Górecki
Complete Works for String Quartet
Silesian Quartet
Chandos CHAN20383(2) 124:35 mins (2CD)
Clip: Gorecki - Five Kurpian Songs, Op. 75. I. Hej, z gory, z gory!
The belated success of Górecki’s Third Symphony was possibly more of a curse than a blessing. Dawn Upshaw’s 1992 recording suddenly skewed perceptions not only of the 1975 ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ but indeed of Górecki’s wider output. Although spirituality was always a part of Górecki’s make-up, so was a strong vein of Polish intellectualism. He began as a tough avant-gardist, as any complete survey of his music reveals.
When it comes to his works for string quartet, that survey begins about halfway through his career – dating from 1988, the String Quartet No. 1 predates the composer’s worldwide fame. ‘Already it is Dusk’ owes something to Bartókian tradition in its processing of folk elements from Górecki’s beloved Tatra mountains, while the prayer of its title, taken from a Polish renaissance motet, provides the other main strand.
They are perfectly blended by the Silesian Quartet, Górecki interpreters of long standing who play with a mixture of stillness and attack.The three numbered quartets, unquestionably masterpieces, are predominately slow yet very different. The Beethovenian title of No. 2, ‘Quasi una fantasia’, is enigmatic but there are quotes from Bach and Bernstein. It receives an incisive performance, and there is even more searing intensity in No. 3, ‘…songs are sung’, a work lasting over 50 minutes and consisting of four slow movements ranged around a brief central scherzo, with some sonorities found nowhere else in the quartet literature. The premiere recording of the Five Kurpian Songs, in the composer’s own transcriptions of his unaccompanied choruses, brings this outstanding release to a haunting close. John Allison