CD Review | Górecki’s World of the Piano, Dunn, Górecka

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Górecki’s World of the Piano

Jarred Dunn, Anna Górecka, piano

ATMA Classique, 2025

This new recording by Canadian pianist Jarred Dunn and Polish pianist Anna Górecka features the complete works for solo piano and two pianos by Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1933-2010). Listeners more familiar with Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) will discover a more dissonant and austere soundscape. A variety pack of works composed from 1955 through 2008, the album features sets of miniatures and pieces written for specific people or occasions. These showcase Górecki’s love of the piano and the variety of sounds it is capable of making—from spare, lyrical lines to dense textures that verge on confrontational. Dunn’s intergenerational, cross-cultural collaboration on the two-piano pieces with Górecka, the composer’s daughter, results in an album that stands out as a unique, interpretive masterpiece.

The Toccata for Two Pianos is complex, angular, dissonant and, above all, virtuosic. Full of complicated timing and syncopation, it requires precise co-ordination between the performers. Górecka (Piano 1) and Dunn (Piano 2) are kindred spirits and an ideal duo, fully in control of the work’s complexities. Colour, nuance, and singing tone resound in even the most forbidding passages. Voicing and clarity of phrasing are impressive in music of such rapid-fire density.

Of the Five Pieces for Two Pianos (previously unrecorded by a major label), the first three are just a minute each. Their Webern-like, pointillistic style uses the full range of the piano and requires arduous keyboard gymnastics. The performers’ hands jump incessantly around the keyboard, switching dynamics, tone, articulation, or chords in milliseconds, while maintaining rhythmic cohesion. A duet in this style is impossible to execute without musical mind reading, not to mention superlative memory, listening, and technique. Masses of sound fragments must be turned into phrases, many of which change on a dime from single tones to piles of fast-tumbling notes. In the face of these obstacles, Górecka and Dunn’s superb rhythmic and dynamic authority turns abstract structures into artful chamber music. This is a landmark premiere recording by two virtuosi.

Many of Górecki’s short solo pieces are tiny pedagogical etudes for specific techniques. One might think the shorter the piece, the easier, but in fact it is more difficult to create natural flow and musical meaning from a miniature. The listener is rewarded, even after a single hearing of these expertly played tone poems, by Dunn’s fine-tuned sense of line and musical contrast. The nine short solo pieces in From a Bird’s Nest, particularly, come across as the musical equivalent of aphorisms—short observations that contain some pertinent truth or a satisfying conclusion. 

Dunn brings out the subtle, spacious, often haunting atmospheres of Górecki’s lyrical piano works with remarkable perceptivity. Some give the impression of being simple to play, such as Lullaby, Op. 9, with its slow-moving counterpoint over an ostinato. But four-voice counterpoint is never simple, and Dunn’s incredibly sophisticated control of tone quality and sustained notes is a quality for which he is already well-known. Intermezzo is an especially lovely piece in which he creates luminous tones as if from carillon bells of all sizes. Four Preludes, Op. 1, feature a more intellectually contemplative style in their lyrical sections. The Piano Sonata No. 1 contains much variety from Bartók-like percussiveness and Polish folk-music influences, to heartfelt religious-style chordal textures, with Dunn’s brilliant virtuosity on display throughout.

With his previous albums, Dunn has shown he is a master of Brahms and Chopin. In collaboration with Górecka, he demonstrates not only his mastery of the intricacies of Górecki’s music, but his commitment to authenticity and versatility. Dunn’s sharing of this little-known music of Poland (his second home) makes the album a triumph amongst recordings of 20th– and 21st-century piano music. How lucky we are that Dunn and Górecka have offered this wonderful gift to the piano world.