Good evening, thank you for coming tonight and
finishing recital.
Today I will be talking about Penritsky's
Divertimento Suite for Cello Solo, his
stylistic analysis and performance guide.
Penritsky was born November 23, 1933, near
Krakow, is today recognized as one of the
leading representatives of the avant-garde movement.
Upon his successful completion of his studies,
he was offered a composition professorship in
the Academy in 1958, where he studied with
Stanislav Vechovic and Artur Malavsky.
He won recognition in 1959 with his Strophes,
which was performed in Warsaw Autumn Festival
of Contemporary Music.
That was the festival which was supported by
the Polish government to bring Polish music
into the modern age.
Along with Krzysztof Penritsky, his composer
friends in Poland, Henryk Michalaj, Gorzycki,
Wojciech Kilar and Witold Slalonek,
participated to the festival.
The works in this end are still the most
recognizable music manifestation of the 1960s
Polish avant-gardism.
Penritsky carried surrealism and avant-garde
techniques beyond their boundaries.
During the communist regime, after the Second
World War, his works began to embody his own
cultural identity, values and language through
his compositions.
Penritsky's struggle for the liberation of
mankind is his own struggle for truth and
freedom, just as it was for his friend Shostakovich.
Therefore, politics and religion have always
played a central role in his works.
He applied the Polish folkloric religious and
patriotic traditions in each composition in
variable ways.
Penritsky also worked for two years in Polish
Radio Experimental Studio that was established
for electronic music in 1957.
Electronic music shaped his first period
compositions and his sonoristic approach to his works.
Penritsky noted, I heard the sounds of the
electronics which I had never heard before, of
course, and it helped me to develop my music.
Then later I made what was in some ways a
transcription from the sounds of the studio to
normal instruments.
I think my pieces like Threnody, Polymorphia,
other pieces written in the beginning of 60s
were very much inspired by electronics.
Through electronic music, he enabled himself to
structure and group the sonorous effects, the
rhythm within very strictly sophisticated
formal plans in his pieces.
The string instruments with the combination of
varied percussion groups, he explored a totally
new and intense panorama of sound.
His first five period compositions such as
Florescences 1961, Polymorphia 61, Psalmus 61,
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima 1960,
which was received first prize at the UNESCO
International Rollstroom of composers in Paris,
consist of quarter tone, half step, three
quarter tone, whole note, major, minor third,
and perfect fourth harmonic structures.
The fragmented melodic lines in this piece
create various textural patterns and the tone
colors which employs two or three widely
separated dissonant irregular intervals.
From the late 60s and until late 1970s, with
his large scale choral work Passion according
to the to St. Luke 19:67, Penderecki's
avant-garde styles started to shift to Western
traditional musical concepts.
The total allusion, chant-like vocal lines and
sonoristic subtlety governed his middle period works.
Penderecki noted, I wanted to experiment with
the tradition, so I rediscovered the
post-romanticism, especially Bruckner, and I
wrote several pieces under that influence.
These are his graphic notation which he
discovered, the electronics let him discover
this extraordinary graphical notation and he
created his own shapes.
And those are the pictures of Trenody and
Polychromia and also the color notation, block
sounds in the Trenody, the first one.
And banning the pitches and their old
explanations on the side of the partiture.
And this is the third in the late 70s and
beginning of 80s own work, which can be
considered as his last compositional period.
Penderecki developed his neo-romantic works in
binary form by applying post-Wagnerian
chromaticism and the Bartokian art of
developing variation in a highly expressive and
melancholic Brucknerian manner.
His musical language moved from space-time
notation to mixture of metric rhythmic elements
to traditional metric notation, from dense
polyphony to neo-romantic transparent texture,
from biblical themes to universal themes
related to ethical values, and later from large
orchestration to the use of medium-sized
chamber orchestras.
The classical and romantic musical styles such
as scherzo, March, serenade, waltz, and
polonaise intertwined in his works.
Also with his instrumental works, Penderecki
made connections to late romantic concertos by
Johannes Brahms, John Sibelius, Peter Ilyich
Tchaikovsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.
His eight cello works also reflected his
changing styles and demonstrates from
sonoristic to post-romantic compositional
materials, also derived from his major choral
and orchestral works.
His three cello works were Sonata for Cello and
Orchestra, 1964, Capriccio for Sixth Ritual
Palm, 1968, and Cello Concerto No. 1, 1972.
Typical of this period, these works strongly
display what he specifies as total cello,
in which the cello is used not only with
traditional techniques, but also with extended
techniques. Extended techniques were used for
two purposes.
The first is to create sound effects by
striking the instrument in unusual ways, for
example hitting the fingerboard with a knot or fingertips.
The second is to create powerful gestures by
using ultrachromaticism, for example playing
indefinite pitches, highest pitch between
bridge and tailpiece,
quarter tones, clusters, and by incorporating
chance elements.
As a natural result of Rostropovich's close
friendship with Shostakovich, the works written
for especially Rostropovich, Penderevsky mimics
Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1,
with its poetic, heroic, and Carpaccio
characteristics, as well as Ernst Bloch's
Sholomo, Rhapsody for Violin Cello, and large
orchestra. Penderevsky juxtaposes
Shostakovich's dry humor and sarcasm in the
orchestral part,
with Blochian mourning and agony in his late
cello works. The historical background of the
piece, the divertimento, overall view of the
music, synthesizing from his past,
the Divertimento suite connects his diverse
style in terms of usage of sound material and
techniques for its organization. The piece can
be characterized in neo-romantic aesthetics
through using the cello's darker lyrical tones
with a variety of timbre and tone contrasts.
Overall, the structure of the work contains
short, broad dance movements, which connected
with expressive Rubato lines, melodies, and
broken guitar-like Dissipato chords.
The broad neo-romantic palette draws inner
beauty from within his firm ideological and
theoretical framework. In each movement of the
divertimento, one can clearly recognize the
transformation of compositional elements
aroused from his traditional solo and Chamber
works. The works with their varied style
movements are a mixture of all the cello parts
and of his chamber works, and their
compositional language that he employed during
his third-period compositional style.
The clear construction of phrases are strongly
exposed by multiple repetitions of motifs.
Although the eight movements were written at
different times and appear distinctively
dissimilar at first glance,
Penderecki used Motivic and intervallic
compositional techniques to unify these
seemingly disparate movements. The most
significant element is the extensive use of
chromatic half-step melodic motion,
which highlights the B-A-C-H monogram, as well
as leaps of a minor third or a major sixth
throughout the entire work. Another binding
element throughout the piece is the tritone
Leap coupled with half-step motion.
And these are the chamber music, his string
trio and the quartet for clarinet and strings
he wrote in 1991, and the quartet is 1993.
These are the pieces that he used the elements
for Divertimento.
So this is the string trio, the scherzo
movement, and if you can see the first three
bars, it's block chords, and he used repeated
block chords also in his first movement,
pre-video, and fifth movement, allegro Con
bravura, the second line.
And this is, for quartet, I can show you how he
reduced the four parts into only one
instrument, four instruments into one
instrument, which actually, the violin part is
called Sergium,
it starts and joins the cello part, which cello
part is one step lower, scordatura, tuned one
step lower to B, which creates a very large,
wide interval between B and very high muted
violin entrance at the end.
And that he created on the cello, Divertimento,
is a D, D pattern note on the other, it goes
all the way, and then B flat after, on A string
and the higher string, he even uses artificial
harmonics in the piano, it's a very pianissimo
dynamic, and that goes all the way, finishes.
And that way he creates the very wide interval
between D and artificial harmonics also.
And then this is the, again, third movement,
scherzo, sorry, the middle movement scherzo in
the quartet, and he put this half step vivace,
vivace Simo, triple rhythmic motion to cello,
and exactly the same, I can say, I can tell,
and the melodic and rhythmic fragments were
structured by extreme usage of various techniques,
which sometimes end abruptly, wide dynamic
contrast, the percussive sound effects such as
tapping the pitches with fingertips, striking
the strings against the fingerboard with inside
of the left hand palm,
with the palm playing on the on or behind the
bridge, glissando, sulpette, Ponticello
effects, which they were also coming from his
cello works in the 60s that, when he wrote in
the 60s,
those are the elements that he used also in one
of the movements, Divertimento. And I'm going
to move on to the first movement, preludio,
which combines the,
preludio serves as a toccata, a prelude, and
overture of the entire piece, which he wrote
very recent, he started those movements in 94
as 3 movements,
and he, year by year, he added, and then he
brought it at almost seven movements version,
and the last movement, preludio, was written in 2013,
but apparently he had already set up structure
in his mind that even though like over the 19
years period, he still had those ideas to use
in his first movements also,
which also, as a preludio, it served the
toccata and the entrance movements to the whole
piece, and even though it's written late,
all the other movements, materials, has been
introduced in the first movement. It's very
opposite to think that they're all in the first
movement actually,
even though it's written very late time, very
late year, and then very recently. So the
opening passage is a combination of 3 different textures,
he created collars and tremolo on C string,
arpeggiated groupings and accelerante on broken
chords. The sleek rhythmic and multivic texture
of the piece, which he created by using
chromatic ascending and or descending
quintuplets or sextuplets scales,
is achieved by using quick position changes in
almost all ranges of the cello. There are two
folk-like, those are the block chords, as I
mentioned before,
he used and every time he came on the piece, it
always introduced different materials, Multivic
and rhythmic elements. And there are two
folk-like rhythms,
it all of a sudden appears during that chaos,
actually I can call it chaos because it's all
over the cello, and all of a sudden there's a
total of two melodies, very audible.
And the serenade, there's a small change on the
program, the serenade is written as a third
movement, but it's a second movement actually.
It lacks the character of the traditional
serenade with soft, romantic, timbral
characteristics. On the contrary, this work
contains accelerating, arpeggiated and
chromatic passage outlining G and percussive
bowing effects.
Except for edgy natural and artificial
harmonics, Sul Ponticello, chromatic double
stops and number of tempo changes, there is
frequent usage of lute-like pizzicati,
which can be related to historical, the nature
of a serenade. The movement also includes a
variety of mixed meters and sudden rhythmic
changes present great challenges to the performer.
With the procedure of combining a variety of
manipulations of tempi with their metric
variances and the complexity of rhythmic
elements crossing the bow lines, Pedretzky
achieved a sense of misura effect in the
movement in a highly structured manner.
The chromatic conjoint lines occur by eight and
nine, which arrive to an implied D sonority in
left Amp Pizzicato and double stop harmonic at
bar ten.
These are chromatic injunctions in the middle.
It's right there. It's a backing counterpoint.
Actually, it's two melodic goes together with
the double stops.
And the outlining, it's chromatic on the top
and then another melodic goes triplets and the
half step also combines.
And this rhythmic motif always appear
everywhere in the movement. It's in different
versions. And these are Sul Ponticello, also
climax, bowing, different bowing structures,
the strikes, the strokes, actually, Arco
Battuto he used in the cold angel Battuto,
which actually, I believe it's important
because different sound colors he wants to create.
And actually, this is the climax. The whole
passage is the climax of the piece. Gets even
intense. So Serban, in the third movement, in
the old version of the music,
he marked on the top of the title is G, S, B in
Memoriam. And he used B, A, C, H monogram in
the beginning of an opening of the movement.
It starts with A, B flat, B natural. And the
stresses on the downbeats, I can say those are
the downbeats and then drives into the chords,
which is very usual structure in the Bach's
music too.
And also Bach's suite, Serban's. And this is
the also Bach monograms here. Actually, there
are two things at the end happening at once.
It's very interesting. B, A, C, H monogram is
happening in the top here on the one by one
half step motion.
And at the same time, this pizzicato is an E
minor pizzicato chord, which is a reminiscence
of Elgar opening chord. It's a very forte dynamic.
And then he goes with the music. Actually, he
sets up the melody of the entrance melody of
Elgar concerto at the same time.
It's not audible, but it's there. I was shocked
when I found out this. It was very interesting
thing for me.
And he put baroque and romantic periods at
once, at one line here. And another thing is
Tempo di boss.
It goes, of course, it's in his way, of course
it's twisted, but still the Bach's tempo is
there. It's a triple 3-8 meter and then
combined with outlining the bass notes.
I mean, stress on the downbeats, of course, all
the time, but I'm going to try as close as
possible because I tried many times throughout
the whole piece.
It's throwing me off. I mean, even though I
tried, let's say, scherzo, waltz, but still how
he wrote, how bowing directions are so
different than we are used to in the regular
structure of those titles.
It's throwing me off sometimes, it's too
contemporary. But also, he uses those left
hand, left finger tapping on here.
Also, Senza Arco, it's good, it's hearable
because the string is thicker and longer, it
resonates even more.
But this one, the second one, it comes on the
open-to-open strings, which they're very, very
strong strings, but F-Sharp, F-natural, D, and
the C string on the very bottom down string,
it's a low string, it's not hearable.
So I have to reduce and change the pressures of
my hands in order to be able to make the bottom
string audible and those most resonating
strings low.
And very, very awkward, this one is Arco
Battuto with both hair and wood together, but
it's a sul Ponticello and it's on the very high
register of the cello, which is a very muted,
very muffled sound.
Maybe that's the effect he wanted to create. So
I'm going to try as much as possible to make it
hearable also.
And this is the polonaise rhythm that it comes
all over the windows and everywhere. This one
is Allegro Congrovera, this is exactly the same
rhythmic and serenade and tempo evolves.
It all of a sudden changes the timbre, changes
the color. These are the motif elements also
binding the movements together.
And this is also in the polonaise section,
overlapped rhythmic variety, which, I mean,
it's not possible to follow one after another.
And even though there's a kind of a tempo
marking, but it's only giving me what is the
eighth note per beat, but because of the quick
shifts and changing registers constantly,
keeping the tempo is impossible.
So I had to create my own tempo in order to be
able to join those passages.
So I probably will fluctuate the tempo a little
bit between each of the blocks of rhythmical
variety. And this is Allegro Congrovera.
Also it's coming from his string trio, which he
used here. And every time it comes, it
introduces different character, different
rhythmic and melodic variety it's bringing.
And the third one is stressing on A, which is
driving in its climax and down. It's also the
same block chords.
This passage is a little bit complex because
it's combining all the percussive bowing
strokes at once and back to each other, and
it's kind of hard to adjust all of them at once
in order to be able to play.
So this one, one separate and the flying
staccato, and then Slur staccatos, and then
right after comes all the way natural
harmonics, which again shifting and adjusting
the bow speeds and bow placements and pressure.
And then right after ricochet, ricochet comes
and that left hand pizzicato, which he put
empty here, which meo Destra, means with the
left hand pizzicato, and also putting the
finger on the pitch and pizzicato with another finger.
So these are all at once, played at once, it's
very demanding actually. And those are ricochet
bowings everywhere in the piece, so every time
comes different varieties.
And this is Aria, which is the one movement
piece, one page piece in eight, which also is a
reminiscence of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 on the second.
Here you can see his first movement, the
Prelude, but he, the melody is in the here, is
the top, and then block chords interact those
rhythmical variety also, which goes with the
half-step motions.
And then, and he also finishes the piece, which
actually, with a higher, very high chords,
which almost on there's no fingerboard anymore,
which is also hard to maintain those chords,
which also sounds like artificial harmonics,
which finishes at the end, natural harmonics,
you will be hearing.
They, right after seventh movement, actually it
was third movement when it was written, in 94,
he wrote this piece, it's very fast motion, but
he, as far as I listened to his all kinds of interviews,
and listened to the quartet and how they play,
he emphasized that it's not, it doesn't have to
play that fast, which is, we watch it, it's 130
per bar metronome.
Also, shifting up and down the, play these
intervals, changing the strings and sporadic
finger positions, dealing with varying rhythmic
patterns in these phrases may require an under
tempo performance of this movement.
It is necessary to keep the bow on the bouncing
point and close to the bridge. Despite
constantly changing between separate and
slurred spiccato bowing gestures,
the Performer must maintain an accurate bowing
balance on each quarter, with the same length
and pressure for the entire movement, which is
really hard.
And also, here is, here it is, he starts with
the half step motion in the beginning, and then
later on in the middle of the beginning, bar 36
through, and he opens up the intervals,
and the last leap is the ninth interval, which
both using C string and, I found my way, it's
on the D, but it's lots of right hand up and
down motion.
And it brings A on A, it opens with G first,
and then this is like a exposition,
re-exposition in the middle, you will be
hearing many times it comes.
So this is the intervals gets even crazier
here, the thirds combined with the pedal note G
here, and it's, again, it's a very high register.
This one is, introduces the eighth notes, which
the first, I mean, quarter beat becomes even
faster, but he emphasized popo and Popo mezzo
vivace, which it gets slower and slowly gets slower.
And then those chords, he said, barocce, it's
already, I mean, you don't have to play
barocce, it's already there, it's very, also
clash, classic chords.
These are also circle of fifths, he uses a
circle of fifths couple of times, different
movements. This is one of them, scherzo, it
starts with E, which it happens during the
climax, which it's intense, it's very intense.
And then it starts with E, goes down to A, D, B
here, it's a pato left hand. It's now G over
here, and then C, it's a very long, long line,
and it's hard.
Now turn to the last movement, which was the
last movement also in his quartet, sorry, the
third movement in the quartet.
This one is also, combines the elements that
all the percussiveness and the timbral changes
with natural and artificial harmonics.
The D pedal note is at the end, it combines
with the left hand pizzicato, at the same time
playing a higher melody on the F, which, and
then left hand pizzicato on the Arco, so D string.
So it's very muffled and muffled sound. I'm not
sure he intended to do that, or it's, I don't
know, maybe he was just experimenting it.
So this is all my presentation about the piece,
so I hope you enjoy the piece.