Krzysztof Penderecki's compositions are played all over the world. DW spoke to his wife, Elzbieta Penderecka, about her husband's artistic legacy and the Beethoven Festival she initiated.
Elzbieta Penderecka, wife of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki
DW: On March 29, three years have passed since the death of your husband Krzysztof Penderecki. He is known far beyond Poland as a great composer. But what kind of person was he?
Elzbieta Penderecka*: I have spent almost 55 years at my husband's side, so I can say that he was not only a great composer, but also a great person with a big heart and a great personality. He had a sense of humor, he was sarcastic at times, but he was an extremely good person. He didn't know the word “hate”. And when someone did something wrong or did something against them, they said, “You know, you have to wait and see, maybe they'll change their minds”.
The Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki was one of the most important but also one of the most productive contemporary composers. He created more than 120 compositions, including 4 operas, 8 symphonies, but also film music for blockbusters such as “The Exorcist”. Now that he's gone, how do you intend to take care of his legacy?
I think there is still a lot of work to be done. Immediately after my husband's death, I decided that I would take care of it. I started organizing, checking, sorting. My husband was wonderfully organized. When I started to search in a rather large box that was standing next to the piano, I came across sketches for “Phaedra” by Racine, among other things. With the help of our friend, the brilliant young musician Jerzy Dybala, a suite from the unfinished sketches of the opera “Phaedra” for choir and orchestra and soloists was performed at the National Philharmonic in November, almost on my husband's birthday. And then there was a suite from the opera “King Ubu” which my husband had prepared during his lifetime and which was performed in Bytom. It will be printed by Schott Verlag.
This is the intangible, spiritual and artistic heritage. On the other hand, you and your husband founded the Krzysztof Penderecki European Music Center in Luslawice near Kraków. What will happen to this center and to your mansion in Luslawice?
Luslawice was sold, or rather, largely handed over to the Polish state, as my husband wished. The center opened in May 2013 after 16 months of construction with a concert hall for more than 600 people, which can be expanded to 950 people, even larger than the Philharmonic in Kraków, with excellent acoustics. My husband's dream was that it would not only be a European center, but also one where young musicians from all over the world would be trained.
Krzysztof Penderecki applauds Anne-Sophie Mutter at the opening of the Krzysztof Penderecki European Music Center in Luslawice, south-eastern Poland on May 21, 2013
What about the famous garden, the Arboretum in Luslawice, which was your husband's great passion?
Luslawice should be turned into a museum connected to the European Center, it should be possible to visit the place, the garden is already open to the public. I think this will bring the place to life. There are memorabilia of my husband there, the center has created an archive from my collection, there is a lot of correspondence, some awards, photos, films that my husband wrote the music for.
From the very beginning you supported your husband by running his secretariat. You organized his life, but at some point you wanted to step out of his shadow. How did your career as a music manager and festival director begin?
When I was asked to chair the program council of the European Capital of Culture in Kraków 2000, I felt the desire to create something of my own. My husband said: You should definitely do that, after all the years you've been with me. In fact, I accompanied my husband everywhere and it didn't bother me at all that I was living in his shadow. So I thought about doing a festival.
The Beethoven Festival. Why did you choose Beethoven as your patron saint?
Easter 1997 marked the 170th anniversary of Beethoven's death. I dreamed of organizing a festival where not only works would be performed, but sheet music would be shown, discussions would be held, musicologists and critics would meet about all these works and it would be something different than just going to a concert. The first festival lasted six days. There was also the first exhibition where we showed some Beethoven manuscripts from the Jagiellonian Library.
Each festival edition has a theme. What's the theme for this year?
This year's theme is “East and West”, so we chose music by Beethoven, but also by Japanese, Ukrainian, American and German composers and also by Krzysztof Penderecki. For example, we start with the Orchestra of the University of the Arts from Seoul, a Korean orchestra that will perform, among other things, the “Korean Symphony”, my husband's Fifth Symphony, and begin the concert with Beethoven's Egmont Overture .
Krzysztof Penderecki, here on a photo from 1980
What is planned for the finale of this year's festival?
The finale will be Krzysztof Penderecki's “Seven Gates of Jerusalem”. This, of course, is a great tribute to my husband's legacy and wonderful work. Incidentally, that wasn't my decision, because in this case I didn't want to be the one who alone decides on the final, but rather the entire program committee, our entire team, which has been with me from the very beginning, i.e. since 1996.
< p>“The Seven Gates of Jerusalem” is a play created for an extraordinary occasion…
It is unusual because the play was written to commemorate the 3000th anniversary of the Great Holy City of Jerusalem . It was commissioned by the then mayor of the city of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek. And imagine that he commissioned this work from a Pole. It was a very important work because it featured a Polish composer, a German conductor with Jewish roots, German choirs and an orchestra from Jerusalem. It is one of my husband's greatest works and we wanted to close the festival in Warsaw with this piece.
The interviewer was Bartosz Dudek.
Elzbieta Penderecka (b. 1946) is since 1997 artistic director of the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw. From 1965 to 2020 she was married to the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020).