Born: December 6,1933, Czernica, Poland
Died: October 27, 1991, Twickenham (suburb of London), England
Early days. A son of a violinist mother Mathilde Thones (of English background) and a violin-maker father. As a schoolboy he composed some successful popular tunes, but his father did not approve of his son's pursuing a musical career. He eventually relented, permitting the boy to study music provided he matriculated. Panufnik studied composition and conducting and completed the course with distinction in 1936. Panufnik travelled to Vienna in 1937 to study conducting with Weingartner (Austrian composer, conductor and pianist). He returned to Poland and also lived in Paris and London, where he studied privately and composed his first symphony.
Career. 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, however, to return to Poland. During the German occupation of Warsaw during World War II Panufnik formed a piano duo with his friend Witold Lutosławski, and they performed in cafés in Warsaw. Panufnik also composed some illegal Songs of Underground Resistance. During this period he composed a Tragic Overture and a second symphony. He fled from Warsaw with his ailing mother, leaving all his music behind in his apartment, just before the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. When he returned to the ruins of the city in the spring of 1945 he discovered that all of his scores had been discarded onto a bonfire by a stranger who had taken over his rooms. He then moved to Kraków where he found work composing film music for the Army Film Unit. Some of this was for propaganda films. Panufnik accepted the post of Principal Conductor with the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra. Appointed Music Director of the defunct Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra but when bureaucratic obstacles made the reconstitution of the orchestra difficult 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. Panufnik became Vice-President of the newly constituted Union of Polish Composers. However, in this capacity he found himself maneuvered into positions which he did not support, at conferences whose nature was political rather than musical. Adding to Panufnik's discomfiture, in the post-war 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". 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. His Nocturne was singled out for criticism, and later General Włodzimierz Sokorski, Secretary of Culture, announced that Panufnik's Sinfonia Rustica had "ceased to exist". The work was nevertheless published by the State Publishing House and performances of the work continued sporadically in Poland. While his compositions were branded at home as formalist, Panufnik was promoted abroad as a cultural expert, both as composer and conductor. In 1950, Panufnik visited Soviet Union as part of a Polish delegation to study Soviet teaching methods. He met the composers 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. Having 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 Jarosław 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 with the authorities. At that time he met a beautiful Irish woman Marie Elizabeth O'Mahoney (called Scarlett). 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 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 was sent, with the Chamber Orchestra of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, on a tour of China, where he met prime-minister Zhou Enlai and, briefly, Chairman Mao. In his first days there, he heard devastating news that his adored Oonagh had been drowned while Scarlett had an epileptic attack while she was bathing her. 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 as to their sympathies 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 no longer felt able 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 emigrate to Britain. Panufnik’s wife whose father lived in Britain, easily obtained permission to travel to London, and while she was there she covertly asked Polish émigré friends to help. They contrived a conducting engagement in Switzerland as cover. Panufnik was anxious not to arouse suspicion by appearing too eager to accept the invitation when it arrived. While Panufnik was fulfilling the engagement, the Polish Legation in Switzerland became aware of his impending escape, and urgently recalled him to the Polish Embassy. Panufnik gave members of the Secret Police who were following him the slip during an alarming night-time taxi-ride through Zürich. 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, publicizing numerous calumnies against him. Although a few subsequent Polish performances nevertheless did occur, with his defection Panufnik 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. His old friend the pianist Witold Małcużyński also helped by finding for Panufnik a wealthy patron. His wife published a book about Panufnik's life in Poland and his escape, but its surmises and inaccuracies distressed Panufnik; they drifted apart, as she craved excitement and society while he wanted only peace and quiet for composing. In 1960, Panufnik visited the United States to see Leopold Stokowski. Stokowski had given the American premiere of the Symphony of Peace in 1953, and in 1957 he conducted the world premiere of Panufnik's revised version of the symphony, entitled "Sinfonia Elegiaca", which is dedicated to all the victims of World War II. Stokowski gave American premieres also of Panufnik's "Katyń Epitaph", his "Universal Prayer" and "Sinfonia Sacra". Panufnik continued to find 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 United Workers Party (Communist party). Shortly after settling in Britain Panufnik was given an exclusive publishing contract with the prestigious firm of Boosey and Hawkes. They could get no answer from the Polish State publishers as to their long-term intentions for Panufnik's existing works, all of which had appeared under their imprint. Panufnik was therefore advised to introduce small revisions into all his existing works in order to avoid copyright problems when Boosey and Hawkes took these works into their catalogue. Just after he completed this task, he heard that the Polish State Publishers had finally confirmed that they had no further interest in their catalogue of Panufnik's music. Nevertheless, all the music he wrote before 1955 continues to be performed in the revised editions. From 1957 to 1959 Panufnik's financial situation eased slightly when he was appointed Principal Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In 1959 Panufnik became romantically involved with Winsome Ward, who was diagnosed with cancer the following year. In 1960 he met author and photographer Camilla Jessel, then aged twenty-two, who had worked as a personal assistant in the United States. The British MP Neil Marten 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. Accepting these engagements and commissions gave Panufnik the resources to allow him to devote more time to composition. In 1963, Panufnik entered his newly completed Sinfonia Sacra for a prestigious international competition in Monaco for the best orchestral work: it won first prize. He became a British citizen in 1961. After Winsome Ward died in 1962, Panufnik and Jessel were married in November 1963. They moved into a house near the Thames in Twickenham, Greater London, where at last Panufnik had the peace to concentrate entirely on composition. His works were in demand by such major figures as Leopold Stokowski, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn and Sir Georg Solti, as well as Yehudi Menuhin and Mstislav Rostropovich. Panufnik refused to return to Poland until democracy was restored in 1990.
Awards. 1949 Standard of Labor First Class; 1990 posthumously awarded the Polonia Restituta Medal by Poland; 1991 Knighted by Queen Elisabeth II; 2014, the German record label Classic Produktion Osnabruck completed the publication of an eight-volume cycle of Panufnik's symphonic works, conducted by Łukasz Borowicz
Source:
This article uses mostly material from the Wikipedia article "Andrzej Panufnik." Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License:
Wikipedia (includes extensive list of works)
with additions and modifications from:
Wikipedia in Polish
Published on 12/24/14
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