The two works on this recording are separated by 35 years, during which time Penderecki made a decisive break with the post-war European avant-garde.

In the Magnificat, chilling instrumental clusters, spectral sounds and impassioned rhetoric unite with tonality and counterpoint to deliver a work of monumental emotional power.

Written to mark the 65th anniversary of the end of the Jewish ghetto in Łódź, Kadisz is among the most distinctive of Penderecki’s later choral works in the stark contrasts between drama and sombre reflection of its individual sections.

Antoni Wit studied conducting with Henryk Czyz at the Academy of Music in Kraków, continuing his musical studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Immediately after completing his studies he was engaged as an assistant at the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra by Witold Rowicki. From 2002 to 2013 Antoni Wit was the managing and artistic director of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. He has made over 200 records, and in 2012 he received a Grammy Award for Penderecki’s Fonogrammi, Horn Concerto and Partita (8572482), and six other nominations for CDs containing works by Penderecki and Karol Szymanowski.