… became a hit, has died.
[T]he work…achieve[d] …explosive success — a surprise, given its unceasingly mournful character — [when] a recording by the soprano Dawn Upshaw, with David Zinman conducting the London Sinfonietta, was released on the Nonesuch label in 1992. The recording became a radio hit in Britain, where it broke into the Top 10 on the Music Week pop chart, and sold more than a million copies worldwide. For a while, Nonesuch said, it was selling 10,000 copies a day in the United States.
Here’s the first part of the symphony.