Gorecki: Symphony No. 3, "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"

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Review by John Schaefer

Polish composer Henryk Gorecki (pronounced Go-RET-skee) found himself with an unexpected worldwide hit with this symphony in the early 1990s — almost 20 years after writing the piece. The “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” ditches the usual complexity of 20th-century classical music in favor of 3 long, flowing melodic lines that unspool themselves over a slowly heaving body of strings. It’s utterly sensual and at the same time deeply spiritual. The texts, sung in Polish, are a medieval lament of Mary for her son Jesus; an inscription found scrawled on the wall of a Gestapo prison cell from a teenage girl to her mother; and a mother’s lament for a son missing during the Polish uprising in the disputed Silesia region after World War I.

Though inevitably linked these days with the so-called “holy minimalism” of Estonia’s Arvo Pärt or England’s Sir John Tavener, Gorecki’s 1976 piece preceded both by some years. It initially began to gain attention when used, strangely, as the soundtrack of a French film called Police. A subsequent Polish recording created no ripples, but a 1992 American release featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw sold a staggering million-plus copies. Other recordings have been made since, but while it’s an easy piece to enjoy, it’s a difficult piece to conduct. Moving so slowly, each of the three movements constantly threatens to collapse under its own weight. When it works, as it does here, the symphony provides a wonderful, creative tension that Donald Runnicles and the Atlanta Symphony handle with grace and assurance.