Penderecki’s Second Violin Concerto, Metamorphosen (1995), was also his first collaboration with Mutter – channelling its varied emotional contrasts into an expansive yet cohesive single movement whose premise of continual variation is pursued with dogged intent. Here, as in the driving Allegro that follows, a tendency to discursiveness rather undermines any longer-term momentum such as the melancholy closing Andante itself fails to secure. The first two of its five movements unfold continuously as though a prelude and scherzo, their plaintive then sardonic character contrasted with the central Notturno, which interweaves somnolent and speculative passages. Coming 49 years after its succinct predecessor, the Second Violin Sonata (1999) is cast on a large scale. It is with the larger works that doubts emerge.
Very different yet no less effective is Duo concertante (2010), an energetic and even jazzy workout for violin and double bass rendered with an almost nonchalant ease. Most notable is the way in which variations in the theme’s stately tempo alternate with those of a wider expressive range, culminating in the extended 12th variation that intercuts such contrasting tempos in a ‘stretto’ of mounting intensity towards the grandly rhetorical close. Interestingly the pieces are presented in reverse chronological order – opening with La follia (2013), the composer’s contribution to a centuries-old tradition of variations on this indelible Baroque sarabande. Anne-Sophie Mutter has advocated contemporary music throughout her four-decade career and Krzysztof Penderecki above all, as this two-disc 85th birthday retrospective makes plain.
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