By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The famous singer Dawn Upshaw gave soprano Deborah Selig an important piece of advice last summer at Tanglewood about singing Henryk Gorecki's radiant Symphony No. 3, "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs."

IF YOU GO

What: "War & Remembrance," Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, James R. Cassidy, conductor; David Adams, tenor; Deborah Selig, soprano. Arnold Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw; Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" When: 8 p.m. Friday; 8:30 p.m. Saturday Where: Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington Tickets: $20 and $23; student/senior discounts. 859-431-6216 or www.kyso.org "War & Remembrance" is part of Facing Prejudice, a series of exhibits, lectures, films and concerts in Greater Cincinnati during Holocaust Awareness Weeks (April to June), in collaboration with the Center for Holocaust Humanity Education at Hebrew Union College. For a schedule, call 221-1875, Ext. 355 or visit www.holocaustandhumanity.org.

"She said the best way to approach it was to learn the piece and experience the emotions," says Selig, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. "Allow yourself to go to that place; allow yourself to cry about it, and feel the deep emotions, and then step away from it, and approach it from a different place."

This weekend, 12 years after Upshaw's recording of Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 rose to the top of both Billboard's Classic and Pop chart, knocking a Madonna song off the latter, Selig will sing its Tristate premiere with the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra in Covington's Cathedral Basilica. The concert, which includes Arnold Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw with tenor David Adams, will partly re-create a 1989 concert at St. Magnus Church in Brunswick, Germany, that marked the 50th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland.

The Third Symphony is an emotional journey through three slow movements, lasting about an hour. To prepare for the recording with David Zinman and the London Sinfonietta (Nonesuch; $14.99) - the only classical recording in history to sell more than a million copies - the Polish composer sat with Upshaw "and basically moaned for a good hour," Selig relates. "That is what he wanted her to feel - that the music was coming from out of her gut."

For Selig, who is 24, the most moving part is the central movement, which has a text from a prayer written on a Gestapo prison cell wall by a young child.

"It's basically 'Ave Maria,' but she's addressing her mother, saying, 'Mother, don't weep for me,' and saying a last prayer before she's executed," Selig says.

Still, says Selig, who will sing Gretel in CCM's production of Hansel and Gretel in May, the symphony isn't depressing and dark.

"It is emotional and moving, but it's about hope, life and peace," she says.

"One of the most beautiful things about the piece is how simple the music is. There's nothing flashy about the vocal line; it's all about the text."

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com