After the ubiquitous Third Symphony the Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka (“Little Requiem for a Polka”) is fast becoming one of Gorecki’s most frequently recorded works – it’s certainly one of his most intriguing and compelling pieces. Gorecki has offered no explanation for the rather oxymoronic title though Richard E. Rodda’s booklet-notes suggest that the work my be “a sad, perhaps even tragic commentary upon the modern world’s loss of innocence from the simpler, retrospective, more happy time of the polka’s efflorescence during the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century”. I’m not so sure, but perhaps the strength of this music is that it can mean different things to listeners at different times. Rudolf Werthen and I Fiamminghi project the stark, violent contrasts of the piece (especially the acid – mocking? – polka section) particularly well, though no more, or less, I would say, than the Zinman version on Nonesuch.
I found the extraordinarily moving and intensely hushed Good Night (Gorecki’s memorial to the late Michael Vyner) a marginally more affecting experience in this performance than Dawn Upshaw’s account on Nonesuch. Again, there is little in it, but perhaps the slightly reverberant sound of this recording adds to the dreamy, transcendental atmosphere of this work. However, it is less successful in the makeweight Three Pieces in Old Style where the strings have a tendency to sound rather mushy at times. Here, I found I Fiamminghi less focused than the strings of the Warsaw Chamber Orchestra on Koch Schwann – and be warned, the extremely quiet first movement which opens the disc may lead you to set the volume level inappropriately high for passages in the Kleines Requiem.'