Manchester Collective / Mahan Esfahani - Górecki, Eastman, Tabakova etc (BBC Proms 2021)

String-based brilliance from a live concert broadcast last Tuesday.  The Manchester Collective ensemble were founded five years ago, and have since been making waves in the contemporary classical world with works by groundbreaking composers like those featured here.  For their Proms debut, the Collective led by Rakhi Singh appeared with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani.

 

Esfahani is the star turn on the programme's opener and closer, starting with Górecki's uncharacteristically rollicking Harpsichord Concerto, a suitably energetic curtain-raiser.  The ensemble then dial down the tempo for Edmund Finnis' atmospheric The Centre Is Everywhere, which lent its title to the Collective's debut album.  The first half of the concert concludes with Julius Eastman's Holy Presence Of Joan D'Arc, its churning ten cello arrangement reconfigured for full string ensemble.  Shame we don't get the full sung prelude (it's condensed into a brief spoken passage), but the ensemble's version of the main piece is fantastic.

 

After the interval comes another work that's featured on these pages before (all links below) in Dobrinka Tabakova's Suite In Old Style, its Rameau-influenced writing as entrancing as ever.  Mahan Esfahani returns for the fun swing and mellow blues of Joseph Horovitz's Jazz Concerto in its version for harpsichord, making for a memorable finale.  That's not all though, as the Collective return for a great encore performance of the frenetic Orawa by Wojciech Kilar.  Highly recommended, top-notch playing all round in a superb programme.

 

link

pw: sgtg

Henryk Górecki at SGTG:
Early works
Symphony No. 3
Beatus Vir
O Domina Nostra
Miserere
Kleines Requiem / Lerchenmusik

Totus Tuus

Julius Eastman:

Unjust Malaise (incl. Holy Presence & full Prelude)

Femenine (live 1974)

Femenine (live 2016)

Edmund Finnis:

In Situ (Proms 2020)  

Dobrinka Tabakova:

String Paths (incl. Suite In Old Style)

Centuries Of Meditations (live 2019)

Henryk Górecki - Choral Music: Totus Tuus (2012)

Another take on choral Górecki (see Miserere in links list below), from a charity shop dig a few weeks ago.  This collection is bookended by two works that it has in common with that Nonesuch album, Euntes Ibant Et Flebant and Amen, which offers a nice contrast to the earlier recordings and also leaves a good 45-ish minutes of stuff I wasn't familiar with.

The first of the latter, then, is Lobgesang (2000) written in commemoration of the Gutenberg Bible.  It takes the same technique as Miserere, etc of insistent repitition of a minimal text with gradual musical development, and adds judicious use of a glockenspiel at the end.  Next up is the album's title track, another beautifully austere piece for acapella choir.  Using a more pointedly Roman Catholic liturgy, it was written for a papal visit to Poland in 1987.

That leaves the longest and most instrumentally-augmented work, Salve Sidus Polonorium.  Written in 2000 for a papal-political summit, the text is about the 10th century missionary St. Wojciech (aka Adalbert of Prague).  The first section adds a tolling bell at key moments, before organ, piano and percussion fill out the grandest moments of the central section.  Then the joyous finale is adorned with more bells and piano.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Early works
Symphony No. 3
Beatus Vir
O Domina Nostra
Miserere
Kleines Requiem / Lerchenmusik

Henryk Górecki - Miserere (1994)

Absolutely stunning collection of Górecki's choral music, which on its release was the composer's first album of his unaccompanied vocal works.  The first half of this collection is taken up by the title piece, written in 1981 as a response to political unrest sparked by the violent disruption of a protest.  Like Górecki's legendary third symphony, Miserere builds with slow deliberation over half an hour, the individual voices introduced in waves of trance-inducing melancholy.

After such a lengthy piece, Amen (1975) is well placed as a moment of simple, spare reflection - its only text is the title.  Then Górecki's earliest piece for voices, Euntes Ibant Et Flebant (1972) wraps up the album's religious selections with more austere beauty.  The remainder of the disc focuses on Polish folk melodies and texts, with a common theme of rivers in My Vistula, Grey Vistula (1981) and the five-part Broad Waters suite (1979).  The latter is definitely my favourite thing here, its gorgeous plaintive melodies capping off an essential collection of 20th century choral music.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Early works
Symphony No. 3
Beatus Vir
O Domina Nostra
Kleines Requiem / Lerchenmusik

Henryk Górecki - Kleines Requiem / Lerchenmusik (1995)

In the aftermath of Henryk Górecki's sudden fame in the early 90s, when his re-recorded Third Symphony went global, the quiet and retiring composer just got on with the day job.  A commission for the Holland Festival became Kleines Requiem für eine Polka, and this first recording slotted neatly into the short series for Philips of Schönberg/DeLeeuw recordings that also produced Ustvolskaya's Compositions (a Nonesuch recording of Kleines Requiem also appeared in 1995). 

Despite the solemn introduction, it's not as funereal as the title might suggest, and the sudden contrasts in dynamics and tempo in the upbeat passages led the composer to muse on its premiere "God, what have I made now? Such circus music!".  There's definitely light-hearted fun to be had at times here, making the subsequent solemn themes all the more deeply touching.

Kleines Requiem drew comparisons to Messiaen, who Górecki openly admired, and even stronger links were noticed in an earlier commission for Denmark's Lerchenborg Castle annual music festival.  Lerchenmusik, completed in 1985, had very similar instrumentation to Quatour pour la Fin de Temps, and the slowly developing introduction was also a homage to Messiaen.  This work also has its share of contrasts, particularly in its strident, folkish middle movement, before finishing with quieter influences from plainchant and a quote from Beethoven.  This is a great recording of two really interesting works from Górecki's mature period, that just get more wonderful every time I listen to them.

link
pw: sgtg

Górecki, Satie, Milhaud, Bryars - O Domina Nostra (rec. 1992, rel. 1993)

Christopher Bowers-Broadbent's Trivium seemed to go down well the other week, so here's the organist's second ECM New Series release, again focusing on just three well-chosen composers.  The most striking difference with this album is that he's also joined for two pieces by Sarah Leonard, an English soprano with a particular interest in contemporary classical music, to great effect.

First up is the Górecki work that gives the album its name.  O Domina Nostra (1982-1985/90) takes inspiration from the iconography in a Polish monastery, and making stunning use of the deep organ drones set against the developing soprano part.  The organist is then featured solo in a vocal-less version of Erik Satie's Messe des Pauvres (1895) and a couple of Darius Milhaud Preludes from 1942, before Sarah Leonard returns for the stunning finale - Gavin Bryars' The Black River (1991), with its text from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.  Compared to the Trivium album, this collection is much more about subtlety and gradual shifts in atmosphere, making it a fascinating feast for the ears.

link

Henryk Górecki ‎- The Essential Górecki (1993 compi of works 1958-69, rec. '67/'69)

Strictly speaking, we had the truly essential Górecki just under a year ago with the premiere recording of his his 3rd symphony, but this early stuff is a different beast entirely, and well worth hearing.  I have wondered since getting this disc if anyone in 1993 was fooled into thinking it would be another nice, melancholy companion to the Nonesuch/Dawn Upshaw Third, and getting a rude awakening with what lay beneath that deceptive album cover above...

This CD, then, is Essential - in giving a neat portrait of the angry young Górecki carving out his early style in the late 50s through to late 60s.  These first four pieces were released on LP in 1967, and include the huge blocks of oddly-scored sounds collapsing into each other of Zderzenia-Scontri (Collisions) (1960), setting the stage for the Polish school of sonorism over the next decade.  Genesis II (1962) is an even more explosive work that brings prime early Xenakis to mind, with its opening air-raid glissando collapsing into scratches and scrapes before the whole ensemble kick in.

Selected Compositions LP, Poland 1967 (tracks 1-4 on Essential CD)

Refren (1965) shows Górecki's style gradually maturing, and starting to point the way towards the 3rd symphony a decade later.  Lastly, to fill out this compilation we get 27 minutes of Muzyka Staropolska (Old Polish Music) (1969), in its premiere recording - fascinating stuff, with its recurring brass fanfare glueing it together and combining old folk melodies in a great modernist whole, not unlike Three Pieces In The Old Style.

link

Henryk Górecki - Beatus Vir (rec. 1993)

From the same Oxfam trip as the previous album.  I really should dedicate both of these posts to the person who donated a pair of rare-as-hen's-teeth Polish Górecki CDs two years ago - dziekuje!

Beatus Vir is a 32-minute, self-contained choral/orchestral work which is a bit more lively than the 3rd Symphony, and for me brings to mind some of Arvo Part's large-scale pieces from the 90s.  Beatus Vir was commissioned by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, and premiered in 1979, by which time he'd became Pope John Paul II.  It's also less widely recorded than the 3rd Symphony, and is best known from a 1993 Argo release.  This Polish CD didn't even have a discogs entry when I bought it.

The two supporting works on this album date from earlier in Górecki's repertoire, and provide early pointers to the substantive works from today and yesterday.  Ad Matrem (1971) was when Górecki started getting in to sacred music. 'Trzy utwory w dawnym stylu na orkiestrę smyczkowa' ('Three Pieces In The Old Style') was composed in 1963, and was one of the first times Górecki moved away from prevailing avant-garde trends towards weaving old Polish melodies into a memorable cycle.

link

Henryk Górecki - III Symfonia (1976, rec. 1978)

There's a few classical works where I own two different recordings, maybe even three; in this case it's no fewer than seven.  I first got hooked on Górecki's 3rd Symphony "Piesni Zalosnych" (Sorrowful Songs) via the HMV Classics release when I bought it in the late 90s.  Many solitary hours during my fresher year were spent just letting these huge, icy waves of melancholy wash over me, whilst using this hip new thing called 'the internet' to read up on the inspirations for the work (of which so much has been written that I won't retread here, as I wouldn't do it justice).

Wanting to hear more renderings of my new favourite symphony (which remains one of my most treasured orchestral works that I've ever heard), I first plumped for the equally stately Philips release then the brilliant Naxos (Antoni Wit can do no wrong as a conductor to my ears) and so forth.  And yes, everything you read about the Nonesuch version, particularly if the words 'classic FM' or 'dinner party' or suchlike are used, is pretty much on the money - you won't miss anything by skipping it.  It does of course deserve recognition for breaking the symphony into the wider public consciousness, and without its impact you could argue that some later recordings might not have come about.

And so it came to pass, almost exactly two years ago, that my local Oxfam Music completely excelled themselves.  What initially looked on the shelf like a budget release that I didn't think would be worth picking up turned out to be, on inspection, the holy grail - the CD reissue of the original 1978 recording on Polskie Nagrania Muza.  So here it is, for your downloading pleasure - IMO, the most stunningly beautiful, rawest version of all, taken at a fair pace too (the first movement lasting barely 26 minutes). It's of course a bit of an assumption to make that this premiere recording is closest to Górecki's original intent - but I reckon this is as good as it gets.

link