Krzysztof Penderecki's music scores found after many years, written in the 1950s and 1960s for puppet theatres, drama theatres and for films, have been recorded and released on CD as part of the "Musical Trace of Krakow" series. This is the second – after the 2018 release of a CD with Stanislaw Radwan's works – unique phonographic project of the Krakow Forum of Culture (Krakowskie Forum Kultury) aimed at documenting film and theatre music. Krzysztof Penderecki's music was recorded by: Beethoven Academy Orchestra conducted by Maciej Tworek (Krzysztof Penderecki's long-term assistant), Polish Radio Choir, Cracow Singers and vocalists Annika Mikołajko-Osman and Jacek Wróbel. Among the recordings there is music from plays in the Stary Theatre, the "Arlekin” Puppet Theatre or from film Nie ma końca wielkiej wojny[There is No End to the Great War] by Documentary and Feature Film Studios (WFDiF). DUX is the publisher of the album. The recordings are also available at www.muzycznyslad.pl
Penderecki's adventure with the theatre began in 1957 with Jekaterina Borysowa's Złoty kluczyk [Little Golden Key] directed by Władysław Jarema at the "Groteska" Puppet Theatre in Kraków, and his film career began in 1959 with Bulandra i Diabeł [Bulandra and the Devil] directed by Jerzy Zitzman and Lechosław Marszałek at the Animated Film Studio in Bielsko-Biała. At the time, Penderecki was a young composer in his twenties, and in addition to composing Polymorphia and Threnody, he created music for animated films, puppet theatres, drama theatres and short films. Many commemorative articles after the Maestro's death referred to his "film music", quoting the titles of Wajda's or Kubrick's pictures, although only a few such feature films were made, and moreover the directors used concert pieces already written for them. Meanwhile, Penderecki wrote almost thirty original scores for various animated films, both for adults and children, and another ten for documentaries, shorts and feature films, in addition to the well-known Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie [The Manuscript Found in Saragossa].
The largest, and still requiring description and recording, area of the composer's artistic activity are scores for theatres, as by 1980 Penderecki had created scores for almost seventy plays, ranging from the "Banialuka" Puppet Theatre in Bielsko-Biała to the Marionetteatern in Stockholm and from the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre to the Polski Theatre, collaborating with the most eminent directors such as Konrad Swinarski, Jerzy Jarocki as well as Józef Szajna and participating in stagings of the most important dramatic works by Mickiewicz, Conrad or Bergman.
A painstaking search of the surviving manuscripts, conducted by Magdalena Figzał-Janikowska and Andrzej Kosowski (project curator), led to the discovery of the first scores, which were recorded in Kraków in September 2020 and December 2021. It is the music for the following plays: O krasnoludkach i sierotce Marysi [Little Orphan Mary and the Dwarves] (Maria Konopnicka, dir. Irena Wojutycka, 1957, Arlekin Puppet Theatre in Łódź), Przygody warszawskiego misia [Adventures of the Warsaw Bear] (Kazimiera Jeżewska, dir. Stanisław Ochmański, 1958, Arlekin Puppet Theatre in Łódź), Tomcio Paluch i wilk [Tom Thumb and the Wolf] (Jerzy Zaborowski, dir. Stanisław Ochmański, 1961, Puppet and Actor Theatre in Lublin), Dziady [Forefathers' Eve] (Adam Mickiewicz, dir. Bohdan Korzeniewski, 1963, Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków) and Nie-boska komedia [Undivine Comedy] (Zygmunt Krasiński, dir. Konrad Swinarski, 1965, The Helena Modrzejewska Stary Teatr in Kraków), Baśń o pięciu braciach [A Tale of Five Brothers] (Sergei Obraztsov, Sergei Preobrazhensky, dir. Wojciech Wieczorkiewicz, 1967, "Marcinek" Puppet and Actor Theatre) and the film Nie ma końca wielkiej wojny [There Is No End to the Great War] (dir. Jan Łomnicki, 1959, Documentary and Feature Film Studios).
The CD is available from www.dux.pl
In order to listen to the recordings, visit www.muzycznyslad.pl
Contributors to the project included:
Beethoven Academy Orchestra
Conductor: Maciej Tworek
Polish Radio Choir
Cracow Singers Choir
Soloists: Annika Mikołajko-Osman and Jacek Wróbel
Sound Director: Małgorzata Polańska (DUX), montage: Igor Szymański, Michał Szostakowski
Project Curator: Andrzej Kosowski
Queries: Magdalena Figzał-Janikowska, Andrzej Kosowski
The project is organized by the Krakow Forum of Culture (Krakowskie Forum Kultury), a cultural institution of the City of Kraków.
More about the project:
https://audycjekulturalne.pl/zapomniana-muzyka-pendereckiego/ (Maciej Tworek, conductor)
https://radiokrakowkultura.pl/podcasty/muzyczny-slad-krakowa (Andrzej Kosowski, project curator)