Górecki: Complete String Quartets, Vol. 1

With the belated success of his Third Symphony ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ (Naxos 8.550822), Górecki emerged in the 1990s as a composer of world stature. Between 1988 and 1995 he wrote three string quartets for the Kronos Quartet that are among his most important mature works. String Quartet No. 1 reveals chorale-like themes, so much a feature of his later writing, as well as hectic, dance-like motion, while the Second Quartet’s wider range of expression explicitly evokes Beethoven. Genesis I: Elementi offers a powerful contrast—a string trio from 1962 of uncompromising immediacy.