Flea, who debut solo album Honora is due to be released on Nonesuch later this month, was featured in the label’s video series in which musicians select and comment on their favourite albums from the Nonesuch music library.
Flea’s first choice was Górecki’s iconic Third Symphony, entitled Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, which achieved unprecedented international success thanks to a 1992 Nonesuch recording by the London Sinfonietta and American soprano Dawn Upshaw, under David Zinman’s baton.
Scored for soprano solo and orchestra, the work is often described as a meditation on motherhood, love and loss.
In explaining his choice, Flea said: “You put the record on and it’s dead silent. Then you start to hear what I think is a boatload of upright basses and cellos playing this real low sound. It just creeps in on you. It leaks you to the pores of who you are and starts to fill me up.”
He added: “It’s about the Holocaust. The work’s second movement is based on a quote that a Polish woman wrote on the walls of her prison cell - 'Oh Mama do not cry, Immaculate Queen of Heaven support me always.' This music is a prayer, like all good music is. There’s a simplicity in the unison playing of it, in the harmony, in the way it grows and the sentiment of it. It’s so good. It makes me want to be better.”
Górecki was one of Poland’s most prominent 20th-century composers. He died in 2010 at the age of 76.
In addition to Górecki’s Third Symphony, Flea’s selection of his favourite albums included those by Jeff Parker, Brian Eno & David Byrne, Bulgarian State Television Female Choir and Ambrose Akinmusire.
(mk)