Dr Dan Elphick (Lecturer in Musicology) will be speaking live on BBC Radio 3 at the BBC Proms, featuring Górecki’s Third Symphony, ’Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’
Dan will be discussing the symphony’s contexts and some of the reasons for its extraordinary success in the 1990s, sometimes hailed as the most commercially successful composition by a modern composer.
The evening’s Prom concert will feature Dalia Stasevska conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with Francesca Chiejina as soprano soloist. Joshua Bell will appear as violin soloist in the first half of the concert, with the UK premiere of Thomas de Hartmann’s Violin Concerto.
Górecki’s Third Symphony
Górecki’s Third Symphony was written in 1976 and it presents a powerful meditation on mourning and motherhood. The three movements set texts related to motherhood for soprano soloist, including the second movement’s use of an inscription from the cell wall of a Gestapo prison. Musically, it is a radical turn away from Górecki’s earlier musical style, after he had established himself as a leading composer of the 1960s Polish avant garde generation. Instead, the symphony features austere and melancholy lines that quote Polish medieval songs that slowly overlap to build up intensely-expressive dissonance. The symphony was a modest success at its premiere, but it was only with the 1992 release of a recording by the London Sinfonietta with Dawn Upshaw conducted by David Zinman that the Third Symphony began its meteoric rise to fame. It sold over a million copies and it reached no. 6 in UK music charts. It continues to inspire a devoted following, with documentary films and a ballet based on the symphony.
About Dan Elphick
Dr Daniel Elphick is a Lecturer in Musicology specialising in music from Eastern Europe, including Poland and Russia. His first book is Music Behind the Iron Curtain: Weinberg and his Polish Contemporaries (Cambridge University Press), and, together with Royal Holloway’s Prof. Stephen Downes, he is currently finishing a new edited volume, Constructing Polish Musical Identities Outside of Poland (Boydell & Brewer). Dan’s teaching at Royal Holloway includes modules on Music & the Holocaust, Russian Music, and Shostakovich’s String Quartets.
Join us or tune in
To listen to the live broadcast, tune in to BBC Radio 3 at c. 8pm on Friday 22 August. The broadcast will be available to listen again on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/erj4mb
