Word: gorecki
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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COMPOSER: HENRYK GORECKI...
This year's most unexpected hit, classical division, has been Henryk Gorecki's 1976 Symphony No. 3, the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" -- a transcendentally dour, radiantly miserable minimalist cogitation on suffering and death for soprano and orchestra. Boosted by savvy marketing and extensive airplay, an Elektra Nonesuch recording of the symphony transformed an obscure Polish composer into a grand master...
...Nobody can answer the questions 'Why now? Why this piece?' " says Gorecki (pronounced Goor-et-ski), 59, outside his apartment in Katowice, a grimy industrial city 185 miles southwest of Warsaw, where he lives with his wife Jadwiga and their two grown children. "Perhaps people, especially young people, find something they need in this piece of music, something they are seeking...
...shall find: since its release last April, more than 200,000 copies of the Nonesuch CD, featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta conducted by David Zinman, have been sold worldwide, 140,000 of them in Britain. An average classical album usually sells around 15,000 copies; the Gorecki recently sold 14,000 in a single day in Britain...
...brainchild of Elektra Nonesuch senior vice president Robert Hurwitz, 43. Hurwitz first heard the symphony nearly a decade ago in one of the three previously recorded versions, but upon encountering it again at a London Sinfonietta program in 1989, he determined to record it with Upshaw and Zinman. Gorecki was present for the sessions in London in May 1991. "There is a brutal truth and honesty to this performance," says Hurwitz, "because the performers surrendered themselves to the music...