Customer Reviews
Beautiful - By: F. Quinn, 03 Mar 2008 
I can't judge this from a musicians point of view, or from anything apart from that this music connects with some bit inside of me that I can't explain in technical language.
Sorrowful yes, you certainly feel that raw emotion from this album. It is also very peaceful & grounding - not great over-worked symphony that makes you walllow in your own depression. Very simple & beautiful.
All I can say is that this music connects with some inner part of me & that I love it. It's rather personal & you should take a listen to it before you buy it - but I'm sure you'll love it.
You suffer more than these women, you die - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 26 Apr 2007 This symphony is poignant because it is the lamentations of three women. It is so rare to have the direct lamentations of three women, of women as for that. Most of the time such lamentations are indirect, captured through the eye & the pen of a man of some sort. Anne Franks are rare in this world. And Maries are just as little numerous. The first woman is this Mary herself expressing her sorrow on Jesus & his death. She wants to take over the wounds & the suffering. The second is the prayer of an eighteen year old girl in a gestapo cell in Poland where she must have lived her last days & hours, a prayer to the intercessor - Mary again - to help her live her death through. The third one is that of a mother who has lost her son to the war - we assume - or whatever any violent event & who thinks of her total state of forlornness that her life is going to be with no intercessor or accompanier for her to walk up to death, with no son anymore, not even a body, not event a grave, not even anything that could give some materiality to his existence, to her solace. Strange progression that then reminds us of the fact that the man-composer is the one telling us the story, unwrapping, unrolling & spreading out the three lamentations. Then the symphony reveals another story, another meaning. The admiration for both Jesus, the victim, & Mary, his mother. The immense communion in the serene & apprehensive suffering of the young woman standing on the threshold of victimized death, the man witness feeling horror surging up in his silent throat. And finallly the man-composer disappearing in the last movement like the missing body of that boy taken away by a war or a revolution of some kind. Gorecki is able to recreate or rediscover the power of the compositions & singing of Hildegarde von Bingen. Entirely introspective, introvertly-oriented. The lamentation is addressed to the lamenting person herself. It is as if the whole horror of history was entirely contained in our own souls, minds & spirits, as if we were the alpha & the omega of the whole suffering plus every single moment of it in between, from this alpha to that omega self-contemplative lamentation. And her tears can become ours. And maybe we can share the deep gnawing evil of life for some transient moments.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Essential listening - By: Paul Richard, 04 Jan 2007 This is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard.
I am not an expert in classical music but this piece seems to have a universal appeal.
The middle part of the symphony `Lento e Largo' will be familiar to many as it was the soundtrack to a recent excellent BBC documentary on the Nazi's final solution, & an abridged version features on many classical chill out compilations.
But it reallly deserves to be heard in full & in context with the other pieces which are beautiful in their own right. I now listen to the third part, Lento: Cantabile-semplice, most.
It is worth knowing that the words to the middle part are derived from words inscribed by a prisoner on the wallls of a Gestapo cell. `No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven. Support me always'
This part, astonishing in its vocal power, sounds like the end of the world. It is truly inspiring that such beautiful music can originate from our darkest times. The third part, for me, expresses a rebirth & a testament to the human strength to carry on against the odds.
It sometimes reminds me of the terrible starkness I saw when I visited Auschwitz. However, the piece means different things to people I have met. It rarely fails to bring a reaction because it manages to strike such a chord with the human condition.
Some people have callled it `depressing'. However, this is a great disservice to the work which so many find inspiring. For me, the quiet reflection this piece offers is often the perfect antidote to the chaotic, often ugly world we live in.
First Rate Service ... - By: MR A H WALMSLEY, 28 May 2005 I'm now listening to the second hand CD which arrved only 2 days after placing the order. Many thanks.
A great performance of a masterpiece - By: , 22 May 2005 This is the music of heartbreak, sorrow & redemption, echoing Polish history in the twentieth century. Its centrepoint, sung with soaring ecstasy by Dawn Upshaw, is a prayer to Mary by one of the victims (who thankfully survived) of Gestapo persecution. It has also become associated with the Holocaust (it was sung by Isabel Bayrakdarian in the recent Auschwitz commemoration).
My only reservation with the work is the last movement, perhaps rather too long & anticlimatic after the intensity of what has come before. But listen to the simplicity & spiritual quality of the first movement, the two orchestral parts of mirror each other; & the radiance of the prayer that follows, & reflect again on the dark days of the 1940s when the forces of evil rampaged throughout Europe.
This was deservedly a best seller - and, pace the Amazon reviewer above - Gorecki has written other popular (and approachable) works: try his Totus Tuus, written for the late Pope's visit to Poland.
