Górecki’s music is some of the most original to have emerged in the twentieth century. The second of Górecki’s Symphonies was written to mark the quincentenary of the great Polish astronomer Copernicus and is here complemented by Beatus Vir, a setting of appropriate texts from the Psalms to celebrate the return of Pope John Paul II on pilgrimage to Kraków in 1979. His music is a symbolic art, expressing the deepest human emotion and longing in fresh and innovative formats.