Gorecki's Symphony No. 4 - 'playful, dramatic and tender'
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
14.04.2014 09:55
The much-awaited premiere of the Fourth Symphony by the late Polish composer Henryk Gorecki has won some rave reviews after its performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra on Saturday.
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki: photo - Wikipedia domena publiczna/Szczebrzeszyński
Gorecki's "swansong turned out to be extraordinary: playful, dramatic and tender," says the UK's Daily Telegraph on the premiere of the work nearly four years after the composer's death in 2010.
"Symphony No 4 is an ambitious, hypnotic work, and, rather movingly, it acts as a meditation by Górecki on the many styles he adopted and developed during a long and successful career," the Daily Telegraph writes after the premiere at the Royal Festival Hall in London under the baton of Russian-Polish conductor Andrey Boreyko.
"Massive and violently contrasting blocks of ideas," dominate the work, says the Guardian.
"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 critic writes.
The work was all but completed by the time Gorecki died and differs considerably to the Third Symphony (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) which became a cross-over hit in the 1990s, selling millions of CDs worldwide. (pg)