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Gorecki - Symphony No.3: Sorrowful Songs
from: Nonesuch

List Price: £15.99

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0075597928228
Label: Nonesuch
Manufacturer: Nonesuch
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Nonesuch
Release Date: July 06, 1992
Studio: Nonesuch
Sales Rank: 3623
MPN: 79282

Disc 1:

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
This album, which catapulted Polish composer Henryk Górecki to into the international spotlight, takes texts born in pain and turns them into statements of affirmation through the use of music that ebbs and flows in mystic minimalism. The clear voice of soprano Dawn Upshaw, singing the Polish texts, is a large part of the success of this particular recording, but the music, contemporary without either dissonance or movie-music mawkishness, clarifies and uplifts the words. This is a moving and essential element of the modern repertoire. --Sarah Bryan Miller

From Amazon.com:
You gotta have this. After all, everyone else does, right? This was the classical music phenomenon of the 1990s. An obscure Polish composer writes a symphony setting texts all dealing with the subject of sorrow or oppression. It's a very long symphony, too, and scored almost entirely for string orchestra, mostly very slow and very quiet. And it sells millions of copies and the astonished composer gets rich beyond his wildest dreams (and good for him!). So the record companies rush out to record more of his music, only none of it sounds like this symphony, so nobody buys it, and his star wanes once again. That's life, I guess. --David Hurwitz

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Beautiful
I can't judge this from a musicians point of view, or from anything apart from that this music connects with some bit inside of me that I can't explain in technical language.

Sorrowful yes, you certainly feel that raw emotion from this album. It is also very peaceful and grounding - not great over-worked symphony that makes you wallow in your own depression. Very simple and beautiful.

All I can say is that this music connects with some inner part of me and that I love it. It's rather personal and you should take a listen to it before you buy it - but I'm sure you'll love it.

Rating:

- You suffer more than these women, you die
This symphony is poignant because it is the lamentations of three women. It is so rare to have the direct lamentations of three women, of women as for that. Most of the time such lamentations are indirect, captured through the eye and the pen of a man of some sort. Anne Franks are rare in this world. And Maries are just as little numerous. The first woman is this Mary herself expressing her sorrow on Jesus and his death. She wants to take over the wounds and the suffering. The second is the prayer of an eighteen year old girl in a gestapo cell in Poland where she must have lived her last days and hours, a prayer to the intercessor - Mary again - to help her live her death through. The third one is that of a mother who has lost her son to the ... Read More:

Rating:

- Essential listening

This is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard.

I am not an expert in classical music but this piece seems to have a universal appeal.

The middle part of the symphony `Lento e Largo' will be familiar to many as it was the soundtrack to a recent excellent BBC documentary on the Nazi's final solution, and an abridged version features on many classical chill out compilations.

But it really deserves to be heard in full and in context with the other pieces which are beautiful in their own right. I now listen to the third part, Lento: Cantabile-semplice, most.

It is worth knowing that the words to the middle part are derived from words inscribed by a prisoner ... Read More:

Rating:

- First Rate Service ...
I'm now listening to the second hand CD which arrved only 2 days after placing the order. Many thanks.

Rating:

- A great performance of a masterpiece
This is the music of heartbreak, sorrow and redemption, echoing Polish history in the twentieth century. Its centrepoint, sung with soaring ecstasy by Dawn Upshaw, is a prayer to Mary by one of the victims (who thankfully survived) of Gestapo persecution. It has also become associated with the Holocaust (it was sung by Isabel Bayrakdarian in the recent Auschwitz commemoration).

My only reservation with the work is the last movement, perhaps rather too long and anticlimatic after the intensity of what has come before. But listen to the simplicity and spiritual quality of the first movement, the two orchestral parts of mirror each other; and the radiance of the prayer that follows, and reflect again on the dark days of the 1940s ... Read More:

Music : Gorecki - Symphony No.3: Sorrowful Songs