Górecki symphony premiered in US
PR dla Zagranicy
John Beauchamp
15.01.2015 12:29
Symphony No. 4 by the Polish composer Henryk Mikołaj Górecki is given its American premiere on Friday by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Andrey Boreyko.
Monument to Henryk Mikołaj Górecki in Katowice, south Poland: photo - wiki/CC
The programme of the concert also includes the Violin Concerto by Sibelius (with Nikolaj Znaider) and Stelè in memoriam Igor Stravinsky by the Polish composer Aleksander Tansman (1897-1986), a fitting choice in view of the fact that Górecki’s symphony is subtitled ‘Tansman Episodes’.
Left incomplete (in short score) at the time of Górecki’s death in November 2010, the Fourth Symphony was finished by the composer’s son, Mikołaj, on the basis of his father’s instructions.
Friday’s concert (which will be repeated on Saturday and Sunday), is the second performance of the work, following its world premiere by the London Philharmonic Orchestra in London in April 2014.
The premiere received glowing reviews from the British press, with the Daily Telegraph writing “Górecki’s overdue swansong is dramatic and tender”, while the Guardian hailed the piece as “massive and violently contrasting blocks of ideas dominate […] The extremity of such individual ideas, and the replacement of any sense of development by sheer repetition, give the symphony a rough-hewn, monumental feel.”
The conductor Andrey Boreyko has Polish and Russian roots. His father was Polish and he spent the first five years of his life in Poland, then moving to St Petersburg, his mother’s hometown where he studied music.
In the early 1990s he served as Music Director in the western Polish city of Poznan for four seasons. He is now Music Director of the National Orchestra of Belgium.
Further performances of Górecki’s Fourth Symphony are scheduled in Amsterdam in February and in Łodź, Poland, in May. (mk/jb)