Warsaw Boys' Choir, Warsaw Philharmonic Choir, Warsaw PO/Antoni Wit Naxos 8.572932 ***
The latest instalment in Naxos's survey of the music of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki (born 1933) arrives just as the composer himself is due in Ireland for this weekend's Castletown Concerts. Naxos juxtapose a 1964 Cantata in honour of the 600th anniversary of his alma mater, the Jagellonian University, and a 1998 Credo written for the Oregon Bach Festival. The cantata is short (under seven minutes), its musical language adventurous, at times harsh. The Credo (to which Penderecki has added other religious texts) is softer, and altogether more expansive (50 minutes), darkly romantic in manner, and for the Et resurrexitshifts into choppy chanting that's reminiscent of moments from Orff's Carmina Burana. What the two works have in common is an unerring immediacy of effect, which comes across well in these Polish performances.
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