Henryk Górecki: Symphony No. 3

The classic music station Catalonia Música celebrates its 30th anniversary. This 3CD edition brings together thirty years of history, not only of the station but also of other musical events that have taken place over these years, as well as news from other areas, which have as much to do with the art as with everyday life. As a musical memory, it offers a collage of headlines that summarizes three decades: each record includes ten years: from May 10, 1987 to May 10, 2017. The listener will travel through more than thirty large-format recordings. historical value, accompanied by some of the most reputable interpreters and directors: Pablo Casals, José Cura, Joyce DiDonato, Angela Gheorghiu, Henryk Gorecki, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Herbert von Karajan, Rafael Kubelik, Alicia de Larrocha, Sir Neville Marriner, Yehudi Menuhin, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Riccardo Muti, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Mstislav Rostropovich, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Mark Turner, among others.

Henryk Gorecki (1933-2010) became best known for his Third Symphony, the ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ that became a hit in the 1990s, tapping into a new hunger in the listening public for serious new music that was nonetheless melodically inspired and spiritual in sensibility. These qualities can be readily discerned in much of the rest of his small and fastidious output. The Kleines Requiem für eine Polka (1993) is itself at once a profoundly serious work and a curiously elusive one, a blend of warm expressive directness with almost Brechtian alienation. It is scored for a chamber ensemble: like Henze’s late masterpiece, it is an instrumental Requiem, in which words are felt to be otiose to the direct expression of grief and consolation.

The essay in the program booklet for this release of Górecki's String Quartet No. 3 (…songs were sung), makes much of a supposed caesura in Górecki's creative output following the phenomenal success of Nonesuch's 1992 release of this Third Symphony, with soprano Dawn Upshaw, which elevated him practically to the level of a pop star. The essay implies that his meteoric rise to being one of the most famous and popular contemporary composers may have produced a creative crisis that caused him to wait until 2005 to finally deliver the score of his Third Quartet, which he had written in the winter of 1994-1995. In fact, Górecki's sudden notoriety seems to have had little effect on his creativity; between 1993 and 2004, he wrote 16 opus numbers.

Polish composer Henryk Górecki, whose popularity exploded after the success of his Third Symphony, had an interest in and talent for chamber music throughout his long career. It was the Kronos Quartet that provided the impetus and was to commission and premiere each of the composer's three string quartets. Like any of Górecki's works, inspiration is drawn from composers of the past (particularly Beethoven), literary verse, and Polish folk music. Górecki transforms each of these muses into works of his own unique musical language that purposefully explores dissonance, contrasting textures and rhythms, and extremes of both dynamics and tempo. This Hyperion album brings together the three string quartets …..

Mike D. Brownell @ allmusic