Krzysztof Penderecki

• Born: November 23, 1933, Dębica, Poland
• Died: March 29, 2020, Kraków, Poland

Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio

• Composed: 1993
• Premiere: August 13, 1993 in Lübeck, Krzysztof Penderecki conducting
• Duration: approx. 15 minutes
  

Krzysztof Penderecki’s Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio represents an important milestone in his compositional development, both in terms of his chamber music oeuvre and his evolution away from the chaotic musical language of previous works. Commissioned by the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and premiered in Lübeck in 1993, the Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio falls into the composer’s chronology at the point where his synthesis period was acquiescing to a more cohesive idiom. Of the final movement of the quartet, titled Abschied (“farewell”), the composer writes: 

The question should be asked: a farewell to what? Maybe to some kinds of music, yet not necessarily the final farewell. There have been periods of time in my life when I would become interested in one type of music and then I would return to some other type. Recently, this mischievous goblin which has been always present somewhere in my music and my personality has calmed down, giving way to lyricism and concentration. The time has come to retreat into privacy again, to leave the turmoil.

All four movements draw the listener toward the city of Vienna. A performance of Viennese composer Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major (D. 956, Op. posth. 163) had left a deep impression on Penderecki and motivated him to conceive the first movement and the serenade. The restlessness of the cello line and the unison violin/cello melody in Schubert’s quintet are reflected in the opening and in the fourth movement of Penderecki’s composition. The second and fourth movements bear telltale signs of other successors of Vienna’s musical heritage: Arnold Schoenberg in the scherzo and Alban Berg in the Abschied.

Penderecki had originally conceived the Quartet as a work of seven movements, which accounts for the idiosyncrasies of proportion among the four movements that constitute the piece in its final form. Indeed, it is the Abschied that anchors the Quartet. Clocking in at eight minutes, it is as long as the other movements combined. In its opening 16 measures, the composer unifies the work by reiterating motives from the previous three movements. A lyrical clarinet line leads into a violin cadenza, followed by the barest outlines of a recapitulation. Finally, the composer permits an inkling of tonal resolution as the cello settles onto a low F pedal and the work draws to its sublime, ethereal “farewell.”

—Dr. Scot Buzza