This recording by leading British chamber ensemble Chamber Domaine celebrates the 75th birthday of one of the world’s most popular living composers, Henryk Mikolaj Górecki.
Górecki’s worldwide fame is largely due to the commercial success of his best known work, the 3rd Symphony, A Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. A recording in 1992 by Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta sold in excess of a million copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful classical music recordings of all time and catapulting its veteran composer into the media spotlight.
There is also a wealth of beautiful music by Górecki that has rarely been heard, and Chamber Domaine’s approach on this recording, which contains no less than seven world premières, is to present an overview of his varied output, from intimate pieces composed during his studies in the 1950s to large-scale ensemble works published after his commercial breakthrough in the 1990s. Of the latter, the atmospheric and haunting Kleines Requiem für eine Polka op.66 is a highlight.
Among the soloists featured on the recording are pianists Stephen de Pledge and Evelina Puzaite, baritone Ronan Collett and conductor/violinist Thomas Kemp, director of Chamber Domaine.
Chamber Domaine is at the cutting edge of music making in the 21st Century. Its excellence and dynamism have received widespread acclaim in the United Kingdom and abroad: The ensemble was described on BBC Radio 3 as “the most innovative ensemble in Britain today.”
“The earliest pieces (the Preludes, Toccata, Three Songs and Variations) exhibit a barely-controlled violence, an angry reaction against the fetters of socialist-realist aesthetics. The opening section of the Requiem diffidently breaks the silence. Eventually materials is repeated at much greater volume... The Requiem's remaining movements career through episodes of martial and cabaret / circus music, bringing to mind Satie, Milhaud and, above all, Stravinsky, before rounding off with the beautiful Adagio cantabile.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2009 *****
“The disparate members of Chamber Domaine - something of a British musical collective - each bring to this music a tremendous sense of vitality and commitment. Their robust handling of the Kleine Requiem, with its curious juxtaposition of circus-ring antics and quasi-religious introspection, makes for compelling listening; as, it has to be said, does the entire disc.” Gramophone Magazine, April 2009
