Tom Moon on Henryk Górecki

"Nothing much happens in the first few minutes of [the Symphony No. 3, Op. 26: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). We open in a pool of low-strings murk, and we stay there, stewing. It's as though the Polish composer Henryk Górecki is clearing his throat, insisting on a certain quality of attention. Or, perhaps, he's making sure the whole room reaches the proper gloomy frequency. This stasis has an effect. When the sonorities do change, they have cataclysmic impact. Górecki organized the extended first movement as a series of overlapping 'canons,' or rounds, in which slow-moving motifs are layered over each other to create a counterpoint. It's a cerebral technique sometimes used by minimalists, but Górecki lets the ideas emerge so gently, it hardly seems like a device at all—the dissonances that result carry their own emotional surges. The chords swell up one by one, gusts of wind announcing a gathering storm. When the voice enters, after thirteen minutes, things have swirled to a head; the grieving mother at the center of the work is finally heard. What had been indistinct atmosphere becomes jabbing weaponry behind her" (1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, p. 319).