The day’s programme includes an introduction to the composer’s life and work by Polish music expert Professor Adrian Thomas, the film ‘Please Find’ by Polish director Violetta Rotter-Kozera which charts the key events in the composer’s career, and several concerts.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra, under Polish conductor Antoni Wit, is billed with several of Górecki’s works, including the monumental Second Symphony ‘Copernican’, the Silesian String Quartet is featured with two of his String Quartets, Nos 1 and 2, and the BBC Singers under David Hill perform several of Gorecki’s choral works.
The event comes shortly before the 5th anniversary of Górecki’s death (12 November 2010). Born in Silesia in the south of Poland in 1933, Górecki studied composition with Boleslaw Szabelski at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice.
In the mid-1950s - at the time of the post-Stalinist cultural thaw - he found himself at the forefront of the Polish avant-garde.
He also explored Polish folk music traditions in such works as Three Pieces in Old Style (1963) and Old Polish Music (1967-69). The simple yet monumental style for which Górecki became renowned was forged in the 1970s with such works as Symphony No. 2 ‘Copernican’ (1972), Symphony No. 3 ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ (1976) and the Psalm setting Beatus vir (performed in Kraków to mark Pope John Paul II’s visit to Poland in 1979).
In the early 1980s, following the imposition of martial law in Poland, Górecki withdrew from public life and concentrated on choral settings and chamber music.
In the 1990s, the recording of his Third Symphony achieved unprecedented international success, breaking all popularity records and becoming the most successful recording ever of a work by a contemporary composer.
His output also includes four string quartets, all commissioned and premiered by the Kronos Quartet.
Górecki held numerous honorary doctorates, including those from the Academy of Catholic Theology in Warsaw, Warsaw University, the Catholic University in Washington, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Victoria University in Victoria, Canada, and the University of British Columbia in Montreal. (mk/nh/rk)