Once upon a time (ie in 2008) there was a major record label called EMI. Its ambitious Polish branch published CDs with contemporary music for the local market. That is when I first heard Górecki’s complete string quartets recorded by the Silesian Quartet. I am happy to see them back on a Chandos double CD, complemented with a 2014 recording of Five Kurpian Songs (Górecki found the melodies in an old book by Father Władysław Skierkowski, the same one that had inspired Szymanowski to write Six Kurpian Songs for choir a cappella and Twelve Kurpian Songs for voice and piano).

All three of Górecki’s string quartets were commissioned and premiered by the Kronos Quartet (the First in 1988 and the Second in 1991, while the Third, completed in 1994 95, was premiered only in 2005). The Kronos Quartet’s recordings remain an important point of reference. For me the Kronos are like curators of a museum of contemporary music, where each string quartet is given a prominent place with carefully designed lighting. With the Silesian Quartet, these pieces find a natural habitat where they can grow organically, tended by a group of four native speakers of Górecki’s very idiosyncratic musical language. His chamber works are like sparse poetry founded on paradoxes and oxymorons: one finds movement in the static and the luminous in the dark. The Silesian Quartet have the necessary instinctive knowledge of Polish history and of Polish autumns to find the ideal gloomy (some might say sombre) tone.

The other recording of Górecki’s complete string quartets that I like is by the Royal String Quartet. The RSQ recording is more ethereal than the Silesian’s earthy one, though I cannot say which is better. It is like seeing the same sculpture in a different light, first in moonshine and then in daylight (though on a very cloudy day). In both instances the playing is superb and interpretations captivating. The 2008 EMI album included excellent booklet notes by Górecki’s English biographer, Adrian Thomas. In the present edition the essay in the booklet is by Marcin Trzęsiok from the Academy of Music in Katowice. Trzęsiok gives much interesting contextual information, discussing Górecki’s love of Szymanowski and the music of the Tatras, which you can hear in the First Quartet, hidden references to Beethoven in the Second and the mystery of musical allusions to the Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov in the Third. For Górecki lovers this album is a must have, for all others a perfect introduction to the music of this Polish maverick.