Symphony No. 1 “1959” op. 14

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Opis materiału

Composer:Henryk Mikołaj Górecki
Original title: I Symfonia „1959” op. 14
content: 1. Invocation
2. Antiphony
3. Chorale
4. Lauda
year of completion: 1959
instrumentation: string orchestra, percussion
Dedication: To Professor Bolesław Szabelski
performer: Wielka Orkiestra Symfoniczna Polskiego Radia i Telewizji w Katowicach

Duration: 11'35''
Genre/form: symphony
category: instrumental music, orchestral works
conductor: Jan Krenz
Producer: Polskie Radio S.A.
Production year: 1959
quality: low

Premiere: (parts I, III and IV) Warsaw, 14.09.1959, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jan Krenz – conductor; (whole piece) Darmstadt, 15.07.1963, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Michael Gielen – conductor
Discography: "Henryk Mikołaj Górecki", Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra, Roland Bader – conductor, Koch Schwann, 1993/Koch International, 2008

Symphony No. 1 op. 14 was Górecki’s first large-scale symphonic work. Its title refers to the year of composition – a significant one for many reasons for the composer, who graduated from music academy and got married that year. After earlier works written in a modern sound language including the Concerto for Five Instruments and String Quartet and Epitaph, the composer could now prove himself with a symphony, which is by definition a traditional form.

Górecki set himself the ambitious task of composing it in accordance with radically new musical ideas. Symphony No. 1 is thus a strictly avant-garde experiment, an attempt at filling the traditional mould of the genre with extreme avant-garde contents. The four-movement design remains classical, with the first part, Invocation, playing the most important, form-determining role. In this part, Górecki juxtaposes two non-standard instrumental groups of percussion and strings. The incredibly powerful 12-tone harmonies in the strings, derived from a 12-note series, form the main musical idea, opposed to more ethereal, rhythmic progressions absent of pitches in the percussion.

Antiphon, the second part, consists of a sequence of ragged overlapping instrumental lines with a level of rhythmic complication that is so high that this part was omitted from the first performance at the Warsaw Autumn festival in 1959 (and is also missing from our recording). The third partis a calm Chorale with a distinct quasi-melodic “chorale” line in the viola part. The Finale – Lauda focuses on the wealth of percussion colours. In its closing section, strings take over and finish this avant-garde symphony with a perfect fifth, A-E, most likely an allusion to highlander music from the Tatra Mountains in Poland, with which Górecki was already closely familiar.

The festival performance of Symphony No. 1 shocked the Warsaw Autumn audience. At that time, such innovative musical language – and in a composition presented as a symphony – was truly astonishing. In retrospect, especially in the context of Górecki’s later works, this symphony appears more as a bold experiment than as a composition with deep, lasting artistic qualities. Still, the sheer power of accumulated sound in the Invocation’s huge chords, the variety of percussive colours in the Lauda and the careful construction the parts compels admiration even today for the invention and imagination of the young composer.

Ninateka - Three composers - Symphony No. 1 “1959” op. 14

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Symphony No. 1 “1959” op. 14

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