Michael Berkeley wrote Mosaic for Father Popieluszko for Jean-Jacques Kantorow and Anthea Gifford, who gave the first performance in 1985. The emotional impetus for this piece was the murder, in Poland the previous year, of the pro-Solidarity priest Father Jerzy Popieluszko. For Berkeley, the combination of grief and rage is potent, as can be heard in this angry, passionate piece in which there is much contrast between aggressive, violent sounds and soft, wounded ones. It is a memorial to someone who died an atrocious death quite needlessly. © Jeremy Hayes 1997
Michael Berkeley (b.1948)
