Gorecki: String Quartet No. 3, Op. 67 "...Songs Are Sung"

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Up until the media explosion of the Symphony No. 3 in 1992 (even if the work dated back to 1976), Górecki was only known within a small circle of music enthusiasts; it’s worth mentioning that his musical language, filled with serial Boulezian avant-garde and extreme minimalism, didn’t necessarily draw crowds. But this Symphony No. 3 completely changed how he was perceived and we won’t be mad at him (quite the contrary in fact) if this String Quartet No. 3, "...songs are sung" (translated from the original Polish title “…pieśni śpiewają”) features many of his old tropes, in particular for the slower sequences, at least in one of the five movements – the shortest, a five-minute Allegro worthy of Shostakovich and Pärt −, central to the piece and surrounded by Largos and Adagios. Górecki started working on this project in the middle of the 1990s, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and finished it in 2005, five years before his death. The theme of death is in fact omnipresent throughout the piece, particularly as it highlights a poem by Velimir Khlebnikov: “When horses die, they breathe; when grasses die, they wither; when suns die, they go out; when people die, they sing songs.” . An ambitious piece, masterfully interpreted by the DAFÔ String Quartet – an ensemble that mostly focuses on 20th and 21st century music. © SM/Qobuz