In January I made a trip to Los Angeles as a musical pilgrimage of sorts. I am a big fan of Henryk Górecki, a contemporary Polish composer best known for his haunting Third Symphony, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. He wrote this piece in 1976 and initially it wasn’t well received. It didn’t become famous until a 1991 recording with the London Sinfonietta, featuring the soloist soprano Dawn Upshaw. This recording to date has sold more than a million copies – more than any other contemporary classical record – making it a rare commercial success in the world of classical music. Górecki commented on this unexpected success,“Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music […] somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed.” Read the rest of this entry →