Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki was a Polish composer and conductor. His best-known works include Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Symphony No. 3, his St Luke Passion, Polish Requiem, Anaklasis and Utrenja. His oeuvre includes four operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works.
Penderecki in 2008
Penderecki between 1980 and 1990
Krzysztof Penderecki and Władysław Bartoszewski in 2011
Krzysztof Penderecki conducting the Argentine National Symphony Orchestra, 2015
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, also translated as Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, is a musical composition for 52 string instruments composed in 1961 by Krzysztof Penderecki. Dedicated to the residents of Hiroshima killed and injured by the first-ever wartime usage of an atomic weapon, the composition won the Tribune Internationale des Compositeurs UNESCO prize that same year.
Atomic cloud over Hiroshima, 1945