Album: Krzysztof Penderecki and Jonny Greenwood, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima/Popcorn Superhet Receiver/Polymorphia/48 Responses to Polymorphia (Nonesuch)

 

Andy Gill
Thursday 08 March 2012 20:00 EST
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Jonny Greenwood's debt to Penderecki is clearly acknowledged in this pairing of the two composers' works.

Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima establishes the tone, its shrill discords and furtive rustlings furnishing a prickly emotional patina, in which the shifts from dissonance to consonance wield a powerful impact. Similarly smeared glissandi characterise Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver. The melancholy mood pervades throughout, into the itchy, insect flurries of Penderecki's Polymorphia, for 48 strings, and Greenwood's 48 Responses To Polymorphia.

DOWNLOAD THIS Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima; Polymorphia; 48 Responses to Polymorphia

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