The Mazes
Krzysztof Penderecki discovered at one point that the metaphor of a labyrinth perfectly reflects his musical explorations. He created small and simple patterns of hornbeams and thujas in the Italian and lower gardens, but this was not enough. The crowning result of his fascination is the grand maze in the new section of the park, made up of 15 thousand saplings of European hornbeam which map out more than 4 kilometres of paths.
The composer commented, partly with tongue in cheek, that the labyrinth was meant for music critics. It is hardly a coincident that in the final scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, set in a snowbound maze, we can hear the Polish composer’s music.