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Krzysztof Penderecki, page 4

BD: Many times you conduct your own pieces, and other times someone else conducts them. Are you the better conductor of your works?

KP: No, no. If somebody is conducting, a good conductor, good musician, could discover something which I was not aware, even, in my music.

BD: Do you relish that?

KP: Yes, yes. Some good musicians were doing my music and I can learn from them, too.

BD: Do you then incorporate that into your own interpretation when you perform it subsequently?

KP: Yes, absolutely. I don’t like to do the first performance myself. I would rather give it to another conductor who is doing it. I can really then have a distance from my own piece.

BD: Then you come it to later?

KP: Yes. Because I wrote the piece, I know the piece, but maybe my concept is only one of the interpretations. Maybe it’s not good, because there are many, many possibilities to conduct a piece, the same piece.

BD: If you come back to your own score a number of years later, do you look for more of these possibilities?

KP: There is something that I think happens, not just to me, but also to many, many others. My imagination is much richer than I am really able to write. When I am tired, sometimes I am dreaming about the very particular piece I'm working on, and I wake up with some fresh ideas, and I am not able really to write everything down. Just some percentage of it. So conducting my own piece is going back to something which has been lost, something which you can’t really describe the color, especially the color of the orchestra, because the form is fixed. But there are many ways to conduct the same piece as far as the tempo is concerned.

BD: And they’re all right?

KP: Yes. It depends on the place. If I would do my piece in a church, the tempi are different than in a very dry acoustic. And the mood, also, yes.

BD: The mood at the time you wrote it, or the mood you are in at that performance?

KP: My mood in the moment I am conducting.

* * * * *

BD: You mentioned that you are sixty-six. Are you pleased with where you are at this point in your career?

KP: No, I think the whole life of the artist is always in progress, and I am never satisfied. Always I think in the beginning that I can maybe do better and different, especially different, but better too, of course.

BD: Always growing?

KP: Yes.

BD: Thank you for coming back to Chicago.

KP: Thank you. Thank you very much.

(The following brief biography is from the Polish Music Center of USC)

Krzysztof Penderecki was born in Debica on 23 November, 1933. He studied composition privately with Franciszek Skolyszewski and then (1955-8) with Artur Malawski and Stanislaw Wiechowicz at the State Higher School of Music in Kraków, where he also taught, being appointed its rector (i.e., president) in 1972 (in the 1980s the School was renamed "Academy of Music"). Penderecki's career had a very auspicious beginning. In 1959 he came suddenly to prominence when three of his works won first prizes in a national competition organized by the Polish Composers' Union (he submitted them under different pseudonyms). His reputation quickly spread abroad, notably through perfomances of such works as Anaklasis (written for the 1960 Donaueschigen Festival) and Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. The latter piece, as well as the Passion according to St. Luke of 1963-5, found an unusually wide audience for contemporary works, and Penderecki soon received important commissions from diverse organizations in Europe and the USA. He has also appeared widely as a lecturer and in 1972 began to conduct his own compositions.

Penderecki has won numerous domestic and foreign prizes including the First Class State Award (1968, 1983), the Polish Composers' Union Prize (1970), the Herder Prize (1977), the Sibelius Prize (1983), the Premio Lorenzo Magnifico (1985), the Israeli Karl Wolff Foundation Prize (1987), a Grammy Award (1988), a Grawemeyer Award (1992), and a UNESCO International Music Council Award (1993). He has honorary doctorates from universities in Rochester, Bordeaux, Leuven, Belgrade, Washington, Madrit, Pozna?, Warsaw and Glasgow. He is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Musikaliska Academien in Stockholm, Akademie der Kunste in Berlin, Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Academie Internationale de Philosophie et de I' Art in Bern, Academie Internationale des Sciences, Belles-lettres et Arts in Bordeaux, and the Royal Academy of Music in Dublin. In 1990 he received the Great Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1993 the Order of Cultural Merit (Monaco), and in 1994 an Austrian honorary distinction For Achievements in Science and Arts. In 1993 he was decorated with the Commander's Cross with the star of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

Penderecki's teaching career developed in Germany, the U.S. and Poland. He taught composition at the Volkwang Hochschule fur Music, Essen (from 1966 to 1968); in 1973-78 he lectured at Yale University in New Haven. In 1982-87 he was rector of the Academy of Music in Kraków, in 1987-1990 he served as the artistic director of the Cracow Philharmonic. Since his conductor's debut with the London Symphony Orchestra (1973), he has performed with prominent symphony orchestras in the United States and Europe, and he is chief guest conductor of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra in Hamburg. Apart from his own works, his conducting repertoire covers the works of composers from various epochs, with a preference for 19th-century and early 20th-century compositions. In 1997 he published a book entitled "The Labyrinth of Time. Five Lectures at the End of the Century" (Warsaw, "Presspublica"). In 1996 the performance of his piece Seven Gates of Jerusalem, commissioned by the city, commemorated the celebrations of "Jerusalem - 3000 Years" in Israel.

© 2000 Bruce Duffie

This interview was held in Chicago on March 9, 2000.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

Used by permission.

Listen to Allegretto from Symphony No. 2 performed by Texas Festival Orchestra here.