This premiere really, the second premiere,
the world premiere because some is a news call.
I was asked by my publisher to reduce the orchestration because, you know,
at that time, especially in Germany, there was no limit as far as the money,
the concern for culture.
So, Lieberman told me, you can do what you want, many instruments you want.
I was young and I wrote with a huge orchestra, maybe a hundred musicians,
who has a hundred musicians now in the opera house in Europe.
I decided that I will write the piece.
But of course, I started to reduce the orchestration, which is easy,
but then, you know, after so many years, forty-five years,
I wanted to change a lot, actually.
The first chord I wrote was exactly 206 pages.
Now it's 351 or 52, so it's one-third, more than one-third, it's new.
Also, orchestration is new and I think it sounds much better and different.
And I read the Huxley book, The Davils of Lundan,
and it was a great fascination for me.
So, I also began to search and reading around the story, many books,
about inquisition, of course.
And also, I discovered something which I didn't have much idea about really,
the role of the church, especially in the 17th century, the 16th century.
I grew up as a very Catholic family in a small city in southeast South Poland.
Well, actually, the criticism against the church was not only allowed,
but it didn't exist at all.
It was a dogma.
And after this book, actually, which opened my eyes,
I changed and living in a very Catholic Poland,
to maybe 90%, they say 95, I don't believe maybe,
but there is really something like that.
I wanted to write a piece which is telling the truth.
And of course, this piece was also very much criticized by the church in Germany.
The premiere was in Hamburg and two days later, or maybe one day later, in Stuttgart,
the very Catholic city, and the bishop wrote very angry letters to the press.
The same happened in Poland, of course, after the premiere.
And it was in the same time, there was a premiere of Devil's in Rome.
So the Vatican wanted me to stop the performance.
I didn't do it.
I started to have a problem as a church, of course, being very Catholic,
but trying to tell the truth.
I was always doing something against, in the music as well.
My avant-garde was really very avant-garde,
maybe much more than other countries living in Poland.
Already in the time I was a student, we were rebelling.
We were rebelling and we heard some news about new music,
which is written in the West Europe.
We still were in a time of the 20s or 30s, as far as music is concerned.
Because of the electronic studio, which was established in Warsaw,
I went to the studio, I was working there for two years.
I heard the sounds of the electronic, which I never had before, of course,
and it helped me to develop my music.
I think my pieces, like Trinody and Polymorphia,
other pieces written in the beginning of the 60s,
were very much inspired by electronic, actually, at that time.
There was something, which happened in the whole Europe,
the young people wanted to be different, to write, to forget the past,
to build the future, writing different music.
I was writing the film music, especially for experimental movies in Poland,
in the 50s, in the beginning of the 60s, not the big movies.
No, no, I was writing only very, very interesting experiments, I would say,
using a lot of electronic at that time.
But later, my music was taken for the big Hollywood movies as well,
but this was not written, this was written as other pieces, which they took.
I gave permission so that Kubrick asked me to write the music for his shining.
I said, no, because I said I'm busy, but I gave him some suggestions of the pieces
he's supposed to listen to, and then he did and took this music.
And also, many, many others, like the Weider, now, cutting movie,
but this was also because my uncle was killed in cutting,
and his father was killed in cutting, so I wanted very much that my music would be in this movie.
I was living not at an easy time.
If I was, I would be born in New Zealand, maybe I would never write the Polish Requiem,
or pieces which were connected with the history, it was a war, of course not,
but this is my childhood.
The war, death was the main subject also in our family,
because we, the other uncle was killed by Germans in Warsaw,
another one was also killed.
So there always was somebody killed in the family,
and our house was in the middle of town,
but after the back of our house was ghetto,
I saw what really happened to the people there.
They were my colleagues, we played together,
and then one day the ghetto was made,
and then they were, you know, living there for a couple of months,
and then sent to Auschwitz, I don't know where.
Being a child or being very young, you never forget,
so I think that I had to write some music first to say on which side I am.
So I wrote this huge Requiem, which is two hours almost,
dealing with some historical moments like uprising,
like cutting, like the Maximilian Colbert dedicated to people like you.
I think this, I think I had to do it.
I wrote also about Auschwitz, near Zire, to the victim to Auschwitz.
I took the text, not from Auschwitz or not about Auschwitz actually,
but the apocalypses of the Johannes were just great literatures as well,
very powerful, still after 2,000 years.
No, I didn't change much really my music.
My music was changing very slowly, very slowly.
It began really when the time I was living,
but this has the musical background more than the other.
I used to live two years in Berlin,
and I was going every week to the Philharmonic.
My first fascination on the music, which I didn't know, was Brückner,
because Brückner was not played at all.
Until now, actually, very rarely is played.
I became very much involved in this music,
listening to the best possible performance of the Habat-Vokharian.
So my music changed.
It was exactly after the Davies of the Down.
I was lucky to know such a people, to be very close to the people.
Like, as extent.
First, I brought for him wine and concerto,
and he performed it in New York and in other cities in Europe.
Then I met Rostropovich, and we became very good friends.
I brought for him five pieces, actually,
and even he was already sick,
so he asked me to write the last piece he's going to play,
and I did.
It was four or five months before he died, really.
He played in the Musikverein Wien.
And Hans-Sophie Mutter, I knew her from the time in Berlin,
and she is a phenomenal musician,
as well as a virtuoso, of course.
So I brought for her the metamorphosen wine concerto,
because of such a great musician who played my music.
Of course, it helped very much in my music.
Sometimes the passages they were almost impossible to play, they do play.
So I feel that I can really develop something without any limit.
We were actually occupied by Russia for 45 years.
It was not direct, but it was.
There was no political possible without asking Moscow.
So there was a befriung, and the joy, of course, the avant-garde.
Not only avant-garde, even Slavinsky was forbidden,
because he was Russian, living in America, in a capitalistic country.
He was not played.
Even Bartok was the same.
He was living in New York. He was not played.
So we were...
This is hard to believe in such a time we have to live.
Artists don't need so much to be connected with a group.
We build a group, actually.
But we were separatists.
I knew very good, of course, Lutoslavsky was my friend,
but we didn't meet in discussing music.
No, no.
Also with Guretsky, who we met maybe five times in our life.
No, no.
I think the old artists I remember from the past
were really lonely, me too.
Now, because of the possibility to push something
and you hear at home everything you want,
become very easy and also there is not such a big difference
between the kind of musical language we are using
and the pop musicians are using, also the electronic.
I have three concerts now with Johnny Greenwood.
50,000 people were coming. Young, young people.
Very much enthusiastic.
Listening also, not only to Greenwood music,
but also to my music, which is not easy.
Music from the beginning of the 60s is really something.
So I think we are now much closer than we were 40 years ago or 30 years ago.
Now is a time there is no need to change anything.
I think to do it to make it better maybe, but not change.
Because we are happy, we are the member of the European Union.
We change for good now.
They are this popular, but it's not so important
that they were in the 60s or 70s.
