Word: gorecki
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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...
...what of Gorecki's other music? Is he just a one-tune wonder, or does he have more songs to sing? Two new CDs provide the answer. Koch Schwann has issued Symphony No. 1, "1959"; Choros I, a major work for string orchestra from 1964; and the brief Three Pieces in the Old Style (1963) for strings. From Elektra Nonesuch come two recent string quartets, Already It Is Dusk (No. 1) and Quasi una Fantasia (No. 2). The result is a fuller, rounder picture of an uncompromising modernist who just may be the Bruckner...
...Gorecki's compositional language has changed over the years; it is a long way from the atonal pointillism of the Symphony No. 1 and the relentless brutality of the Choros I to the contemplative beauties of the Quasi una Fantasia quartet of 1991. The symphony, so typically "modern" in its harsh sonorities and deliberate absence of melodic appeal, is not much different from what Boulez and others in Western Europe were doing at about the same time; the Choros, meanwhile, is clearly influenced by Gorecki's countryman Krzysztof Penderecki, notably by the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima...
...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...