Form and Disposition

To describe Zbigniew Karkowski as an unconventional artist would be a massive understatement. The Polish composer pursued a radically anti-academic approach in his work, and his personal life up to his death in 2013 was no less iconoclastic. Karkowski composed the solo piece for percussion “Form and Disposition” – its title certainly apt – without ever having written a score for it. The piece was both preserved and further developed through live performances by Daniel Buess between 2008 and 2016, and subsequently by João Carlos Pacheco. Commissioned by the Sacrum Profanum festival in 2022, percussionist Aleksander Wnuk and composer Piotr Peszat created the first transcription of the work. They have created a new version that relies on digital processing, maintaining the extremely physical character of Wnuk’s performance while highlighting Karkowski’s interest in the textural qualities of electro-acoustic, ambient and noise music. In this interpretation by the exceptional percussionist Wnuk, “Form and Disposition” lives on in the spirit of Karkowski, in a state of flux and mutation. The work is imagined as a continuation of, and response to, Karkowski – a dialogue with one of the most radical artists of his time, opening up new perspectives on his output beyond his death.