Misterioso

Description

Misterioso by Krzysztof Penderecki for flute and piano.

Duration: 2:00

Krzysztof Penderecki (b.1933) published this piece in 1963 as a contribution to the flute method Skola na flet by Eugeniusz Towarnicki, considered the first Polish flute method. Misterioso (dated to 1954 or 1955) is one of Penderecki’s first serious, successful attempts at composition  and, first and foremost, it is stylistically different from his other works.  Those two minutes of music surprise with their impressionist atmosphere, more akin to Debussy’s Syrinx and – because of the selected intervals and the piano part – to Lutosławski’s Orthodox Church Bells than to any other among Penderecki’s works. The music seems suspended in time. The economical use of resources – thin texture, an accompaniment in high registers and piano dynamics that initially supports only single tones of the flute – creates the effect of hypnotic attraction, enhanced in the last section by denser rhythms. In this new texture, the movement of the music gradually subsides.