Here the composer has given us a masterwork equal in rank to his Polish Requiem and Seventh Symphony, and the assembled forces under Penderecki advocate Antoni Wit turn in a performance fully worthy of the piece.

Antoni Wit’s Penderecki series for Naxos has been uniformly excellent, and this latest installment is no exception. Credo, which was commissioned by Helmut Rilling and the Oregon Bach Festival, is a wholly approachable and largely optimistic work. Many of its ideas, such as the oboe solo in the first movement, are strikingly beautiful in a traditional, melodic way, and while much of the music is slowish and devotional, there is more than enough color and variety to sustain interest. The percussion writing in the eighth movement is particularly arresting, but then the work is full of characterful and always text-sensitive ideas.

The Credo, as an affirmative statement of the composer’s own devout Catholicism, is distinct in being comparatively more upbeat than the symphonies or Polish Requiem. This is the second recording of Penderecki’s monumental setting of the central symbolon of the Christian faith. Martin Anderson and Raymond Tuttle both reviewed the first, on Hänssler with forces under Helmuth Rilling, in 22:4; as they ably describe the musical contents in detail, I will simply refer readers to their reviews for those aspects. Anderson was basically approving, if a bit patronizing, finding the work effective in its big rhetorical gestures for conservative concert audiences that shun avant-garde pieces, but somewhat derivative. Tuttle—a regular reviewer of Penderecki compositions for Fanfare who cites the formative influence that Penderecki’s earlier works exercised upon him in his youth—concluded that he was “more than a little bemused” by the work, though adding, “I expect that my appreciation for this work and for this CD will only increase with time.” (Given his shift in his views of Penderecki’s later works, I presume it has.) I, on the other hand, embrace it as an unqualified masterpiece, fully worthy to stand beside the Polish Requiem and Seventh Symphony.

While the Rilling recording is very fine, this one is even better. Antoni Wit rightly reigns as Penderecki’s premier interpreter, and there are numerous subtle touches that give him the edge over his esteemed German counterpart, beginning with the slightly more legato flow in the choral parts that avoids too much static monumentality and maintains measured but inexorable momentum. Even though the text is Latin rather than Polish, Wit’s soloists, despite being far less renowned than their starry counterparts under Rilling, simply sound more idiomatic; I never expected to find Remigiusz Łukomski superior to Thomas Quasthoff as a bass soloist, but he is, and the same can be said for the other voice parts as well. Finally, Naxos has a more open and spacious recorded acoustic, which makes the Hänssler disc sound a bit boxy by comparison, and provides nine cueing tracks as opposed to five for accessing sections of the work. The booklet includes Latin texts and English translations, photos and biographical synopses of the performers, and extensive program notes. If you already have the Rilling CD you don’t need to rush out and buy this Naxos issue, but if you can afford it, by all means get it. Urgently recommended, and a likely 2011 Want List candidate.

As a bonus, Naxos includes the world premiere recording of a brief cantata (6:31) that Penderecki wrote in 1964 to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the founding of the Jagellonian University near Kraków. This piece brings us back to the early experimental Penderecki, with tone clusters and fistfuls of dissonances, extensive employment of percussion instruments and snarling brass, whispering and hissing effects from the choir, and so on. Smore....

Review By Marsimo Viazzo,Musica,April 2011

I1 Credo di Pen derecki è stato completato nel 1998 in risposta a una comissione dell’ Oregon Bach Festival, che in realtà chiedeva a1 musicista di comporre una Vera e propria Messa. Ma Penderecki alle prese con il « cuore » della liturgia decide di arrestarsi li, enfatinando poderosamente il symbolum nicenum in un brano autonomo e autosufficiente. 11 lavoro, segmentato in cinque sezioni e con otto interpolazioni al testo liturgico, qui declinato nella sua completezza. risulta di irn~attod rammatico ragiardevole e aipartiene alla fase neo-romantica che nelle ultime auattro decadi ha stabilito un’inversione di tendenza nella produzione del compositore polacco, all’inizio della sua attiviti affascinato dall’avanguardia pih sperimentale. Nel Credo troviamo armonia tonale, quindi, spesso diatonica, con un incedere sblenne e ieratico. Musica non certo di difficile ascolto, che serba nella ricerca della spazialid la prerogativa che sa renderla comunque interessante. L’interpretazione di Antoni Wit con gli ottimi complessi polacchi i un po’ pih scorrevole e teatrale di quella referenziale di Helmuth Rilling (Hksler), dedicatario dell’opera, che gode, quest’ultima, di una registrazione pih ariosa e dinamica e-che annovera fra i solisti un commosso Thomas QuasthoK Completa il CD la mate rica Cantata honorem Almae Matris Universitatis Iagellonicae sescento abhinc annosfundatiae licenziata nel 1964 in occasione del sesto centenario della fondazione dell’universiti Jagellonica, la pih antica universiti polacca e una delle pih antiche in Europa.

Religious music has been a significant part of Penderecki’s output from early in his career, and his St. Luke Passion of 1966 [8.557149] was a key work in establishing his international reputation as an iconoclast with an original and arresting musical vision. Since turning his back on the avant-garde in the 1970s he has devoted even more energy to religious music, creating a number of large pieces, some of which are among his most significant works in his mature post-Romantic style. Penderecki’s essential perspective—earnest, dense, and darkly dramatic—has remained constant throughout his career, though, and is on full display in his 50-minute 1998 setting of the Credo, a part of the Mass most of which is devoted to optimism and affirmation. The composer’s setting of the central section asserting belief in the crucifixion and death of Jesus is appropriately grim, but even the more traditionally positive sections sound anguished and angst-ridden, as if every aspect of the composer’s faith were very serious business indeed. There are a few moments of brightness, including parts of the first movement and the end of Et in Spiritum Sanctus, but even the concluding Alleluia is almost entirely in a bleak minor mode until the final major cadence. The brief Cantata in honorem Almae Matris, written to honor the Jagellonian University, which Penderecki attended, comes from 1964, the height of his experimental period. Its sinister mutterings aren’t out of character with his music of that era, but it hardly sounds celebratory. Led by Antoni Wit, the Warsaw Boys Choir, Warsaw Philharmonic Choir, and Warsaw Philharmonic perform the difficult scores with passion and intensity. Some of the soloists are very fine, and some less so, but all are reasonably effective. The sound is about as clear as could be expected given the textural and harmonic density created by the massed choral and orchestral forces.