Customer Reviews

Górecki: Kleines Requiem für eine Polka, Op. 66 / Lerchenmusik, Op. 53

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I'm no great fan of the music of Gorecki and its "neo-simplicity". When I first heard his famed 3rd Symphony - and mind you, that was some 30 years ago, BEFORE the Upshaw-Zinman chart-breaking recording was made - my jaws dropped in disbelief. Was this really meant to be serious? Anyway I more or less gave up on Gorecki (except for his earlier, more avant-garde works). I purchased this one only because I found it cheap enough on the famous auction site, and these Philips-De Leeuw-Schoenberg Ensemble discs are becoming rarer and more expensive - when even they are offered: others include Vivier: Lonely Child / Prologue Pour Un Marco Polo / Zipangu / Bouchara, Janacek Elegie Auf Den Tod/&, Gubaidulina (not even listed here apparently; you'll find it on the European sister companies under ASIN B000009LJV), Ustvolskaya (same deal, see ASIN B000009LJX), Frank Martin (ASIN B000009LHU ), Stravinsky Sacred Choral Works.

Well, I really enjoyed it. Not that Gorecki has abandoned the neo-tonality and neo-simplicity and reverted to his former avant-gardism, but the music is truly radical in its own way - and sometimes even fun. The title of the first piece will give you a hint: "Little Requiem..." - now that's no fun, and you can expect to get a lot of the ritualistic, slow-moving and tonal Gorecki - "...for a Polka" - oh is that so? So, yes, you do get an alternation of the dreamy, ritualistic, time-suspended, tonal music with the soft tolling of bells (and it is not confined to the two outer movements) and of moments of doggedly repetitive and brassy vehemence (in the second movement) or of what Gorecki himself is quoted as dubbing "circus music" (third movement - and it is strident). It sounds like a mixture of Satie and Ustvolsakaya.

Gorecki's Lerchenmusik is a long piece for scored for piano, clarinet and cello - as David Drew, director of publications at Boosey and Hawkes, quoted in the liner notes, remarked, they are three of the four instruments that make up the ensemble of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, and Messiaen was a great admiration of Gorecki's. In many ways Lerchenmusik indeed evokes Messiaen, but it is much grimmer. As Messiaen's finale, Gorecki's first movement, which does without the clarinet for 8 and a half minutes, unfolds a slow-moving, brooding, requiem-like atmosphere, almost threatening with some kind of ominous pent-up menace, slowly repeating just a few pitches, until the eruption of Messiaen-like bird calls, almost frightening in their repetitive vehemence, making them sound like birds of doom rather than God's creatures of color. Ominous tolling ostinato chords from the piano underpin a wistful-to-vehement folk-like melody played by clarinet in the second movement, later joined by cello. All three instruments come together in the finale, with more alternation between the slow-moving (based on a plainchant melody) and the vehement; around the end (9:09), violently pounding piano chords (there's something of the overbearing God theme from Messian's 20 regards sur l'Enfant Jesus there) strangely "morphs" into the opening theme of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto. Why? That riddle is destined to remain unsolved.