Performers for the night include French clarinetist Michel Lethiec, Finnish cellist Arto Noras, and Spanish violinist Leticia Moreno. All of them worked closely with Penderecki, who died in 2020.
On Thursday, November 23, the 90th anniversary of the composer’s birth, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, under Andrzej Boreyko, will perform Penderecki’s Violin Concerto No. 2 Metamorphoses, together with German violin virtuoso Anne-Sophie Mutter as the soloist.
The concert will see Mutter’s return to the Warsaw Philharmonic after 10 years. In 2013, she took part in the composer’s 80th birthday gala.
The Penderecki Festival will end on Sunday with a performance of the composer’s Credo at Warsaw’s National Opera.
The work, dating from 1998 and scored for orchestra, mixed choir, boys’ choir, five solo voices and wind ensemble, is considered to be one the composer’s finest religious works.
The programme of the Penderecki Festival also features Funeral Music by the late Polish composer Witold Lutosławski, who was born 110 years ago and died in 1994, and the Third Symphony Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, who would have been 90 next month.
Other events in Penderecki’s tribute this week include a concert performance of his opera Black Mask by the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in the southern city of Katowice, under Marin Alsop, and an international lineup of soloists on Thursday.
Another highlight is Sunday’s premiere of Penderecki’s other opera Paradise Lost by the Łódź Opera company.
Penderecki died in Kraków on March 29, 2020, at the age of 86. His legacy comprises over 160 compositions, including concertos, orchestral and chamber pieces, symphonies, songs and choral pieces, cantatas, oratorios and operas.
His long list of honours and distinctions included the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish state distinction.
(mk/gs)