When, in 1992, the static, almost hypnotic Symphony no. 3 was recorded by the London Sinfonietta, selling a million copies and going viral across the Western world, Górecki, who had composed it 15 years before, was still largely unknown, hidden from most by the then recently lifted ‘Iron Curtain’. The same ‘curtain’, however, had not prevented Górecki’s compatriot, Penderecki, from conquering the world. Also born in late 1933, Penderecki rose from his Polish homeland into the ranks of the international avant-garde with an intensely personal rigour, as in the famous Threnody, where strings are emotionally charged with the deafening screech of nuclear horror. The pain, here, is as deep as the suffering that pervades Górecki’s ‘sorrowful songs’, inspired by an inscription on a German prison wall—the light-heartedness of Beethoven’s Triple Concertolong gone and forgotten.
