Henryk Górecki

Henryk Górecki spent nearly his whole life in the industrial region of Silesia in southern Poland, teaching for years at the music academy in Katowice. He began as a fierce modernist, but in the 1970s his music slowed down and opened up, turning toward simple chords, old Polish church melodies, and long, patient repetition.

Out of that change came the Symphony no. 3, the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," three slow movements for soprano and orchestra setting laments, including a prayer scratched on a Gestapo prison cell wall by an eighteen-year-old girl. Written in 1976, it found a modest audience until a 1992 recording with soprano Dawn Upshaw unexpectedly sold over a million copies, an almost unheard-of feat for a living composer's symphony.

That Symphony no. 3 is where to start, and there is no need to hurry: let its long arcs unfold at their own pace.