Gorecki, Symphony no.4, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Boreyko (Nonesuch)So long-awaited was this disc that I had forgotten a number of times that I was waiting for it. Finished as a piano score by 2006, it was left with notes on its orchestration when Henryk Gorecki died in 2010 and completed from those notes by his son, Mikolaj.
How was Gorecki going to follow his mournful masterpiece, no.3, that was such a critical and commercial success, one of the great pieces of the late C20th. Beethoven followed his seminal third with a less ambitious fourth. Stevie Wonder followed Songs in the Key of Life with the reduced resources employed on Talking Book. But from the start, Gorecki is clearly not taking cover in understatement. The fff fortissimo of his five blasted chords make a bolder opening than anything else in the repertoire and we arrive at the 4-minute mark before there's any sign of abatement. This is not a disc that lends itself to a proper appreciation if you live in a terraced house; one must consider the neighbours. Loud and soft passages alternate most inconveniently. It's a tendency that began perhaps with Haydn's Surprise Symphony so I blame him but whereas he was having one of his jokes with the audience, C20th music has taken his example to heart as a staple effect compared to the more even temper of earlier music. The last chords of Sibelius 5, previously regarded as hammer blows, are sweet and gentle compared to Gorecki 4.
During this onslaught it appears that another piece, for piano, has begun underneath the main theme but it is assimilated into the main composition, the sets of five notes encoding the name Aleksander Tansman, another Polish composer, by means of a much more contrived system than that with which Bach signed such compositions as The Art of Fugue, his B-A-C-H, where H is German for B flat. And the work continues to reference composers from Poland and Russia, more or less noticeably depending on one's knowledge.
In the quiet parts, the cello, violin and woodwind combine to make spectral reference back to the theme before, later it is brought back in a rush of Russian folk dance that charges along merrily to an energetic string accompaniment. It shifts, as one becomes accustomed to post-Stravinsky modernism doing, but returns to its memorable, grand first theme, discharging its rough energy before falling back on almost inaudible murmurs until, well, I won't tell you the ending but it's either very loud or very quiet. Afterwards, although the disc had officially ended, I was left wondering if the vaguest hum I thought I could hear was still a part of the piece, as in the end of A Day in the Life's continuous loop at the end of the LPor if it was what the sound the Sony machine makes when it's resting. So I switched it off and it stopped so I expect it was the machine.
It isn't going to be the phenomenon that no.3 was. It would be out of the question to expect it to be but Gorecki can be applauded for not ducking the issue of the fourth and providing a bold 35 minutes that will be well worthy of a place of its own. Those reviewers who were disappointed were ever likely to be and there was no point delivering something similar that would suffer in comparison. Artists can sometimes justifiably be accused of repeating themselves or reproducing the same work as they get older- even Seamus Heaney was- so bravo to Henryk Gorecki. I didn't know what to expect but now I know, I'm not disappointed.