Saturday, 16 June 2012

Gorecki Symphony No. 3 'Sorrowful Songs' - Lento e Largo

Soprano: Isabel Bayrakdaraian, Sinfonietta Cracovia, conducted by John Axelrod.
Taken from "HOLOCAUST - A Music Memorial Film from Auschwitz". For the first time since its liberation, permission was granted for music to be heard in Auschwitz and a number of leading musicians were brought there to perform music for the film.
The nine-minute second movement, Lento e largo—Tranquillissimo, contains a libretto formed from the prayer to the Virgin Mary which was inscribed by Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna on the wall of her prison cell in the basement of the Gestapo’s headquarters in Zakopane, Poland. The prayer, translated into English, is this:
No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Support me always.
“Zdrowas Mario.”
“Zdrowas Mario” (Ave Maria) is the opening in Polish of the prayer to the Holy Mother of God. (“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death, amen.”) Beneath it is Blazusiakówna‘s signature, with the words “18 years old, imprisoned since 26 September 1944.”