Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

A free concert by an all-volunteer orchestra pulled off a small miracle at Herbst Theater on Sunday afternoon. Though I usually avoid these kind of concerts because the audiences are often so unruly, I attended the second half of the program because the Mozart to Mendelssohn orchestra was performing Henryk Górecki's 1976 Symphony No. 3, which I had never heard live before.

John Kendall Bailey, the ensemble's Music Director, explained that Górecki (1933-2010) was a leading modernist Polish composer of the 1960s who turned to a "holy minimalism" in the 1970s, culminating in the hour-long, three-movement "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" for orchestra and solo soprano. His international serial music colleagues were appalled at the betrayal, with Pierre Boulez exclaming "Merde!" at the premiere, though Polish audiences quickly took the music to heart. In 1993, Nonesuch released a recording with David Zinman conducting the London Sinfonietta and soprano Dawn Upshaw singing the sad, gorgeous Polish folk songs about mothers separated from children. The recording received quite a bit of play on United Kingdom classical radio and became a viral sensation soon after, selling millions of copies. Bailey mentioned that the symphony had not been played in the SF Bay Area sice 1994 when David Zinman conducted a performance by the San Francisco Symphony, which seems a ridiculously long time for such a once-popular work to lie dormant.

The professional soprano soloist at Sunday's concert was Marnie Breckenridge, who was magnificent and intensely moving. The vocal line requires a certain purity of tone and expression, and Breckenridge nailed it.

The unexpected joy of the afternoon was twofold. First, the large, volunteer string orchestra gave a completely creditable performance. There were woodwinds that played briefly at the midpoint climax of the first movement, and they were fine too. Secondly, the audience fell under a trance-like spell in the slow, rising canon of the first movement and remained silently attentive for the entire symphony. Now that was a miracle, and congratulations to everyone involved.