Penderecki
Sacred Choral Works
Latvian Radio Choir/Sigvards Kļava
Ondine ODE 1435-2 60:46 mins
Sumptuous, passionate and uplifting, Penderecki’s sacred choral music spans his career. From the early avant-garde outbursts to the refreshed traditional sounds of his maturity, these expressions of often defiant piety are central to his output. Rarely, though, have they received such assured and lovingly committed performances as on this ravishing album from the Latvian Radio Choir and conductor Sigvards Kļava. The same performers’ recent collection of choral music by Cage rightly received numerous plaudits, but this new recording is, if anything, even more impressive. These utterly fearless unaccompanied singers bring precision to the most complex textures while retaining a palpable grasp of the music’s emotional heart, imbuing it with an engaging sense of wonder.
Their formidable skills are most apparent in Miserere and In pulverem mortis, the two movements for unaccompanied choir taken from the St Luke Passion (1966), Penderecki’s astonishing provocation to the totalitarian atheism of Poland’s Communist era. The Latvians perfectly capture the slowly blurring opening textures of the Miserere before the incandescent anguish of its central climax. They are unflinching at the challenges of In pulverem mortis, with its juxtapositions of otherworldly passages of disjunct beauty and vividly present, pungently thick harmonies. The only frustration is the impossibility of having a recording of the entire St Luke Passion with all its disparate forces performing at this exalted level.
These qualities also underpin the performance of the largest work here, the concluding Missa Brevis, written piecemeal across two decades before being brought together by Penderecki in 2012. The upper parts were intended for children’s choir, but only the churlish would object to this performance, the fresh-voiced sopranos and altos giving the Sanctus and Benedictus an exquisite glowing radiance suggestive of suitably wide-eyed amazement.
The album’s opening work, O Gloriosa Virginum (2009), with its spirit of amenable joy, typifies later Penderecki, its directness of expression having a timeless quality. Nonetheless, a look under the compositional bonnet soon reveals this could only be the work of recent times. The build-up of textures in the latter stages with no loss of clarity reflects the integrity of the composer’s expression no matter the changes to his aesthetic mood. Notions of progressive or traditional are simply irrelevant.
The recorded sound is also marvellous, its judicious balance of detail and bloom supporting the atmosphere of active devotion in all the music’s diversity. The decorated sustained lines of Veni Creator (1987) recalling medieval organum hang effortlessly in the air, yet the searing climax to the 1981 Agnus Dei has fervent, spine-tingling immediacy. The choir’s technical control is stunning throughout. The restrained disquiet of De profundis (1996) somehow never loses its appropriately spartan quality despite blooming at times into vocal abundance while they combine ecstatic luminosity with ardent urgency in the Song of Cherubim(1986) until the intense stillness of the final period of repose. Ultimately, though, for all the vocal skill, it is the performers’ vibrant humanity underpinning the spiritual conviction of Penderecki’s remarkable music that makes this so compelling. Christopher Dingle