Modern Polish composers

[pieter]

Henryk Górecki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henryk Miko?aj Górecki (born December 6, 1933) is a Polish composer of classical music.
Górecki was born in the town of Czernica in Silesia in southwestern Poland. He did not study music seriously until he was in his twenties when he attended the State Higher School of Music in Katowice and studied under the composer Boles?av Szabelski, a former student of Karol Szymanowski. Górecki would go on to become one of the most prominent avant-garde composers of Poland in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Later, while continuing his studies in Paris, Górecki was able to hear works by Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen, which were suppressed by the Polish government. Górecki eventually became Professor of Composition at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice, and its Rector (1975-1979) but resigned his post in protest against the government's refusal to allow Pope John Paul II to visit the city.
Górecki's music covers a variety of styles, but tends to be harmonically and rhythmically relatively simple. His first works were in the same avant-garde style as that of Pierre Boulez and other serialists, but his later music is more often compared to minimalism, often being labelled “holy minimalism”. Like Arvo Pärt, with whom he is also compared, his works often reflect his religious beliefs (Górecki is a Catholic).
Górecki's most popular piece is his Third Symphony, subtitled Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Symfonia pie?ni ?a?osnych). Slow and contemplative, the three movements are composed for orchestra and soprano solo. The words of the first movement are from a 15th century lament; the words of the second were written by a teenage girl, Helena B?a?usiak, on the wall of a Gestapo prison cell in Zakopane and invoke the protections of the Virgin Mary; the third movement is a folk song. The first movement, an extended canon for strings, takes up around half the playing time; it uses a battery of double basses to build slowly to an exquisite outcry from the soprano, before retreating to its foundation. Of the three movements, the second - lasting about eight minutes - is probably the most frequently listened to. A typical performance of the work lasts about 55 minutes. The work was written in 1976, and premiered the following year; after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was performed in Poland at an emotional commemorative event. An acclaimed recording of the symphony -- performed by the London Sinfonietta conducted by David Zinman with the solo part sung by soprano Dawn Upshaw -- was released in 1993 and sold 2 million copies.
More recently, the first and third movements of Górecki's Pieces in the Old Style (Trzy utwory w dawnym stylu) were reinterpreted by the pop/dance music producer William Orbit in the album Pieces in a Modern Style (1999), an examination of orchestral pieces through electronic media.

See also:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krzysztof_Penderecki
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojciech_Kilar

It is really incredible but I can't find anything on the net about Henryk Wieniavsky,
who was played a lot at my parents home who had a record of him.
How can people forget this composer? Isn't he known or played in Poland?

[pieter]

Only when I typed in "Polish composers" I found Henryk Wieniavsky.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Henryk Wieniavsky

Henryk Wieniawski was born on 10 July 1835 in Lublin. Wieniawski owes his early introduction to the world of music to his mother, Regina, a professional pianist and the daughter of a Warsaw physician. His mother was also the driving force behind his musical training and subsequent development into a violin child prodigy. At the age of five he began violin lessons and three years later was admitted to the Paris Conservatory, overcoming the obstacles of being underaged and of foreign nationality. After completing with gold medal the accelerated course of study at the Conservatory he remained in Paris perfecting his technique under the care of professor Joseph L.Massart. It was then that he met in his mother's Paris salon of the two most famous Polish emigrees: Adam Mickiewicz (poet) and Fryderyk Chopin. Wieniawski's first, somewhat childish,compositions were written during that time (he was thirteen years old).
He returned to the Paris Conservatory and was joined by his brother Josef, where both studied composition until 1850. Wieniawski then embarked upon the unrelenting schedule of concert tours and performances which he was to continue almost throughout his life. While traveling he met Belgian violinist and composer Henri Vieuxtemps; a fellow Pole, Stanislaw Moniuszko, to whom he dedicated Allegro de Sonate op.2; Karol Lipinski, another Polish violin virtuoso and competitor of Paganini; also Robert Schumann and Anton Rubinstein.

The latter was instrumental in securing for Wieniawski a three year contract as the soloist of the court and court theaters in St. Petesburg. Wieniawski's arrangement in St Petersburg was later extended three more times (each time on terms more favorable to the artist) so that he resided there with his family from 1860 until 1872. While fulfilling the terms of his contract he also became involved as a teacher in the Russian Music Society run by his friend Anton Rubinstein and directed a newly founded string quartet. Through these various means he exerted a lasting influence on the development of the Russian violin school. The terms of the contract allowed Wieniawski extensive travel time during the spring and summer when he continued touring Europe on a busy schedule of concerts and social appearances.

In 1872, after his last contract in St. Petersburg had run its course, he resumed the life of the traveling virtuoso with a two-year tour of North America. Upon his return in 1875 he accepted a position of the professor of violin at the Brussels Conservatory but still maintained an extensive calendar of traveling and perfoming engagements. Since his North American tour, which exhausted him, his health continued to deteriorate. He died of an aggravated heart condition on 31 March 1880, in Moscow, in the midst of yet another concert tour. He was forty five at the time of his death.

During his life time he was unquestionably considered "a violinist of genius," an artist of great individuality, intensity of expression, and original technique. The influence of his technique is still evident in the style of some violinists of the Russian School.

The comparatively modest body of compositional work which he left behind attests to the demands of the life of the traveling virtuoso. Compositional forms favored by Wieniawski are consistent with the trends of his times. He composed variations, fantasies, capriccios, larger forms, such as concertos, and smaller lyrical forms (also called pieces de salon) - elegies, reveries, miniatures . In most of his early compositions, including the violin Concerto in F-sharp minor (1853), he put emphasis on technical difficulty and virtuoso effects. They were performance pieces which he composed with himself as a performer in mind. His work from these early years is said to exhibit the various influences of Paganini, Ernst and Vieuxtemps.

Wieniawski's grueling travel and concert schedule obviously interfered with his work as a composer. The relatively stable period of his residence in St. Petersburg (1860-1872) yielded the finest of his compositional works: Etudes-caprices op.18, Polonaise Brillante op.21, and the Second Violin Concerto in D-minor. The latter, a small masterpiece, has become a standard in the violin repertoire. While demonstrating the virtuoso possibilities of the violin technique,the composition is also characterized by Romantic lyricism and passionate melodic expression.

Wieniawski's interest in creating a "national" style of Polish music is evident in the mazurkas and polonaises he continued to compose throughout his career. In those works the influence of Chopin and Wieniawski's own genius produced a singular combination of noble simplicity of melodic line and mature, artistic sophistication. This great virtuoso-composer remains well respected today; in Poland his name is honored by International Competitions for violinists and violin-makers, held every five years in Pozna?. (For more information check our list of Competitions).

www.usc.edu/dept/polish_music/composer/wieniawski.html

[Jaga]

Pieter,

very interesting thread. Gorecki became more known outside of Poland first, I believe. Wieniawski is known in Poland for its violin music.

Pieter, did you ever heard about Marek Bilinski - he had unusual life and I love his music!

www.bilinski.pl/info%20english.html

[pieter]

admin said:

Pieter,

very interesting thread. Gorecki became more known outside of Poland first, I believe. Wieniawski is known in Poland for its violin music.

Pieter, did you ever heard about Marek Bilinski - he had unusual life and I love his music!

www.bilinski.pl/info%20english.html

Jaga,

Unfortunately I neve heard about Bilinski, but I am glad that you mention him.
Thank you for your contribution to this thread. This widdens the information
we have on Polish composers. It is also interesting to see the differant ways
Wieniavski is seen in Poland and the Netherlands.
In Poland as a violinist and in the Netherlands mainly for his compositions,
I knew him as a composer via my parents and the Dutch Classical radio,
Nederland 4.

Pieter

[pieter]

Here more info on Marek Bilinski (the Polish Jean Michel Jarre?) pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek_Bili?ski
It is great to know something about this Modern composer who works with synthesyzers and Arab
influences (his period in Kuwait). I have an ecclectic taste myself, and always love cross-overs in Music,
like Fusion, Pop music mixed with Calssical and Folk elements and jazz with classical touch (Oscar Peterson,
and Polish Jazz, I heard in Krakow). In Europe you have in France a new stile of music, which is a mix
of French chançon, Maghreb (Northern-African), Gypsy, Yiddish and Modern Anglo-saxon Pop music.
The North-African Rai music is a mix of Western Pop-music and Arab oriental music.
The Israeli singer (an beautiful Yemenite Jewish lady) Ofra Haza, also made this kind of music.
People like Marek Bilinski are important for the Music world, people who mix differant influences
and music cultures to a new -integrated- form.

And we may not forget another great Polish composer Karol Szymanowski ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Szymanowski ).

[Jaga]

Pieter,

if you would have any chance to listen to Bilinski - I really recommend his music! The comparison with J.M.Jarre is very appropriate

[pieter]

Thank you Jaga, for encouraging me to know Modern Polish music. Sorry for my late reaction.

Her more about Modern Polish music from 1945 until now;
( source: www.usc.edu/dept/polish_music/essays/briehist.html 0

The most recent chapter in the history of Polish

The most recent chapter in the history of Polish music was written in the socialist period between 1945 and 1989. The years 1949-1956 may be best described as the heights of Stalinist terror; at that time, the official ideology of the state constrained the arts by stylistic requirements of socialist realism. In music, "realistic" meant "folk-oriented, simple, neo-romantic," with more advanced creative efforts banned as symptomatic of "formalism" and the genres of mass song, cantata to praise the government, children's songs, practiced by most composers living in the country. Luckily for the fate of Polish music, this rigorous approach was soon replaced with a much more lax one: music was defined as abstract in its essence and, therefore, free from the necessity to be "realistic." From 1956, when the first Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music took place, till the fall of the socialist government in 1989 composers, especially those who refrained from political activities, were free to do as they pleased (as long as the subject matter and titles of their works avoided political controversy). During the 1960s Western critics began speaking about a "Polish school of composition" created by Gorecki, Penderecki, Kazimierz Serocki, Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), Wojciech Kilar (b. 1932) and many others. The delicate and refined textures of Lutoslawski's music found many admirers around the world [listen to Anne-Sophie Mutter play Chain II]; other, more aggressively dissonant works seem to have aged less gracefully.

Nonetheless, the cultural policies of the communist government left a legacy of strong support for non-figurative arts, a universal system of musical education, and the wide dissemination of information on composers, performers and their achievements. This favorable heritage was marred, however, by a record of political repression and the cultivation and promotion of a monolithic concept of ethnic Polishness. Knowledge about rich and varied heritages of cultures thriving in the Kingdom of Poland was not disseminated; the issues of ethnic backgrounds and regional loyalties of composers were ignored. One of the advantages of the governmental support for the art of music was the emphasis on gender equity and its result in the form of growing numbers of talented women composers, beginning from Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969). A disciple of Nadia Boulanger, a prize-winning violinist and composer, Bacewicz became one of the main figures in the Polish musical establishment after World War II. Her instrumental music, characterized by vitality, humor and a "joy of life" remains a favorite with musicians and music lovers. One of her younger colleagues, technical difficulty and brilliance. The best example from the first group is Marta Ptaszynska (composer and percussionist) enjoys an increasing international recognition as a leading compositional talent.

Today, music is thriving in Poland, and composers have the status of celebrities. If you ask a Polish man or woman on the street who is "Gorecki" or "Chopin" everyone would know. If you were to ask them to name one living composer the name of "Penderecki" would be mentioned. But if you were to repeat the same test in the U.S, it is highly unlikely that anyone who is not a musician would mention Steve Reich, or Elliot Carter.
Poland cherishes its musical heritage, enriched and sustained over the past thousand years. There are innumerable festivals, concert series and competitions through the year; musical events take place in large cities and small towns or villages. Even the smallest communities strive to celebrate their uniqueness with music. If you happen to be traveling on a LOT Polish airliner to Warsaw, tune in to the "Chopin" music channel on board. Listen to his Polonaises and Mazurkas, and you'll experience the spirit of Poland before your feet touch Polish soil.

[pieter]

Grazyna Bacewicz

Grazyna Bacewicz (February 5, 1909 in ?ód? – January 17, 1969 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish composer and violinist. She was the first Polish female composer to achieve national and international recognition.

Life

Her father, Wincenty Bacewicz, gave Bacewicz her first piano and violin lessons. In 1928 she began studying at the Warsaw Conservatory, where she initially took violin and piano classes, and graduated in 1932 as a violinist and composer. She continued her education in Paris, having been granted a stipend by Ignacy Jan Paderewski to attend the École Normale de Musique, and studied there in 1932-33 under the guidance of Nadia Boulanger. At the same time she took private violin lessons with Henri Touret. Later she also left France in order to learn from the Hungarian violinist Carl Flesch.
After completing her studies, Bacewicz took part in numerous events as a soloist, composer, and jury member. During the 1930s, she was the principal violinist of the Polish Radio orchestra, which was directed then by Grzegorz Fitelberg.
This position gave her the chance of hearing a lot of her own music.
During World War II, Grazyna Bacewicz lived in Warsaw, continued to compose,
and gave underground secret concerts (premiering her Suite for Two Violins).
Bacewicz also dedicated time to family life. She was married in 1936, and gave birth to a daughter, Alina Biernacka, a recognized painter. After the war, she took up the position of professor at the State Conservatory of Music in Lódz. At this time she was shifting her musical activity towards composition, tempted by her many awards and commissions, and it finally became her only occupation in 1954 after serious injuries in a car accident.

Compositions

Most of her compositions are for the violin. Among them are seven violin concertos, five sonatas for violin with piano including two for violin solo, seven string quartets, two piano quintets and four symphonies.

[pieter]

Kazimierz Serocki

Kazimierz Serocki (3 March 1922, Torun - 9 January 1981, Warsaw) was a Polish composer and one of the founders of the Warsaw Autumn contemporary music festival.

Life

He studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski and piano with Stanislaw Szpinalski at the State Higher School of Music in Lódz and graduated in 1946. He continued in Paris, studying composition with Nadia Boulanger and piano with Lazare Lévy, before graduating in 1947-1948. Between 1946 and 1951 he performed many times as a concert pianist in Poland and abroad, but for the rest of his career, he was focused exclusively on composition. Serocki's output is concentrated in two main spheres: orchestral music and vocal-instrumental pieces to Polish texts selected with fine discrimination.
Serocki was one of the founders, along with Tadeusz Baird, of the Warsaw Autumn international contemporary music festival. Together with Tadeusz Baird and Jan Krenz he formed the composers' group Group 49. He was vice-president of the central administration of the Polish Composers' Union from 1954 to 1955. He received a number of Polish and foreign awards, including several State Prizes, among them one in 1952 for his music to the film Young Chopin. He also received a prize at the UNESCO competition in 1959, for the Sinfonietta and the award of the Minister of Culture and Fine Arts in 1963 for the whole of his work.

[pieter]

Marta Ptaszynska

Marta Ptaszynska, composer, percussionist, professor of music, was born in 1943 in Warsaw, Poland. She completed her musical studies at the Academy of Music in Warsaw and in Poznan, receiving three Master of Arts Diplomas with distinction: in music theory, composition, and percussion performance. As a French Government grant recipient, she studied composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, attended classes of Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire National, and worked at Groupe des Recherches Musicales (GRM) at l'ORTF.
Since 1972 she lives in the United States, where she came on the invitation of the Cleveland Institute of Music to finalize her studies in percussion performance and composition. Since then she is enjoying a multi-faceted career as a composer, percussionist, and teacher. In 1998 she was appointed Professor in Music and Humanities at the University of Chicago. Previously she was on the faculty of the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington. For many years she also taught composition at Northwestern University, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the University of California in Berkeley and Santa Barbara, and at Bennington College in Vermont.
Acclaimed as one of the best composition teachers in the US, Ptaszynska is internationally known mainly through her music. Her works have been presented in many countries all over the world and performed at many prestigious music festivals such as the ISCM World Music Days in Stockholm, Brussels, and Oslo; the International Festival "Warsaw Autumn" in Poland; the Gulbenkian Foundation Festival in Portugal; the International Percussion Forum in Paris, France: the New Music Forum in Mexico City; the Huddersfield New Music Festival in England; Prix Futura in Berlin, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and the Heidelberg Contemporary Music Festival in Germany; the Salzburg Festival; Aspen Music Festival and International Conventions of Percussive Arts Society in USA, and the Vratislavia Cantans Oratorio Festival in Poland.

She worked with great musicians of our time, writing music and dedicating it to them. Among her "dedicatees" are Pope John Paul II and Lord Yehudi Menuhin, as well as Keiko Abe, world-renowned Japanese marimbist, Ewa Podles, Poland's foremost contralto, Julia Bentley, American mezzosoprano, Jerzy Maksymiuk, conductor of the Polish Chamber Orchestra.
In 1985 she received a First Prize from UNESCO in Paris at the International Rostrum of Composers for her string orchestra piece, WINTER'S TALE. Her opera OSCAR OF ALVA, awarded by the Polish Radio and Television, was presented in Salzburg, Austria at the International Festival of Television Operas organized by the International IMZ Congress and Salzburg Festival. Her opera for children, MISTER MARIMBA, which is in the repertory of the National Opera in Warsaw since 1998, has enjoyed phenomenal success with sold-out performances for four consecutive seasons. On June 1, 2002 the opera received its 78th presentation.
In 2000 Marta Ptaszynska has received an award from the Polish government for outstanding contributions to Polish culture. In 1995, she received the "Officer Cross of Merit" from the Republic of Poland. She was also honored with a medal from the Union of Polish Composers. In 1997 she received the Alfred Jurzykowski Award in New York for overall creative achievements.

www.usc.edu/dept/polish_music/composer/ptaszynska.html

[pieter]

Witold Lutoslawski

Witold Lutoslawski ( January 25, 1913 – February 7, 1994) was one of the major European composers of the 20th century. He was possibly the most significant Polish composer since Chopin, and was the pre-eminent musician of his country during the last three decades of the century. During his lifetime he earned a large number of international awards and prizes, including the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour.
Lutoslawski studied piano and composition in Warsaw, and his early works were overtly influenced by Polish folk music. His style demonstrates a wide range of rich atmospheric textures. He began to develop his own characteristic composition techniques in the late 1950s. His music from this period onwards incorporates his own methods of building harmonies from a small group of musical intervals. It also exhibits aleatory processes, in which the rhythmic coordination of parts is subject to an element of chance. His works (of which he was a notable conductor) include four symphonies, a Concerto for Orchestra, and several concertos and song cycles.
During World War II, Lutoslawski made a living by playing the piano in Warsaw bars.
For a time after the war, Stalinist authorities banned his compositions for being "formalist"— allegedly accessible only to the elite. In the 1980s, Lutoslawski used his stature to support the Solidarity movement, which won the 1989 legislative election and broke the Soviet hold over Poland.

Biography

Family and early years

Lutoslawski's parents were both born into the Polish landed gentry. His family owned estates in the area of Drozdowo. His father Józef was involved in the Polish National Democratic Party (Endecja), and the Lutoslawski family became intimate with its founder, Roman Dmowski (Witold Lutoslawski's middle name was Roman). Until World War I, Poland was divided according to the 1815 Congress of Vienna, and Warsaw was part of Tsarist Russia.
Józef Lutoslawski studied in Zürich, where in 1904 he met and married a fellow student, Maria Olszewska, who later became Lutoslawski's mother. Józef pursued his studies in London, where he acted as correspondent for the Endecja newspaper, Gonca. He continued to be involved in National Democracy politics after returning to Warsaw in 1905, and took over the management of the family estates in 1909. After Józef's death, when Lutoslawski was only five, other members of the family played an important part in his early life. They included Józef's half-brother Wicenty Lutoslawski, a multilingual philosopher who used literary analysis to establish the chronology of Plato's writings. Wicenty was married to the Spanish poet Sophia Pérez Eguia y Casanova.
Józef's other brothers were also members of the intelligentsia.
Witold Roman Lutoslawski was born in Warsaw on January 25, 1913. Soon afterwards, with the outbreak of World War I, Russia was at war with Germany, and in 1915 Prussian forces drove towards Warsaw. The Lutoslawskis fled east to Moscow, where Józef remained politically active, organising Polish Legions ready for any action that might liberate Poland. Dmowski's strategy was for Imperial Russia to guarantee security for a new Polish state. However, in 1917, the February Revolution forced the Tsar to abdicate, and the October Revolution started a new Soviet government that made peace with Germany. Józef's activities were now in conflict with the Bolsheviks, who arrested him and his brother Marian. Thus, although fighting stopped on the Eastern Front in 1917, the Lutoslawskis were prevented from returning home. The brothers were sent to the notorious Butyrskaya prison in central Moscow, where Lutoslawski—by then aged five—visited his father. Józef and Marian were executed by a firing squad in September 1918, without trial.
After the war, the family returned to Warsaw, capital of the newly independent Second Polish Republic, only to find their estates ruined. Lutoslawski started piano lessons for two years from the age of six. In the Polish-Soviet War, however, Drozdowo again came into the firing line, and after a few years of running the estates with limited success, his mother returned to Warsaw. In 1924 Lutoslawski entered secondary school while continuing piano lessons. A performance of Karol Szymanowski's Third Symphony deeply affected him. In 1926 he started violin lessons, and in 1927 as a part-time student he entered the Warsaw Conservatory where Szymanowski was both professor and director. He started to compose, but could not manage both his school and conservatory studies, and so discontinued the latter. In 1931 he enrolled at Warsaw University to study mathematics, and formally entered composition classes at the Conservatory. His teacher was Witold Maliszewski, a pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He was given a strong grounding in musical structures, particularly movements in sonata form. In 1933 he gave up his mathematics and violin studies to concentrate on piano and composition. He gained a diploma for piano performance from the Conservatory in 1936, after presenting a virtuoso program including Schumann's Toccata and Beethoven's fourth piano concerto. His diploma for composition was awarded by the same institution in 1937.

World War II

Military service followed—Lutoslawski was trained in signalling and radio operating. Although he had intended to travel to Paris for further musical study, in September 1939, Germany invaded western Poland and Russia invaded eastern Poland. Lutoslawski was mobilised with the radio unit at Kraków, and was soon captured by German soldiers, but escaped while being marched to prison camp, and walked 400 km back to Warsaw. Lutoslawski's brother was captured by Russian soldiers, and later died in a labour camp.
To earn a living, Lutoslawski joined a cabaret group playing popular dances. He also formed a piano duo with friend and fellow composer Andrzej Panufnik, and they performed together in Warsaw bars. Their repertoire consisted of a wide range of music in their own arrangements, including the first incarnation of Lutoslawski's Paganini Variations, a highly original transformation of the original 24th Caprice for solo violin by Niccolò Paganini. Defiantly, they even sometimes played banned Polish music. Listening in cafés was the only way in which the Poles of German-occupied Warsaw could hear live music; putting on concerts was impossible since the occupying forces prohibited all organised gatherings. (Panufnik 1987)
Lutoslawski's mother had been in East Poland at the outbreak of the war, but was spirited to Warsaw by friends. Lutoslawski left Warsaw with his mother just before the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, salvaging only a few scores and sketches —the rest of his music was lost during the destruction of the city, as were the family's Drozdowo estates. Of the 200 or so arrangements that Lutoslawski and Panufnik had worked on for their piano duo, only Lutoslawski's Paganini Variations survived. Lutoslawski returned to the ruins of Warsaw after the Polish-Soviet treaty in April.

Postwar years

During the postwar years, Lutoslawski worked on his first symphony—sketches of which he had salvaged from Warsaw—which was first performed in 1948. To provide for his family, he also composed music that he termed functional, such as the Warsaw Suite (written to accompany a silent film depicting the city's reconstruction), sets of Polish Carols, and the study pieces for piano, Melodie Ludowe ("Folk Melodies").
In 1945, Lutoslawski was elected as secretary and treasurer of the newly constituted Union of Polish Composers (ZKP—Zwiazek Kompozytorów Polskich). In 1946, he married Maria Danuta Boguslawska, an architecture student. Lutoslawski had met her brother, the writer Stanislaw Dygat, before the war, and both Stanislaw and Maria had listened to the piano duo performances during the war. The marriage was a lasting one, and Maria's drafting skills were of great value to the composer: she became his copyist, and solved some of the notational challenges of his later works.
In 1947, the Stalinist political climate led to the suppression by the ruling Polish United Workers' Party of music in a specifically Polish idiom, including the music of Chopin. This artistic censorship, which ultimately came from Stalin personally, was to some degree prevalent over the whole Eastern bloc, and was reinforced by the 1948 Zhdanov decree. Composers were required to write music following the principles of Socialist realism. By 1948, the ZKP was taken over by musicians willing to follow the party line on musical matters, and Lutoslawski was dropped from the committee. He was implacably opposed to the ideas of Socialist realism. His First Symphony was proscribed as "formalist", and he found himself shunned by the Soviet authorities, a situation that continued throughout the era of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko. In 1954, the climate of musical oppression drove his friend Andrzej Panufnik to defect to the United Kingdom. Against this background, he was happy to compose pieces for which there was social need, but in 1954 this earned Lutoslawski—much to the composer's chagrin—the Prime Minister's Prize, for a set of children's songs. As he commented, "… it was for those functional compositions of mine that the authorities decorated me … I realised that I was not writing indifferent little pieces, only to make a living, but was carrying on an artistic creative activity in the eyes of the outside world." (Varga 1976).
It was his substantial and original Concerto for Orchestra of 1954 that established Lutoslawski as an important composer of art music. The work earned the composer two state prizes in the following year.

Maturity

Stalin's death in 1953 allowed a certain relaxation of the cultural totalitarianism in Russia and its satellite states. By 1956, political events had led to a partial thawing of the musical climate, and the Warsaw Autumn Festival of Contemporary Music was founded. Originally intended to be a biennial festival, it has been held annually ever since 1958 (except under Martial law in 1982 when, in protest, the ZKP refused to organise it). The year 1958 saw the first performance of his Muzyka zalobna (Musique funèbre, or "Music of mourning"), written to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Béla Bartók; this work brought international recognition, the annual ZKP prize and the UNESCO prize in 1959. This work, together with the Five songs of 1956–57, saw the significant development of Lutoslawski's harmonic and contrapuntal thinking by introducing the twelve-note system that he had developed. He hit on another feature of his compositional technique, which became a Lutoslawski signature, when he began introducing randomness into the exact synchronisation of various parts of the musical ensemble in Jeux vénitiens ("Venetian games"). These harmonic and temporal techniques became part of every subsequent work, and integral to his style.
In a departure from his usually serious compositions, the years 1957–63 saw Lutoslawski also composing light music under the pseudonym Derwid. Mostly waltzes, tangos, foxtrots and slow-foxtrots for voice and piano, these pieces are in the genre of Polish actors' songs. Their place in Lutoslawski's output may be seen as less incongruous given his own performances of cabaret music during the war, and in the light of his relationship by marriage to the famous Polish cabaret singer Kalina Jedrusik (who was his wife's sister-in-law).
In 1963, Lutoslawski fulfilled a commission for the Zagreb music Biennale, his Trois poèmes d'Henri Michaux for chorus and orchestra. It was the first work he had written for a commission from abroad, and brought him further international acclaim. It earned him a second State Prize for music (there was no cynicism towards the award this time), and Lutoslawski gained an agreement for the international publication of his music with Chester Music, then part of the Hansen publishing house.
With his String Quartet (1964), Lutoslawski (or rather his wife, Danuta) solved the problem of how to notate his requirement for a lack of synchronicity between the parts. Originally Lutoslawski produced only the four instrumental parts, refusing to bind them in a full score, because he was concerned that this would imply that he wanted notes in vertical alignment to coincide, as is the case with conventionally notated classical ensemble music. Danuta solved this by cutting up the parts and sticking them together in boxes (which Lutoslawski called mobiles), with instructions on how to signal in performance when all of the players should proceed to the next mobile. In his orchestral music, these problems were not to so difficult, because the instructions on how and when to proceed are given by the conductor.
The String Quartet was first performed in Stockholm in 1965, followed the same year by the first performance of his orchestral song-cycle Paroles tissées. This shortened title was suggested by the poet Jean-François Chabrun, who had originally published the poems as Quatre tapisseries pour la Châtelaine de Vergi. The song cycle is dedicated to the tenor Peter Pears, who first performed it at the 1965 Aldeburgh Festival with the composer conducting. The Aldeburgh Festival was founded and organised by Benjamin Britten, with whom the composer formed a lasting friendship.
Shortly after this, Lutoslawski started work on his Second Symphony, which had two premieres: Pierre Boulez conducted the second movement, Direct, in 1966, and when the first movement, Hésitant, was finished in 1967, the composer conducted a complete performance in Katowice. The Second Symphony is very different from a conventional classical symphony in structure, but Lutoslawski used all of his technical innovations up to that point to build a large-scale, dramatic work worthy of the name.
In 1968, the work earned Lutoslawski first prize from UNESCO's Tribune International des Compositeurs, his third such award, which confirmed his growing international reputation.

International renown

The Second Symphony, the Livre pour orchestre, and the Cello Concerto which followed, were composed during a particularly traumatic period in Lutoslawski’s life. His mother died in 1967, and the period 1967–70 saw a great deal of unrest in Poland. This sprang first from the suppression of the theatre production Dziady, which sparked a summer of protests; later, in 1968, the use of Polish troops to suppress the liberal reforms in Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring, and the Gdansk Shipyards strike of 1970—which led to a violent clampdown by the authorities, both caused significant political and social tension in Poland. Lutoslawski did not support the Soviet regime, and these events have been postulated as reasons for the increase in antagonistic effects in his work, particularly the Cello Concerto of 1968–70 for Rostropovich and the Royal Philharmonic Society. Indeed, Rostropovich's own opposition to the Soviet regime in Russia was just coming to a head (he shortly afterwards declared his support for the dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). Lutoslawski himself did not hold the view that such influences had a direct effect on his music, although he acknowledged that they impinged on his creative world to some degree. In any case, the Cello Concerto was a great success, earning both Lutoslawski and Rostropovich accolades.
In 1973, Lutoslawski attended a recital given by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Sviatoslav Richter in Warsaw; this inspired him to write his extended orchestral song Les espaces du sommeil ("The spaces of sleep"). This work, Mi-Parti (a French expression roughly translated as "divided into two equal but different parts"), and a short piece for cello in honour of Paul Sacher's seventieth birthday, continued to keep Lutoslawski busy, while in the background he was working away at a projected third symphony and a concertante piece for the oboist Heinz Holliger. These latter pieces were proving difficult to complete as Lutoslawski struggled to introduce greater fluency into his sound world. The Double Concerto for oboe, harp and chamber orchestra—commissioned by Paul Sacher—was finally finished in 1980, and the Third Symphony in 1983.
During this time, Poland was undergoing yet more upheaval: in 1978, John Paul II was elected Pope, providing a national figurehead of world importance; in 1980, the influential group Solidarnosc was created, led by Lech Walesa; and in 1981, martial law was declared by General Wojciech Jaruzelski. From 1981–89, Lutoslawski refused all professional engagements in Poland as a gesture of solidarity with the artists' boycott. He refused to enter the Culture Ministry to meet any of the ministers, and was careful not be photographed in their company. In 1983, he sent a recording of the first performance (in Chicago) of the Third Symphony to Gdansk to be played to strikers in a local church, a gesture of support understood by both sides. In 1983, he was awarded the Solidarity prize, of which Lutoslawski was reported to be more proud than any other of his honours.
The Third Symphony earned Lutoslawski the first Grawemeyer Prize from the University of Louisville, Kentucky. The significance of the prize lay not just in its prestige—other eminent nominations have included Elliott Carter and Michael Tippett—but in the size of its financial award (then US$150,000). The intention of the award is to remove recipients' financial concerns for a period to allow them to concentrate on serious composition. In a gesture of altruism, Lutoslawski announced that he would use the fund to set up a scholarship to enable young Polish composers to study abroad; Lutoslawski also directed that his fee from the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra for Chain 3 should go to this scholarship fund.

Final years

Through the mid-1980s Lutoslawski hit upon ways of simplifying his style while retaining the freedoms he had gained in his techniques to date. He composed three pieces called Lancuch ("Chain"), which refers to the way the music is constructed from contrasting strands which overlap like the links of a chain. Chain 2 was written for Anne-Sophie Mutter (commissioned by Paul Sacher), and for Mutter he also orchestrated his slightly earlier Partita for violin and piano, providing a new linking Interlude, so that when played together the Partita, Interlude and Chain 2 form his longest work.
In 1987 Lutoslawski was presented (by Michael Tippett) with the Royal Philharmonic Society's Gold Medal during a concert in which Lutoslawski was conducting his Third Symphony; also that year a major celebration of his work was made at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. In addition, he was awarded honorary doctorates at several universities worldwide, including Cambridge.
Lutoslawski was at this time writing his Piano Concerto for Krystian Zimerman, commissioned by the Salzburg Festival. He had had plans to write a piano concerto since 1938, being himself in his younger days a virtuoso pianist. It was this work that marked the composer's return to the conductor's podium in Poland in 1988, after substantive talks had been arranged between the government and the opposition.

Music

Lutoslawski described musical composition as a search for listeners who think and feel the same way he did — he once called it "fishing for souls".

[pieter]

(Continuation Lutoslawski's story)

Folk influence

Lutoslawski's works up until and including the Dance Preludes clearly show the influence of Polish folk music, both harmonically and melodically. Part of his art was to transform folk music, rather than quoting it exactly. In some cases, folk music is unrecognisable as such without careful analysis, for example, in the Concerto for Orchestra. As Lutoslawski developed the techniques of his mature compositions, he stopped using folk material expicitly, although its influence remained as subtle features until the end. As he said, "[in those days] I could not compose as I wished, so I composed as I was able", and about this change of direction he said, "I was simply not so interested in it [using folk music]".

Pitch organisation

In Muzyka zalobna (1958) Lutoslawski introduced his own brand of twelve-tone music, marking a departure from the explicit use of folk music. His twelve-tone technique allowed him to build harmony and melody from specific intervals (in Muzyka zalobna, augmented fourths and semitones). This system also gave him the means to write the dense chords he wanted without resorting to tone clusters, and enabled him to build towards these dense chords (which often include all twelve notes of the chromatic scale) at climactic moments. Lutoslawski's twelve-note techniques were thus completely different in conception from Arnold Schoenberg's tone-row system, although Muzyka zalobna does happen to be based on a tone row. The twelve-note intervallic technique had its genesis in earlier works such as Concerto for Orchestra.

Aleatory technique

Although Muzyka zalobna was internationally acclaimed, his new harmonic techniques led to something of a crisis for Lutoslawski, during which he still could not see how to express his musical ideas. Then he happened to hear some music by John Cage. Although he was not influenced by the sound or the philosophy of Cage's music, Cage's explorations of aleatory music set off a train of thought which resulted in Lutoslawski finding a way to retain the harmonic structures he wanted while introducing the freedom for which he was searching. His Three Postludes were hastily rounded off (he originally intended to write four) and he moved on to compose works in which he explored these new ideas.
In works from Jeux vénitiens, the parts of the ensemble are not to be synchronised exactly. At cues from the conductor each instrumentalist may be instructed to move straight on to the next section, to finish their current section before moving on, or to stop. In this way the random element implied by the term aleatory is carefully directed by the composer, who controls the architecture and harmonic progression of the piece precisely. Lutoslawski notated the music exactly, there is no improvisation, no choice of parts is given to any instrumentalist, and there is thus no doubt about how the musical performance is to be realised. The combination of Lutoslawski's aleatory techniques and his harmonic discoveries allowed him to build up complex musical textures.
The aleatoric style of Lutoslawski's mature period is clearly illustrated by the excerpt from the score of his Third Symphony. Instead of printing every instrumental part across the page whether sounding or not, here there is white space when instruments are silent. The wind and brass instruments, on the top half of the page, are each given a short fragment of music followed by a wavy line; this indicates that they should each play their fragment again and again in their own time, resulting in an atmospheric texture devoid of pulse and with a cloud-like sense of melody and rhythm. After the brass and wind figuration is established, the conductor gives four successive beats for the string section, notated on the lower half of the page. At each beat (signified by a downward arrow on the score) first the violins, then the violas, then the cellos and finally the basses enter with downward motifs, themselves repeated and unsynchronised apart from their entries. In some works of this period, this controlled freedom given to the individual musicians is contrasted with sections where the orchestra is asked to synchronise their parts conventionally, in passages notated with a common time signature.

Late style

In his later works Lutoslawski evolved a more harmonically mobile, less monumental style, in which less of the music is played with an ad libitum coordination. This development resulted from the demands of his late chamber works, such as Epitaph, Grave and Partita for just two instrumentalists; however it may also be seen in orchestral works such as Piano Concerto, Chantefleurs et Chantefables, and the Fourth Symphony, which require mostly conventional coordination.
Lutoslawski's formidable technical developments grew out of his creative imperative; that he left a lasting body of major compositions is a testament to his resolution of purpose in the face of the anti-formalist authorities under which he formulated his methods.
A detailed and thorough discussion of Lutoslawski's music and technique can be found in both Stucky (1981) and Rae (1999).

[pieter]

Andrzej Panufnik
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Andrzej Panufnik (September 24, 1914 - October 27, 1991) was a Polish composer, pianist, and conductor.

Biography


Childhood, and studies

Panufnik was born in Warsaw, the second son of a violinist mother and an amateur (but renowned) violin-maker father. From an early age he was torn between an interest in music and a fascination with the mechanics of aeroplanes. His grandmother arranged piano lessons for him, but although he showed talent his studies were erratic. As a schoolboy he composed some successful popular tunes, but his father did not approve his son's pursuing a musical career. Eventually his father relented, permitting the boy to study music provided he matriculated. Panufnik failed the piano entrance examination for the Warsaw Conservatoire, but succeeded in gaining admission as a percussion student. He soon left the percussion class to concentrate on studying composition and conducting; he worked hard and completed the course in much less time than expected.
After graduating with distinction in 1936, his plans to travel to Vienna to study conducting for a year under Felix Weingartner were delayed by his being called up for National Service. Panufnik recalled how, on the night before his medical, he heard the Polish chant Bogurodzica on the wireless. This entirely captivated him, and he sat up late into the night drinking copious quantities of black coffee. The result of this was that he failed his medical examination and was excused from military duties. Instead he used the year's hiatus earning money and reputation composing film music.
Panufnik travelled to Vienna in 1937 for his studies with Weingartner. He also fulfilled his intention of studying music by the composers of the Second Viennese School, but while he applauded Arnold Schoenberg's imposition of constraints in order to give artistic unity to a composition, dodecaphonic music did not appeal to him. Panufnik returned to Poland before the end of his planned year-long stay, leaving shortly after the Anschluss when the political situation caused Weingartner to be removed from the Academy.
Panufnik also lived for some months in Paris and London, where he studied privately and composed his first symphony. He met Weingartner again in London, and the older conductor urged him to stay in England to avoid the consequences of the worsening international situation. Panufnik was determined to return to Poland.

Panufnik's war

During the German occupation of Warsaw during World War II Panufnik formed a piano duo with his friend and fellow composer Witold Lutoslawski, and they performed in cafés around Warsaw. This was the only way in which Poles could legitimately hear live music, as arranging concerts was impossible because the occupying forces had banned organised gatherings. Panufnik also composed some illegal Songs of Underground Resistance, which became popular among the Polish community. During this period he composed a Tragic Overture and a second symphony. Later, Panufnik was able to conduct charity concerts, at one of which his Tragic Overture was first performed. He fled from Warsaw with his ailing mother, leaving all his music behind in his apartment, just before the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. When Panufnik returned to the ruins of the city in the spring of 1945 to bury his brother's body and recover his own manuscripts, he discovered that despite having survived the widespread destruction, all of his scores had been discarded onto a bonfire by the new tenant of his rooms.

Socialist Realism

After World War II Panufnik moved to Kraków, where he found work composing film music for the Army Film Unit. Most of this was for propaganda films; Panufnik later recounted how for one film, The Electrification of the Villages, the director was unable to find a house without a supply of electricity, and had to demolish pylons and remove infrastructure in order to film it being built.
Panufnik accepted the post of Principal Conductor with the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra. He also reconstructed some of his music that had been lost, starting with the Tragic Overture which was still fresh in his mind. Encouraged by this he also reconstructed his Piano Trio and Polish Peasant Songs. However, his first symphony did not prove so easy and, disappointed with the result, Panufnik decided that he would thereafter concentrate on composing new works.
Appointed Music Director of the defunct Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, traditionally Poland's leading orchestra, Panufnik set about engaging musicians and finding premises. When beauraucratic obstacles made the reconstitution of the orchestra difficult (for example, the lack of available living accommodation for the musicians) he resigned in protest. At this time he also fulfilled conducting engagements abroad, including guest conductor with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He was instructed to include his Tragic Overture as a reminder to Germany of their recent actions in Warsaw.
Around this time he started composing again, writing his Circle of Fifths for piano (published as Twelve Miniature Studies). His Nocturne for orchestra was inspired by the combination of the River Thames and the night sky while he was visiting London. In its use of quarter tones this broke new ground, both for Panufnik and for Polish music. Panufnik also composed a Sinfonia Rustica, deciding to give it a name rather than the designation "Symphony No. 1" out of feeling for his two lost works in the genre.
Panufnik became Vice-President of the newly constituted Union of Socialist Composers (ZKP—Zwiazek Kompozytorów Polskich), accepting the post after being urged to do so by his colleagues. However, in this capacity he found himself manoeuvred into positions which he did not support, at conferences whose nature was political rather than musical. At one of these conferences he met Zoltán Kodály who privately expressed a similar feeling of artistic helplessness to Panufnik's. He also encountered composers such as the English Alan Bush, who were sympathetic to the aims of Stalinist Socialism, and other composers on the political far-left such as Benjamin Frankel.
Adding to Panufnik's discomfiture, in the postwar period the government became increasingly interventionist in the arts. As a consequence of events in the Soviet Union, particularly the Zhdanov decree in 1948, it was dictated that composers should follow Soviet Realism, and that musical compositions, like all works of art, should reflect "the realities of Socialist Life". Panufnik later mused on the nebulous nature of Soviet Realism, quoting a Polish joke of the time that it was "like a mosquito: everyone knew it had a prick, but no-one had seen it". In this climate Panufnik, who was not a member of the Communist Party, attempted to tread an acceptable path by composing works based on historical Polish music; to this end he wrote his Old Polish Suite.
First, his Nocturne was singled out for criticism. Later General Wlodzimierz Sokorski, Culture Secretary, announced that Panufnik's Sinfonia Rustica had "ceased to exist": Panufnik later described the symphony as "a patently innocent work", and found it particularly galling that one of the panel that decided on the work's proscription had earlier been on the panel that had awarded it first prize in the Chopin Competition. While his compositions were banned at home as formalist, Panufnik was promoted abroad as a cultural export, both as composer and conductor. The authorities awarded him their highest accolade, Standard of Labour First Class.
In 1950, Panufnik visited Russia as part of a Polish delegation to study Soviet teaching methods. He met Dmitri Shostakovich, whom he had befriended at previous conferences, and Aram Khatchaturian. During conversations with lesser composers, Panufnik was pressed to say what he was working on. Feeling the need to say something acceptable, he casually mentioned that he had an idea for a Symphony of Peace. This was seized upon, and on returning to Poland he was granted a stay in quiet surroundings so that he could finish the piece (Panufnik interpreted this as an order to complete it). He wrote a three movement work, ending with a setting of words by his friend, the poet Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz. Panufnik hoped to work his own conception of peace into the composition, rather than the official Soviet ideology. The piece was not a success.
While he was writing the Symphony of Peace, he was struck by the beauty of an Irish woman he met called Marie Elizabeth O'Mahoney, who was known as "Scarlett" because of her likeness (both physical and temperamental) to Scarlett O'Hara from Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind. Even though she was honeymooning with her third husband, she and Panufnik started an affair. Panufnik soon discovered she was epileptic, but in spite of his doubts the couple were married in 1951 and soon had a baby daughter Oonagh. Panufnik now had a young family to support, and so threw himself into his lucrative work for the Film Unit. For one film he again turned to old Polish music, and he eventually adapted this score for the concert work Concerto in modo antico.
In 1952 Panufnik composed a Heroic Overture, based on an idea he had conceived in 1939 inspired by the struggle of Poland against Nazi oppression. He submitted this work (without divulging its true meaning) for the 1952 pre-Olympic music competition in Helsinki, and it won. However, at home this overture was also branded "formalist".
In the spring of 1953, Panufnik led the Chamber Orchestra of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra on a tour of China, where he met prime-minister Zhou Enlai and, briefly, Chairman Mao. While he was on this tour, he heard that Oonagh had been drowned while Scarlett had an epileptic attack while she was bathing her. Some time after returning to Warsaw he was asked to write a letter that the government could send to western musicians, ostensibly from Panufnik, to sound them out for sympatheties with the Polish "Peace Movement". Panufnik described this as effectively an order to spy for Moscow, and as the last in a "succession of final straws". Thus in 1954 Panufnik's no longer felt ablt to reconcile his patriotic desire to remain a Polish composer in Poland with his contempt for the musical and political demands of the government. He decided to migrate to Britain in order to highlight the conditions in which Polish composers were being forced to work.
Scarlett, whose father lived in Britain, easily obtained permission to travel to London, and while she was there she covertly asked Polish emigré friends to help. Bernard Jacobson described the events of Panufnik's escape from Poland as being straight out of a le Carré novel. The plan involved his friends' contrivance of a conducting engagement in Switzerland as cover, Panufnik's anxiety not to appear too eager to accept the invitation when it arrived, the Polish Legation in Switzerland divining his impending escape—and their urgent attempts to recall him to the Polish Embassy—and Panufnik's alarming night-time taxi-ride through Zürich to shake off members of the Secret Police who were following him. He eventually boarded a flight for London, and was granted political asylum on arrival. His defection made international headlines. The Polish government branded him a traitor, immediately suppressing his music and any record of his conducting achievements. Before he left Poland, Panufnik was recognised by both the authorities and his colleagues as the country's leading composer and conductor; with his departure he became a nonperson, and remained so until 1977.

Life in the west

Having left Poland without any money or possessions, income from occasional conducting engagements made it hard for Panufnik to make ends meet. He received financial support from fellow composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Arthur Benjamin; Panufnik was as heartened by the gesture of professional solidarity as much as by the money. His old friend the pianist Witold Malcuzynski also helped by finding for Panufnik a wealthy patron. Scarlett published a book about Panufnik's life in Poland and his escape, but its surmises and inaccuracies distressed Panufnik. The couple were growing apart: Scarlett longed for constant company and excitement, while Panufnik craved peace and tranquility in order to compose.
Panufnik visited the United States to attend a performance of his Symphony of Peace conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The performance made Panufnik decide to scrap the Symphony of Peace, which he felt he had written under duress. When he returned to England he discarded the choral movement and recast the rest of the piece as his Sinfonia elegaica. This too was performed under Stokowski with considerable success.
Panufnik had found it frustratingly difficult to get permission to travel to the States. In the wake of McCarthyism, the staff at the American Embassy in London were unhelpful, and treated him with suspicion: Panufnik was surprised to have to supply fingerprints, and he was pointedly asked more than once whether he had ever been a member of the Polish Communist Party. The irony of this difficulty, after his recent public defection to the west, was not lost on Panufnik.
For two years from 1957 to 1959 Panufnik's financial situation eased slightly when he was appointed Principal Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra was keen to keep him, but preparing for fifty concerts a year prevented Panufnik from devoting enough time to composing.
In 1959 Panufnik fell in love with Winsome Ward, who was diagnosed with cancer in 1960 once more plunging Panufnik into despair. During this time, Panufnik had fulfilled a commission for his Piano Concerto, and another for his Sinfonia Sacra. He had also met Camilla Jessel, then aged twenty, who had worked as a personal assistant in the United States. The British MP Neil Marten (who had been the person at the British Foreign Office responsible for looking after Panufnik's defection) suggested that Jessel could help him with his correspondence. Panufnik accepted, and she rapidly discovered that he had not replied to letters offering conducting engagements and enquiring about commissions. This released time for Panufnik, allowing him to devote more time to composition. In 1963, Panufnik entered his newly completed Sinfonia Sacra for a prestigious international competition in Monaco for best orchestral work: it won first prize
After the death of Winsome Ward in 1963, Panufnik and Jessel were drawn increasingly together, and they were married in November 1963. They moved into a house near the Thames in Twickenham, Greater London. His works were in demand by such major figures as Leopold Stokowski who conducted the first performance of Universal Prayer, Yehudi Menuhin who commissioned a violin concerto, and Mstislav Rostropovich who commissioned a cello concerto. He also received commissions from orchestras as far afield as London, Boston and Monte Carlo. Panufnik did not return to Poland until 1990. He was Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. He died in Twickenham.
His daughter Roxanna Panufnik by his second wife Camilla is also a composer.

Compositions

The manuscripts and parts of a number of early compositions were lost as a consequence of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Panufnik reconstructed some of these in 1945.

[pieter]

For the new visitors too! I hope that this is not to much information!