Not Just a One-Tune Man

By Michael Walsh

WORKS: OLD PIECES AND NEW

COMPOSER: HENRYK GORECKI

LABEL: KOCH SCHWANN; ELEKTRA NONESUCH

THE BOTTOM LINE: The composer of the hit Third Symphony shows his other facets.

This year's most unexpected hit, classical division, has been Henryk Gorecki's 1976 Symphony No. 3, the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" -- a transcendentally dour, radiantly miserable minimalist cogitation on suffering and death for soprano and orchestra. Boosted by savvy marketing and extensive airplay, an Elektra Nonesuch recording of the symphony transformed an obscure Polish composer into a grand master.

But what of Gorecki's other music? Is he just a one-tune wonder, or does he have more songs to sing? Two new CDs provide the answer. Koch Schwann has issued Symphony No. 1, "1959"; Choros I, a major work for string orchestra from 1964; and the brief Three Pieces in the Old Style (1963) for strings. From Elektra Nonesuch come two recent string quartets, Already It Is Dusk (No. 1) and Quasi una Fantasia (No. 2). The result is a fuller, rounder picture of an uncompromising modernist who just may be the Bruckner of our day.

Gorecki's compositional language has changed over the years; it is a long way from the atonal pointillism of the Symphony No. 1 and the relentless brutality of the Choros I to the contemplative beauties of the Quasi una Fantasia quartet of 1991. The symphony, so typically "modern" in its harsh sonorities and deliberate absence of melodic appeal, is not much different from what Boulez and others in Western Europe were doing at about the same time; the Choros, meanwhile, is clearly influenced by Gorecki's countryman Krzysztof Penderecki, notably by the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima of 1960.

Yet despite the superficial differences in idiom among his works, what remains constant is Gorecki's unshakable faith. Like Bruckner's soaring Gothic symphonies, Gorecki's music is secure -- staunch in its Catholicism, sanguine in its magisterial technique and confident in its calm, unmannered directness of expression.

The performances, by conductor Roland Bader and the Krakow Philharmonic and the inestimable Kronos Quartet, are excellent. And for those looking to recapture the magic of Symphony No. 3, the delicious trio of miniatures, In the Old Style, is just the ticket at a tenth the length.