Symphony of Sorrowful Songs review – Gorecki’s triptych retains its visceral power in thoughtful staging

Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony, known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, is that rarest of phenomena, an unashamedly classical work that connects with people way beyond the concert hall. The London Sinfonietta’s 1991 recording, with Dawn Upshaw a radiant soloist, topped the US classical chart for more than 40 weeks. Clearly the work’s contemplative sincerity struck a chord in a post-iron curtain world.

The Polish-born composer had commenced his career embracing a gnarly, post-Webern serialism. His shift to sparer textures and Renaissance-inspired harmonies went down like a lead balloon with modernists - Pierre Boulez was heard summing up the Third Symphony at its 1977 premiere in a single word: “Merde!” Górecki didn’t care. He’d witnessed war first-hand and had visited Auschwitz in 1945.

View image in fullscreen

His musical triptych on motherhood and suffering clearly resonates with Isabella Bywater, who has staged the piece for English National Opera. Set inside what at first appears to be a granitic geometric wedge, she conjures a series of snapshots of women coping with loss. The opening scene reveals a mother kneeling at a grave (American soprano Nicole Chevalier plays all three women). Her son floats above her, suspended between heaven and earth. As rumbling double basses commence Górecki’s long, ascending crescendo, the charcoal-grey walls appear to melt and flow. Roberto Vitalini’s mesmeric video design and Jon Driscoll’s haunting lighting are major elements in the production’s success, as is Bywater’s set. In a visual sleight of hand, her concrete walls turn out to be a closely knit mesh curtain of ropes through which actors can enter and exit.

The imagery is often stunning. In the opening scene, the grieving mother gathers in reams of graveclothes, which she swaddles like a baby. Later, she rises to the ceiling on a chair before tumbling to earth in a graceful slow-motion swan dive. In the following scene, a woman sings words scrawled by a teenage girl on the walls of a Gestapo prison cell in 1942. Embraced by a pair of sinister, hooded figures, she’s dragged away to a despairing “Hail Mary, full of grace”. In the final scene, the jagged tangle of ropes suggests an all-too-familiar modern war zone. Here, a woman searches for the body of her son as faceless soldiers topple around her.

It’s visceral stuff, and powerfully sung by Chevalier whose luxurious soprano sails through Górecki’s long lyrical lines. In the pit, Lidiya Yankovskaya leads a refreshingly unsentimental reading of the score. Just occasionally, the production might have benefited from greater stillness – the music, after all, proves the work can take it – but this is an affecting piece of contemporary music theatre from a resurgent opera company thinking outside the box.

• Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is at the London Coliseum until 6 May.