Reviewed by John Irvine

Occasionally we have the pleasure of reviewing a classical recording which truly stands apart from the crowd. This is such a recording, but for the wrong reasons. I can imagine the conversation between the record company and the composer going something like this, "Mr Gorecki, your Third Symphony has made you the best selling living composer ever, and by way of contrast we'd like to release an album entitled 'Pieces By Gorecki' which aren't very good, which you'd rather forget you wrote! Do you have any ideas what we should put on the album?" "My goodness me, yes! When I was a young man I wrote some duff stuff, some real turkeys I can tell you! Here's a list". And that's how this album was born. The only thing is, at the last minute the record company chickened out and decided to call it "The Essential Gorecki!" in an attempt to boost sales...Seriously though, this album is an attempt to chart Gorecki's progress from being an outstanding member of the Polish avant-garde in the late 1950s (while still a music student) to his discovery of the Polish folk tradition and his development of harmony and scale of work which culminated in the Third Symphony of 1976. Unfortunately his earlier works sound like exercises composition students are forced to write in order to graduate. "Epitaph"(1958) is a mere cacophony; "Collisions" (1960) deals with immense kinetic energy ricocheting from one part of the orchestra to another like a giant pinball machine, which had me rocketing from one side of the room to the other to hit the 'stop' button! "Refrain" (1965) is a more interesting piece -a slow drone of discordant strings punctuated by horns is allowed to create and develop an atmosphere over the space of 16 minutes. Strangely for a 1960s analogue recording without digital processing, the sound quality is very, very good, putting modern recordings to shame. Pity about the actual music, though.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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