turned like Mahler for his Song of the Earth to Chinese poems translated by Hans Bethge. Of the eight movements, the last, “Song of the Flute in Autumn,” is a clear homage to Mahler. Faced with the very “Lied” approach of Stephan Genz, who cuts up each word under the direction of Rajski, Wit and his soloist, Jarosław Bręk, play the authority (Bręk, who died last April at the age of 46, had a voice of ‘Alberich), as if the singer doomed the world to fate. We prefer the more “saying” and more subtle approach of Genz, the advantage of Wit being a perfect coupling with the brief Concertino for trumpet of 2015 by David Guerrier and the Double concerto for violin and cello from 2012, other eminent late scores by the great Polish composer who died in 2020.
To watch on video