PENDERECKI. Kosmogonia for soprano, tenor, bass, mixed chorus and orchestra. De Natura Sonoris, No. 2 for brass, strings and percussion. Anaklasis for strings, harp, celesta, piano and percussion, Fluorescences. Stefania Woyto- wicz (soprano), Kazimierz Pustelak (tenor), Bernard Ladysz (bass), Warsaw National Philharmonic Chorus and Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrzej Markowski. Philips 6500 683 (£5.50). UK distributor: Import Music Service, 17-19 Stratford Place, London, W1N OAF.

If ever a Planetarium wished to appoint a composer in residence, Penderecki is an obvious candidate. His intensely atmospheric music is as capable of evoking the immense, awe-inspiring spaces of the cosmos as it is of reflecting the earthly horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The music makes most sense as a protest against pain, suffering and the general, modern lack of 'aspiration': yet it expresses these attitudes so directly as to seem a protest against argument itself. It's a style whose elements often seem to have emotional effects rather than musical functions.

The four works on this disc form two pairs. Anaklasis and Fluorescences are relatively early pieces, which helped to launch the 'post-serial' 1960s on waves of dense string clusters. Anaklasis now seems almost prehistorically primitive, but Fluorescences still has an impact through its sheer extravagance, a fantasmagoria of improbable timbres and inconsequential actions.

Kosmogonia and De Natura Sonoris No. 2 date from the early 1970s—not the best years for Penderecki by a long way. In the first, the historically-minded listener can sense echos of the urgent sermonizing of the St Luke Passion; in the second, anticipations of the more abstract and integrated designs of the Symphony of 1973. Given the character of his more recent music, it may well be that Penderecki himself now regards these earlier efforts as false starts, or at best as understandable reactions to the confusion and profusion of post-war trends. But students of the period, as well as of a composer whose influence is as undeniable as his prominence, will find this a revealing disc. The performances on this spacious 1974 recording are uninhibitedly dramatic. A.W.