These works, from Gorecki’s small yet fastidious output, like his 1990s hit Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, are melodically inspired and spiritual in sensibility. The instrumental Kleines Requiem, scored for chamber ensemble, blends warm expressive directness with almost Brechtian alienation. The Lerchenmusik for clarinet, violin and piano is similarly elegiac. It plays with vastly differing tempos and suggests a stylistic debt to Messiaen. New booklet notes by Bernard Jacobson, an authority on 20th century Polish music. (Newton Classics) This is a rather Messiaen-ic study in contrasts: the opening five minutes is almost supernaturally calm and quiet, suddenly shattered by a shrill burst of violins and chimes that disappears as enigmatically as it appeared, shifting between extremes of amplitude; in the second movement, a brash tumult of horns gives way to solitary clarinet, underpinned by doomy piano monochord, while the finale is almost completely stationary and barely audible, a still string pad with wanly tolling chimes. “Lerchenmusik” features a similarly startling blend of calm and stridency, before the final movement offers a gloss on the theme of Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto. (Andy Gill - The Independent, April 2011)