Customer Reviews

Gorecki: Kleines Requi / Concerto for Harpsichord & String Orchestra / Good Night

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This CD offers a broad range of styles that showcase Gorcki's talent as a composer. The three pieces on this CD have something for everyone.

The Requiem starts out slow and sublime and as soft as his 3rd Symphony, then gradually builds up, abruptly changes tempo, and reels into a fast polka in two. The polka is just marvelous, sounding demented and joyous at the same time. Repeated notes in dissonance underlying a melody played on violin and clarinet a half step apart makes for a suprisingly delightful and fun time. Then, after the polka, the sublime takes over once more and we are calmed again.

Most of Gorecki's music has a shape like a bell curve - start out soft and slow, build up, and end up soft. The harpsichord concerto is all build up, and it is excitement through and through. One can easily imagine little goblins running around the notes of the keyboard. This piece is upbeat and really fun, and you could easily imagine it being the score for some scary movie.

If the concerto is all build up, then Good Night is all sublime. This piece is slow and somber and there is no big climax. Set for solo piano, solo flute, and solo voice, Good Night is soothing enough for a baby. This piece is about half and half dissonance and traditional harmony, and it blends together very nicely.

This is a superb recording for any Gorecki fan, or anyone looking for something different.

This CD contains some of the best compositions by Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki. Its definatelly one of my favourite CDs. And anybody who says this music is not great must be a totall ignorant as far as contemporary classical music is concerned. "Kleines Requiem.." is a grave and very intense composition. "Concerto for Harpsichord..." is probably the most widely played modern harpsichord concerto since Manuel de Falla's. Writen for and dedicated to Chojnacka , the concerto is addressed to her specific personality and musicality. Gorecki's music is brilliant and unique! - if you love contemporary classical music - you WILL love this CD. Highly recommended!!

Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka is my favorit work of Gorecki.
We were at the Dutch premiere of this piece in Amsterdam at the Berlage-Building.. (also a premiere of Gubaidulina that night, both were there!!) Quite some time ago now, but a strong memory.. And it went straight into the heart!! (Conductor Reinbert De Leeuw..That man is so GOOD!!)
I like the sadness, the building-up and the nice waves of Polka-music coming trough, memory-fragments..lifting the music trough time,,,oooow!!
There is something basic, allmost primitive in Gorecki's way of writing, he is going straight to the point of the feelings that he wants to express and uses everything that is needed to get there.. Still,there is subtlety, but not in the way of Gubaidulina, where every sound is measningfull and woven. Gorecki gets closer to direct connecting to his heartfeelings, less observing, more ploughing, there clearly is Hurt to be expressed, and the hurt is connected to the hurt we all feel coming with life..
Have also once seen a very impressive dance-piece of shadow-dancing with fading and growing shadows based on Symphony No.3, The Symphony of Sorrowfull Songs, that will probably stay his best-known work.. But, to compensate the deep sorrow of No.3, just please also listen to this polka-thing.. Such a precious beauty!
There was one person giving only 1 star to this music..so sorry for him..,
but understand he owns it.. May I suggest to listen again, just the 'Kleines Requiem'( although the 'Good Night' sung by Dawn Upshaw is a nightsong to want to hear every good night..),close your eyes, sit and relax, stop thinking or wanting to understand or compare, let yourself go into the sound.., be touched..and have a warm glowing light of cheer in the chest..!

Gorecki's style in most of these pieces is minimalist, focusing on the repetion, with variations, of certain short motifs. There is a relentless rhythmic energy in the faster pieces, and a painful lyricism in many of the slower ones.

This is not easy music, as the compositions are uncompromising in their emotional honesty. The rhythms of the Harpsichord Concerto conjure up visions of the hectic pace of commerce in the contemporary economy, while Good Night envelops the listener in its introspective sadness.

Unlike some earlier 20th century music that seemed to draw mainly on dogma or an inhumane ideology, Gorecki restores individual human spiritual experience to its rightful place in music.

The performances are excellent as well. Elzbieta Chojnacka's harpsichord playing is particularly remarkable for its sharp, percussive, machine-like effects.

Kleines Requiem für eine polka written in memory of the composer' s mother in 1971. It's work of intimate mood evidently of introspective character with outbursts of absolute meditation, exacerbated concentration and restrained rage, enrooted in the innermost church-song and folk songs traditions.
The second movement is an obsessive of remarkable minimalist character. The fourth movement -Adagio Cantabile- reminds us powerfully to one of the most known folk songs previously employed by Bartok in his famous Rumanian Folk Dances loaded with serene calmness and nocturnal character.
It was recorded on February 12, 1994 at Henry Wood Hall, London.
The Concerto for harpsichord and string orchestra is very brief. The first of the two movements is a lively and obsessive melody with anguishing atmosphere; the last one is equally tense but dynamically stronger and minimalist approach.
It was recorded on December 17, 1994 at All Saints Church, Surrey, England.
Good Night is a very poignant piece in memoriam of Michael Vyner dead on Ocotber 20 1989, the sketch composition was completed on 19 February 1990 and the definitive score on March 9 1990. this work is for Soprano, alto flute, 3 tam-tams and piano.
Recorded June 5,1995 at Henry Wood Hall, London.

Take the Reichian 16th-note ostinato (or the industrial equipment equivalent, the sledgehammer), minimal melodic development, and the sonic capabilities of a modern orchestra in heavy hands, and you've got some difficult listening ahead of you, friend.

As this CD contains a sampling of different types of symphonic forms - long sonata, a concerto, I would consider it a suitable representation of the composers body of work. For my ears, I don't hear music that merits recording. I hear a mediocre composition students senior project, hastly constructed due to his focus on his drumming in his rock band, not on study. In fact, as a harpsichordist, I would be embarassed to play the instrument in his Harpsicord Concerto, insinuating that he even came close to the capabilities of my instrument. Think Yanni.

My guess is that Gorecki fans would explain to me that my vehemence is exactly what the composer intends, or that I don't understand his work or where he's coming from. My response could only be that I pass on music that requires clairvoyant connection with the composer and doesn't stand without explanation.