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Tallahassee Democrat from Tallahassee, Florida • Page 50

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Tallahassee, Florida
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Page:
50
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

The master conducts his masterwork Ml "fii By Mark Hlnson ask their permission. I think it's the longest Credo ever written (at nearly an hour)." It's also a whopper to stage. The work, which was DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER Legendary Polish composer Krzysztof Penderee ki's Grammy Award-winning "Credo" was a mere 20 years the making. A. music ifQHg0 What: Composer Krzysztof Penderecki conducts a performance of his "Cre-; do" with the FSU Symphony Orchestra, the FSU Chamber Choir, the University Singers, the Tallahassee Community Chorus, the Gulf Coast Girl Choir and more Where: Ruby Diamond Auditorium, FSU campus When: 8 p.m.

Saturday Cost: $9 general admission, $6 for seniors and non-FSU students, free for FSU students dark beard. Now it's gray." At 71, Penderecki is one the most highly regarded and decorated working composers on the planet. A complete list of his awards, accolades and honorary degrees would take up several more pages. In person, even while wearing a bright yellow shirt with a Ralph Lauren logo, he's relaxed but stately. When asked where his permanent address is these days, he quickly jokes: "Hotel rooms." It's hard to believe that when Penderecki started his international career with a bang in the late '50s, he was a card-carrying member of the Pierre Boulez-influenced avant-garde.

Many considered Pen-derecki's music radical and frightening. His "Threnody for the Victims of the Hiroshima," written between 1959 and 1961, was a hair-raising piece for 52 strings that sounded like a choir of harpies hovering overhead. Penderecki also experimented with found sounds such as the banging of typewriter keys, rustling paper, whistles, hisses and someone sawing wood. He also flirted with electronic music and tape loops in the early -'60s. Then he did an about-face.

"The problem with the avant-garde is that it didn't develop much," Penderecki said. "They have been recycling the same thing for 50 years. It must be boring to do that all of your life." In 1966, Penderecki finished his first important piece of sacred music with the "St. Luke Passion" oratorio. The avant-garde fraternity may have felt abandoned, but the audiences derecki didn't like the etudes his music teacher wrote for him, he began writing his own.

"It was out of necessity," he said. "I didn't have anything else to play." The young composer came of age at a time when Poles had Russian culture and music force-fed to them. Western music such as jazz was forbidden. Composers such as Igor Stravinsky, who had left Russia for America, were erased from the history books. Writing avant-garde music was certainly a no-no.

"I was doing what was forbidden," Penderecki said. "We played a lot of private concerts in people's homes. It was underground." The war, which killed half of Penderecki's family, has never been far from his mind with works such as "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" and the "Dies Irae" oratorio for the prisoners murdered at Auschwitz. This year, he is furiously working on a new Passion this time around with St. John that was commissioned for the re-opening of the Frauenkirsche cathedral in Dresden, Germany.

The monumental Baroque church was blown to bits during air raids in 1945, killing numerous women and children who were taking shelter inside. "I never thought I'd write another Passion, but here I am again after 40 years," Penderecki said. "It will be very different from the last one. I only want to write what's important and necessary. I don't want to bore the audience." That's probably not very likely.

Contact Mark Hlnson at (850) 599-2164 or mhlnsonStallahassee.com. completed in 1998, calls for an orchestra, a humongous chorus, a children's choir and five solo singers. On Saturday night, Penderecki, who is a visiting Housewright Scholar at Florida State University this month, will take the stage in Ruby Diamond Auditorium to conduct "Credo" with the FSU Symphony Orchestra and enough singers on stage to field an army. "I think it's one of my important pieces," Penderecki said. "This piece is Penderecki like a synthesis of all my writing that came before." From radical to sacred The last time Penderecki (pronounced Pend-ret'-ski) was at FSlFs music school was in the mid-'70s.

"I remember they had a very good choir with (the late choral professor Clayton) Krehbiel," Penderecki said Tuesday. "I hope it is the same level. The last time I was here I had a KZED MASSAGE FilC CORE INSTITUTE BOOKSTORE OFFERS MASSAGE PRODUCTS, BOOKS, MASSAGE TOOLS, AND CORE T-SHIRTS BUNG THIS COUPON FOR 1 0 OFF YOUR PURCHASE CORE Institute 1 "My friend Hel- muth Rilling (who runs the Oregon Bach Festival) kept asking me to write a Mass for the longest time," Penderecki said. "He was always asking me if I had written the Mass yet." For two decades, Penderecki made notes and wrote sketches of music for different parts of the high Mass such as Gloria and Sanctus. He began, then abandoned a Christmas cantata.

He also toyed with composing a Stabat Mater. Then he focused his attention completely on the Credo the longest, wordiest and most orthodox part of the Mass that most composers shorten or skip completely. "I decided to do just the Credo itself," Penderecki said. "I added other text from the Forbidden Text that the church probably doesn't allow. I wasn't writing it for them, so I didn't JLIIII-JIUH i UMI mJIUJI December 4 5 North Florida Fairgrounds Over 300 Artists and Craftspeople Buy Tickets At Th CarrUg Shop 1441 Market Street My Favorite Things 1 950 Thomasvllle Road TMi Event BenfHt TALLME MUSEUM of tiaton 9 Natural 3 loved the change in direction.

He went on to write operas, concertos, requiems, quartets, hymns and much more. "Penderecki resembles the painter Pablo Picasso," famed violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter wrote after recording Penderecki's Violin Concerto No. 2. "Few composers have proved so multifaceted, and few have created such richly contrasting works." Write from the start Penderecki, who was born in a tiny town in Poland just before World War II erupted, started playing the violin as a child. The Germans invaded Poland when he was 5.

"There was no music during the war, none," Penderecki said. The Germans came, but they left after a few years. Then the Russians came, but they didn't leave for a very long time." Because sheet music was hard to get after the war, and the precocious Pen master: There's more Beyond the By Mark Hlnson DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER When one of the world's most famous composers drops by to conduct one of his own masterworks, well, he's bound to attract the most attention. Face it, Krzysztof Sousa yourself Conductor Keith Brion is an expert when it comes to the rousing march music of John Philip Sousa (who would have celebrated his Pleaso tee MORE, 2S Penderecki's concert Saturday is a must-see. (See story, this page.) With that shout-out taken care of, there's plenty of other music popping up around town and the region over the next few days.

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