Credits:

Antoni Wit, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra

Description:

Henryk Grecki (19332010) was born in 1933 in a city in southern Poland. In the early days of his career as a composer, he wrote extremely avant-garde worksmusic that actively employed tone clusters (a technique involving the simultaneous sounding of many notes) and noise though at that time, there were many composers with similar styles However, starting in the 1970s, he suddenly began incorporating a profound religiosity into his music; his style became simpler, and his harmonies shifted toward the diatonic. It was his Symphony No. 3, known as the Symphony of Sorrows, that definitively established his reputation. This work is simple, transparent, and brimming with a purifying light. At a time when debates about What is contemporary music? are intensifying, might it not be worthwhile to reflect on the existence of music like