One of the first episodes of Penderecki’s musical commentary on Polish history.
Polish Requiem: Agnus Dei
00:00
00:06:18
Polish Chamber Choir
Jan Łukaszewski, conductor
DUX 0694 (2010)
In the 1980s, Penderecki vividly reacted to current events in Poland, composing Lacrimosa for the 10th anniversary of the December 1970 shipyard workers’ massacre Gdańsk, and, soon afterwards, Agnus Dei – in just one day after the death of the much-admired Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. The music is simple and sophisticated at the same time, woven polyphonically of voices singing with increasing dynamic. Both these works were later incorporated into Polish Requiem, which is a kind of musical lexicon of Poland’s tragic 20th-century history.