In 1961, a new and difficult work for strings announced the arrival of a composer with a new and difficult name for non-Polish speakers to pronounce: Krzysztof Penderecki.

Having lived as a young man under Nazi occupation and then under Poland’s repressive and ultra-conservative Communist regime, it’s not surprising, perhaps, that as a young composer Penderecki developed an ultra-modern, rebelliously experimental musical style. The success of his “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” made Penderecki famous worldwide. Subsequent choral works, operas, and more experimental orchestral works followed for the next dozen years or so.

By 1973, however, he accepted a commission for a symphony and on today’s date that year, Penderercki himself conducted the first performance of his First Symphony, with the London Symphony at Peterbourough Cathedral in central England.  While his First Symphony remained in his aggressively experimental style, Penderecki would go on to write several more, each in much more conservative musical language, influenced by more traditional composers like Bruckner and Shostakovich.

"[My composing in this style],” explained Penderecki, “maybe goes a little back in time, but it goes back in order to go forward. Sometimes it's good to look back and to learn from the past."

Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933): Threnody for the Victims for Hiroshima (National Polish Radio Symphony; Antoni Wit, cond.) Naxos 8.554491

Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933): Symphony No. 1 (National Polish Radio Symphony; Antoni Wit, cond.) Naxos 8.554567