Henryk Gorecki: Symphony 3 "Sorrowful Songs"
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Free Music Notes for Henryk Gorecki: Symphony 3 "Sorrowful Songs"
Free Music Review: An Unbelievable Piece of Music
Hit: 1 Stars
I just heard this symphony yesterday for the first time and I couldn't believe my ears. It is without a doubt one of the worst pieces of music I have ever heard. The music droned on and on and kept repeating the same theme over and over. Dawn Upshaw has an attractive, even alluring voice but I couldn't wait until the piece was over. I have heard her sing other music which I found thoroughly enjoyable. I can't believe someone in their right mind could compose such a horror as this. If I have to listen to this piece ever again, I will become a mental patient. For those who claim to like this music, I say God bless you!Free Music Review: Beautiful and moving
Hit: 5 Stars
From the opening strings to the coda you journey through an emotional landscape. Really one of the best symphonies of the last 100 years.Free Music Review: The Nap Disk That Started It All
Hit: 5 Stars
Ahhhh Gorecki! Ahhh Upshaw! The musical marriage of these two talents provides us the first true napper's delight. This disc is rarely far away from the player in my listening room, "The Womb," and has yet to provide a restful sleep. I think the furthest I've ever made it through the first movement was 4:12, and that was only because the phone rang around 2:16 and it took me almost a full two minutes to recover and be lulled away. Some nappers may be shocked at the rather short playing time of this disc, but in this day and age of programmable CD players, just hit "repeat" and sleep away the afternoon! Ahhhh! Bliss!
Robert Lewis
Free Music Review: Unique Simplicity Illustrates a deeper Sorrow
Hit: 3 Stars
As a composer and musician well acquainted with the work of Henryk Górecki, familiar enough perhaps to allow the free convention of using only his last name, it gives me great sense of pleasure to impart my thoughts on the most popular of his large scale works. But before I continue, I will amorously confess now that this particular recording has always disappointed me copiously after I became besotted with another recording by Zofia Kilanowicz and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Despite its `budget' quality (replete with a highly audible background hubbub of coughs and creaking stools), there is for me rarely a promising counterpart for the radiance of Kilanowicz's devastatingly authentic voice. Kilanowicz bows with a beauteous humility, tears out her truly despairing heart and exhales every movement with an effortless strength as if it were her very own dying breath. Upshaw's effort is evidently different. Lighter perhaps, or more technically precise even, but largely it still retains a disappointing weakness.
Generally, Her intonation and pronunciation is too crystalline and calculated for what should be, in my eyes, a naturally irrepressible emotional inundation. To understand what is really crucial for the soloist, one only has to consider the blood in which all of the text is symbolized. Similarly one must regard the undulating strings which haul and sigh like some vast ocean of tears at the command of a mothers sorrow, her voice, soaring and echoing in an inconsolable, universal mourning.
Alas, the London Sinfonietta do a predictably good job but still I fail not to wince as upon the most integral climaxes of each movement, Upshaw cruelly bends her notes with an over-controlled operatic wistfulness inappropriate for both the context and a piece highlighting the Post-war modernist era.
But enough! In order to make some valuable imprint upon this page I do not wish to make mere comparisons in sound quality or to disgrace Upshaw's otherwise crystalline demeanour.
It is the sublime perpetuity of this divine composition that entices and ensnares the listener into vast drifts of nostalgic sorrow....
Imagine if you will a blithe child playing alone in the subtle serenity of a Polish Winter. As he rolls a ball of glittering ice between his tiny mittens and goes to throw he is, all of a sudden, startled by an effervescent bloodstain in the snow beneath his feet.
This omnipresent statement by Górecki on behalf of the victims of the Holocaust and indeed the anguish of the Mother of Christ is somewhat unmatched by anything else (bar his Miserere for scalic purposes) of the composer's work and clearly stands as an island, or rather a plateau at which no note, no mark in the near perfect score is conducive to opposition.
Free Music Review: As Emotional As Music Gets
Hit: 5 Stars
I certainly don't have the skills to write a critique of classical performances - but I know what sounds amazing to my own ears, and Gorecki's 3rd draws you in and captivates you like no other music I have ever heard.The piece is broken down into three movements - Sostenuto Tranquillo Ma Cantabile opens the symphony - this portion is dominated by a 15th century Polish Prayer, sung by the ethereal Dawn Upshaw (with an incredible soprano voice), which is enveloped in strings that sound both maudlin and lush. The entire piece is incredibly soft, yet deeply stirring. This is the portion of #3 that is at the center of the movie "Fearless", one of a number of Hollywood productions that have used Gorecki's Third as a theme.
The Second and Third Movements ("Tranquillisiom and Cantabile Semplice) rework the central themes, and instrumentation of the First movement - Upshaw's heavenly vocals resurface in even more desperate pleas, and the strings slow in tempo, making the emotional effect of the piece even more stirring. One thing that is absolutely captivating about this piece is the way that the strings command your attention without being loud or overbearing.
It's impossible not to be deeply moved by Gorecki's Third. And this recording, with the London Symphony and the incredible Dawn Upshaw is an absolutely perfect recording.