3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) Artist:Beth Gibbons and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra Label:Domino Records Genre:ClassicalTo use music industry parlance, Henryk Gorécki’s Symphony No 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) is the epitome of a sleeper hit. When premiered in 1978, it had little impact, but a 1992 re-release brought it to an international audience. To date it has sold more than a million copies and become the bestselling contemporary classical album in recent history. Beth Gibbons of Portishead hasn’t released any music since 1998, but she was invited to front a performance of this modern masterpiece in Warsaw 2014. This is a world away from the early Mercury Music Prize winning blockbuster album Dummy, which became the dinner party soundtrack du jour of the mid-1990s, but it makes perfect sense.

Source: The Irish Times March 28, 2019 06:56 UTC