The greatest contemporary composer, musician and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki visits Minsk for the first time!

Today Penderecki is one of the most performed and esteemed contemporary composers that got world fame and whose list of music prizes, titles and awards is really enormous. He is an honoured member of the Wiener Musikverein where his portrait is hung together with the portraits of Schubert, Brahms, Mravinsky and Jansons.

Over the years, Krzysztof Penderecki has retained the status of not only the most in-demand, but also the highest-paid composer in the world. By the order of the UN he wrote a holy composition, the opera in two parts “Paradise Lost”, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the USA. In 2008 he was chosen as a composer to write the music for the Opening Ceremony of Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

On the 7th of October in Minsk the listeners will have an opportunity for the first time in Belarus to hear the oratorio “Seven Gates of Jerusalem” by K. Penderecki, a composition, which he dedicated to the 3000th anniversary of Jerusalem and wrote in 1997 by the order of the local government. In this composition he combined canonical texts from the Old Testament with avant-guard style in music.

In one of his interviews Penderecki mentioned that conducting activity distracts him from composing and this made him reduce twice the number of his concerts. Still, the composer agreed to take part in the concert with the State Symphony Orchestra of the Republic of Belarus on the 7th of October in Minsk.