Track Listing

1. Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 ('Symphony of Sorrowful Songs'): Lento - Sostenuto tranquillo ma cantabile
2. Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 ('Symphony of Sorrowful Songs'): Lento e largo - Tranquillisimo
3. Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 ('Symphony of Sorrowful Songs'): Lento - Cantabile semplice
4. Pieces (3) in the Olden Style, for string orchestra: I. Lamentation of the Holy Cross Monastery (15th Century)
5. Pieces (3) in the Olden Style, for string orchestra: II. Prayer of the 18-year-old Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna, inscribed on the wall
6. Pieces (3) in the Olden Style, for string orchestra: III. Folk-Song in Opole Region Dialect

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13765 in Music
• Released on: 1994-06-28
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .19 pounds

Amazon.com
The current Schwann catalog lists nine versions of Górecki's phenomenally popular Symphony 3 (Sorrowful Songs) composed in 1976. During his early career, Górecki embraced serialism and concentrated on instrumental sonorities in the vein of Messiaen. But in Symphony 3, his atonality disappears into a strategy of gently mounting thematic pitches, taking the strings through all possible registers. All three movements are marked lento, rare for any symphony. The Elektra Nonesuch recording has tended to be the bestseller, but give this Naxos release a try--it's just as good. The sound is excellent and the performances are above reproach. --Paul Cook

Customer Reviews

This would be the best version even at non-bargain prices
This disc is truly the best of both worlds: an amazingly cheap (cheap! not merely affordable) classical disc of a fascinating piece of musical magnificently performed. Despite the presence of premium priced versions of this haunting piece of music (as well as at least one other very good bargain version), Antoni Wit directing the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra manages to outshine the competition. I knew two previous versions of this before, the famous Nonesuch with David Zinman and Dawn Upshaw, and the Philips with Joanna Kozlowska undertaking the vocals.

I recommend this version over the alternatives for four reasons. First, the price is unbeatable. Second, I believe the performance is marginally better than its competitors. Third, the remarkable singing of Zofia Kilanowicz. Fourth, unlike some recordings of this symphony, the disc contains not only the symphony itself, but "Three Olden Style Pieces," which while not as interesting as the main piece are not without interest. In short, this disc features the best performance, is offered at the best price, and contains more music than its competitors.

I do want to question the logic behind one of the other reviews. A reviewer from Derbyshire has expressed his belief that this music is somehow intellectually inferior and that its effects can be as harmful as a drug. I'm sure this was meant hyperbolically, but even granting this, this seems to me to indicate some confusion. In fact, the point is confusedly made. He grants that in Ravel (in the Bolero, a piece that I like not only less than most of the rest of Ravel's corpus but far less than the Gorecki) repetition is effective, and also in Beethoven. Why Gorecki's use of repetition is supposed (I emphasize "supposed") to be less effective is not made clear. Is it because the symphony is popular? Personally, I find the symphony haunting. The music strikes the listener with the simplicity of simple folks tunes and simple masses. Yes, it produces a stunning emotional reaction and can be almost mesmerizing. I personally do not see how this is a negative.

Although this is almost without question the most popular symphony of the past few decades, it has been subject to some criticism because it isn't sufficiently "modern." I worked for a couple of years at Symphony Center in Chicago, where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performs. I was fascinated to hear backstage the intense hatred a significant number of the orchestra members had for the work of most recent composers. Someone like Gorecki, however, they liked. To me it seems like a perfect instance of the musicians themselves knowing that the emperors had no clothes. We have, I believe, at present something of a gap between fans of orchestral music and musicians on the one hand, and composers and composition teachers on the other. Contemporary orchestral compositions have been plummeting in popularity in the period following Stravinsky and other composers of the early twentieth century, and I would argue that the impossibility of enjoying these compositions on more than an intellectual level has been one of their greatest problems. I am not arguing that orchestral music should be anti-intellectual, but it can't be merely intellectual, as too much of it is.

this is important
i think gorecki's third was released for the first time back in '92 or so. according to _the economist_, it outsold madonna and stayed at the top of the pop charts for a time unprecendented by any symphonic recording. it should come as no surprise, i suppose, that even the artists of the then-burgeoning u.k. techno scene (such as beaumont hannant and pentatonik) were namechecking or sampling outright the third symphony, and with good reason.

gorecki's third is, to quote one of my old professors, 'heartbreakingly beautiful'. the raw, emotive phrases make the hair stand on end; the grayest windy-city mornings assume redemptively tragic proportions when this is your soundtrack.

i prefer this version to every other that i've heard, including the much-hyped, but kinda flat, nonesuch version with dawn upshaw. i'm uncertain about squishy notions like 'national character', but this presentation, performed by polish citizens, eclipses the exercise-like renditions of their american and british counterparts in depth and power. each movement develops slowly, taking its time and giving the listener an opportunity to find the right headspace. wit or whoever recorded this performance also downplayed the unnecessary french horn lines and gave more attention to the piano - the result is a much more striking and poignant piece.

emotionally useful at a time of bereavement
I only own the one recording, this one from Naxos. So this is not about the comparative merits of one performance over another.

I did note that one previous reviewer found the repetitive nature of the music very... toxic? Unless in my musical unsophistication I have made a mistake, the first movement is a canon. A contrapuntal form most recognizable to us in Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D. Repetition is central to the form, and I found the canon of the first movement as effective emotionally as Barber's Adagio, or Ravel's Pavanne. And the structure, first building up to the voice solo, then building down in reverse. Very solid, very effective use of the form, to my unsophisticated ears.

But the main point for me was the use I was able to put this music to, having recently experienced the death of a family member, with whom I had a difficult relationship.

The connection between mother and son, and the deep suffering that the death of one or the other brings. Not just the words, but also the mood of the music acted at mutiple levels and helped me to access the process of mourning in a way that nothing else had.

First there is the 15th century lamentation of Mary, desiring to suffer instead of her son. Next is a petition to Mary, taken from scratchings on a Gestapo jail cell wall, beginning "Mother, no, do not cry." And then in the third movement, the words of a mother mourning the death of her son... not just dead but also lost. Every stage of the grief process is there, in those few lines of the thrid movement, echoed and paralleled by shifts in key signature and melodic line.

This music works on so many levels that I want to use the word, synergism. An integrated whole. A modern masterpiece. Gorecki displays, in my opinion, intimate knowledge of the subject. Experiential knowledge, expertly presented.

Yes, it is an expression of sadness. But also an expression of progress and resolution. We are not left in despair. The mother of the third movement copes, and moves on. There is healing in this music.