In 2016 Colin Stetson ventured to reinterpret Henry Górecki's Symphony No. 3, which was unusual because the US saxophonist was known to a wider public only through his collaboration with pop acts such as Arcade Fire. Two years earlier, Portishead's Beth Gibbons had already taken over the difficult vocal part in that famous "Symphony of Lamentations". The live recording of her performance at the Teatr Wielki Opera House in Warsaw is now being released for the first time.
Since the end of the sixties, rock and pop musicians have repeatedly tried their hand at classical compositions, which they have recorded, sometimes true to the original, sometimes clearly modified. Examples include Emerson, Lake & Palmer's adaptation of Mussorgksi's "Pictures at an Exhibition," Sting's interpretation of John Dowland's Songs From The Labyrinth, or Roger Waters' recording of Stravinsky's Story of the Soldier. Beth Gibbons, singer of the acclaimed trip hop band Portishead, also joins this illustrious squad with a live CD/DVD of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 ("Symphony of Lamentations"), one of the most popular classical works of the 20th century. She is accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra of Polish Radio under the direction of Poland's composer monument Krzysztof Penderecki (85). But how did this unusual constellation come about in the first place?
For this we have to go a little further and go into the 3rd Symphony and its creator in more detail. Henryk Górecki (1933-2010) was one of the spearheads of the Polish avant-garde until the 1960s, and his serial style (a further development of Arnold Schönberg's twelve-tone music) referred to composers such as Anton Webern, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Penderecki. From the mid-seventies onwards - beginning with the 2nd Symphony - Górecki turned to a more minimalist style, which he perfected in 1976 in his Symphony No. 3, which is considered a tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. One year later the commissioned composition of the Südwestfunk Baden-Baden was premiered in Royan, France. And an angry Pierre Boulez is said to have exclaimed: "Merde!" The first three recordings were released in the 1980s (all with soprano Stefania Woytowicz), but it was not until the 1992 recording by US opera singer Dawn Upshaw that the symphony made its breakthrough and found more than a million buyers, an unprecedented success. The British radio station Classic FM regularly broadcast the recording, whereupon the label Nonesuch sent one copy each to Mick Jagger, Enya and the archbishop of Canterbury to have the work officially approved. Górecki's contemplative style, soon referred to as "holy minimalism", obviously hit the zeitgeist.
