Penderecki: Orchestral Works Volume 2: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5 Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Antoni Wit (Naxos 8.5544567).Penderecki: Orchestral Works Volume 2: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5 Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Antoni Wit (Naxos 8.5544567) Sorry, but I must start what will turn out to be quite a favorable review with what I fear many readers will take to be a petulant pet·u·lant adj. 1. Unreasonably irritable or ill-tempered; peevish. 2. Contemptuous in speech or behavior. [Latin petul little quibble QUIBBLE. A slight difficulty raised without necessity or propriety; a cavil. 2. No justly eminent member of the bar will resort to a quibble in his argument. : it drives me crazy ("Aha! I knew he was nuts all along!," the wire worshippers are probably saying to themselves ...) when producers place works on a disc in reverse chronological order. Maybe it's no big deal, but it certainly seems as if it would have been an even smaller deal to open this disc with the First (1973) rather than the Fifth (1992). Perhaps they were afraid that if auditioners chanced upon this disc in some store that somehow had Naxos discs available for audition before purchase (not a really likely scenario, unfortunately), the opening percussion percussion /per·cus·sion/ (per-kush´un) the act of striking a part with short, sharp blows as an aid in diagnosing the condition of the underlying parts by the sound obtained. sounds of the First may have been just plain too much for the average listener, and a sale may have gone down the tubes based on a bad first impression. The Fifth certainly opens impressively with an atmosphere of mystery and drama that is maintained throughout. The work is in a single movement, and its colorful scoring and coherent construction should appeal to a wide variety of tastes. The music sounds modern, and somewhat challenging, gut never harsh or forbidding. The First may be a little tougher sledding for many listeners (maybe Naxos really was justified in not starting off the CD with this work), with lots of percussion and plenty of eerie ee·rie or ee·ry adj. ee·ri·er, ee·ri·est 1. a. Inspiring inexplicable fear, dread, or uneasiness; strange and frightening. b. Suggestive of the supernatural; mysterious. See Synonyms at weird. string sounds, but overall it is great fun to listen to, although perhaps not a work that many listeners will want to play over and over. The engineering is not quite audiophile An individual who is very interested and enthusiastic about the sound quality of a stereo or home theater system. Quality audio components are designed to reproduce the audio without adding any distortion or coloration. quality, but it is certainly adequate to the task at hand, capturing the wide range of orchestral sounds that Penderecki puts into the score and his pupil Wit draws from the Polish musicians Female Vocalists
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