Sir Andrzej Panufnik: Biography
The unconventional music student
The nightmare
of Stalin
Escape to the West
Return to Poland (This section is currently under construction)
Andrzej Panufnik was born in Warsaw on 24 September 1914, a few weeks after the outbreak of World War I. His father, Tomasz Panufnik, was an engineer by profession, but his lifelong passion was violin-making; thus he had met and married a young violinist who had studied with the great pedagogue Carl Flesch. Andrzej was their second son, younger than his brother Miroslaw (Mirek) by five years.
Through the war years, during which time their father was conscripted into the Russian army, the boys' childhoods were beset by the wartime crises of lack of food and money and uncertainty over their father's well-being. After his return late in 1919, Tomasz Panufnik resolved to realise his dream of reviving the fine Polish tradition of violin construction and opened an instrument-making factory in 1921. Unfortunately, the business founded within the year, leaving the family in difficult financial straits.
But at home, the young Andrzej was still constantly surrounded by music, most notably his mother's violin-playing and also her improvisations at the piano. Through watching her, Andrzej began to experiment himself with the sounds of the piano. Encouraged by his grandmother, he began piano lessons and by the age of nine had started to write down notes on manuscript paper, entitling his first composition - a tune with chordal accompaniment - 'Sonatina'. Andrzej's musical gift seemed so promising that he soon began to study as a junior pupil at the Warsaw Conservatoire. Preferring improvisation to practice and composition to solfege and suffering from stage-fright, he failed his end-of-year exam (among the jurors of which was the composer Karol Szymanowski!) and was advised to 'shut the piano forever'...
Four years followed in which Andrzej's life was devoid of music and his schooling was seriously interrupted by a struggle with typhoid fever. He possessed, however, a great passion for aeroplanes and for a time nurtured an ambition to be an aeronautical engingeer; at the age of fifteen he duly began to study at the state engineering school. But, without music in his life, he grew depressed. Eventually, with the support of his musician mother who recognised the source of the problem, he returned to the Municipal Gimnazjum (high school) and began to prepare for becoming a full-time music student.
THE UNCONVENTIONAL MUSIC STUDENT
Having missed four crucial years of study, the teenaged Andrzej had to work hard to reach the standard required in the entrance exam for the Conservatoire. He still preferred improvisation to practice and thanks to the enthusiasm of some of his friends, as well as his brother Mirek who played the banjo, he began to compose short jazz pieces under the influence of Ellington and Gershwin. His mother showed a foxtrot he had composed to the owner of a small local music shop; it then found its way into the hands of a well-known poet, Marian Hemar, who wrote a lyric for it. A famous Polish comedian agreed to premiere it at the Warsaw Grand Revue (the Polish equivalent of the Casino de Paris). But when the Panufnik family arrived to hear Andrzej's triumph, the youthful composer, at sixteen, was too young to be admitted to the theatre to hear his own piece. The foxtrot, entitled 'Ach Pardon', was recorded and thousands of copies were sold; a second one did equally well. But Andrzej, though happy with his financial success, grew uncomfortable, knowing that he did not want to compose light music for the rest of his life and had yet to undertake serious musical studies.His mother approached the rector of the Warsaw Conservatoire, who made an original suggestion: Andrzej should apply to the college as a percussion student, the entrance exam for which he could easily pass with a good sense of rhythm. Thus, in 1932 aged 17, Andrzej Panifnik entered the Conservatoire, abandoning percussion in favour of composition at the first opportunity.
Frustrated by the staid eight-year timetable prescribed at the institution, Panufnik completed the theory and composition course in half the time. A set of Variations for piano and a Classical Suite for string quartet were performed at a public concert at the Conservatoire, but it was only with the Piano Trio, written in spring of 1934, that Panufnik found enough confidence in his own ability to bestow the title Opus 1. His principal teachers included Jerzy Lefeld, Kazimierz Sikorski and the rector, Eugeniusz Morawski, from whom Panufnik gained a depth and breadth of knowledge of music from all periods of history that would stand him in good stead later in his career. The world of new music, however, proved more elusive; occasional performances by the Polish conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg of works by Honegger, Stravinsky and Prokofiev were rare glimpses of the avant-garde, as was a visit by Prokofiev who performed some of his own piano works at the Conservatoire. Bartók, Schoenberg and Webern went completely unheard in Poland. Even Szymanowski, then the country's most distinguished composer, was largely neglected. Encouraged by Sikorski to compose a set of Symphonic Variations, Panufnik was at first distressed by being coerced to compose in conventional tonality, rather than his original choice - which was to compose in four keys at the same time! In retrospect, however, he viewed this as a wise instruction as it helped 'to instil into me the necessity for unity of style and discipline'. Two further works, Symphonic Allegro and Symphonic Image, were deemed 'too sparse' by Sikorski; but from the very beginning, Panufnik aimed for 'clarity and economy of means of expression' and wished 'never to write a single superfluous note'. His diploma work, Psalm for four vocal soloists, mixed chorus and large orchestra, drew a more encouraging response: a diploma with distinction, the Conservatoire's highest honour.
After graduating, Panufnik won a grant from the Foundation of National Culture to study at the Vienna Academy for the academic year 1936-7. A few days later after his grant was approved, however, he found himself called up for National Service and was obliged to ask for the grant to be postponed by a year. Military life agreed poorly with the young composer. At home for one night preceding a medical examination in Warsaw, Panufnik was unable to sleep and turned on the radio early in the morning. What he heard proved to be the Polish hymn known as the Bogurodzica, a medieval Gregorian chant. Entranced by its beauty and absorbed in thoughts of it, he made himself some strong black coffee. By the time he departed for the medical, he had drunk so much coffee that his heart was beating considerably faster than usual. He had the presence of mind to tell the doctor that this was the way his heart usually behaved, promptly failed the test and was released from military service.
To earn some money before he could depart for Vienna, Panufnik composed incidental music for radio plays, served briefly as a music critic for the radio and dabbled in film-making; a new orchestral composition, Little Overture, was meanwhile performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic under Fitelberg.
After his arrival in Vienna in autumn 1937, Panufnik was accepted for the Vienna State Academy and began to study conducting under Felix Weingartner. In the Austrian capital he was able to hear new music that had been unavailable in Warsaw, especially works by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Of these, Panufnik's preference was for Webern's 'exquisite crystal-like structures'. He experimented with Serial composition (the Twelve-Tone system), but decided that 'the "democratisation" of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale seemed to block the way to essential expressive elements...'
But Panufnik's peaceful and productive life in Vienna was soon cut short by the Nazi annexation of Austria, which took place in March 1938. When Hitler arrived, Panufnik stood in the crowd, 'amazed by the huge ripples of enthusiasm rolling towards the fount of what to me seemed the deepest of misfortunes for the people of Austria'. Seeing Hitler's arm raised in salute 'slowly and coldly, almost like a robot', Panufnik understood chillingly that such processions could soon overtake other countries, including his own homeland. He watched with horror as violence against Jews grew in the city, Jewish professors were dismissed from the Academy and concerts given by Jewish performers were cancelled; when his own professor, Weingartner, was dismissed, Panufnik decided to go home.
To raise money to continue his studies abroad, Panufnik composed the music for a film entitled Ghosts; soon afterwards he made his way to Paris, where he studied conducting with Philippe Gaubert and familiarised himself more thoroughly with the music of Stravinsky, Poulenc, Honegger and Milhaud and especially Debussy, whom he considered 'the greatest poet' of early 20th-century music. But in the main he found the contemporary works he heard there too 'clever' at the expense of real musical substance - with the exception of Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, which convinced him that Bartók was the greatest of living composers.
After six months in Paris, Panufnik travelled to England, where he found himself somewhat at odds with the cuisine, but was able to study the manuscripts of 18th-century English composers in the British Library and to enjoy a relatively calm way of life. Here too he met his former teacher Weingartner again; the great conductor urged him to remain in London. But Panufnik, feeling a duty to his country and his family, elected to return to Warsaw despite all.
Back in Warsaw, Panufnik was alarmed to find that his fellow countrymen had little understanding of the seriousness of the surrounding political situation, assuming that the Polish army could easily defeat any German invasion. On 1 September 1939 war was declared and the Warsaw residents began to hear the bombs falling on Poland.
When England and France declared that they would cometo Poland's defence, Panufnik's optimism grew and he began to compose his Heroic Overture 'to celebrate the courage of our Polish defenders'. But shortages of food and medicine quickly began to bite and when Panufnik volunteered for the Anti-Aircraft Defence he found himself armed with only a spade and two buckets of sand to combat incendiary bombs. Barely three weeks into September, Soviet forces had occupied eastern Poland, following the Hitler-Stalin pact. The fourth partition in Poland's beleagured history saw thousands of Poles arrested and deported and hundreds killed. As Warsaw was progressively destroyed by the invading forces, Panufnik's work on his Heroic Overture soon ground to a halt; on 1 October the city surrendered to the Germans. Under German rule, Panufnik drew on the native folk melodies of Poland to compose his Five Polish Peasant Songs: 'this tribute to the land expressed my faith in the future of my captive country'.
Panufnik was also capable of extraordinary bravery. When the Gestapo confiscated his father's beloved collection of violins, Panufnik set about retrieving them, going in person to the Gestapo headquarters and relying on his fine German and authoritative stance to demand their return. The family was astonished when the officials complied.
Under German occupation, a ban came into force preventing the assembling of audiences; the Philharmonic Hall and Opera House had been bombed; and the Conservatoire was closed. The non-availability of musical events led to the creation of 'artistic cafés' in which leading performers would be featured while the public paid by ordering cups of coffee or tea. Panufnik joined forces with his fellow composer Witold Lutoslawski to form a two-piano duo; for three and a half years the two worked on a huge repertoire of arrangements of music from Bach to Stravinsky, as well as improvising jazz together. Of these arrangements, only Lutoslawski's original work, Variations on a Theme of Paganini, has survived to the present day. Meanwhile Panufnik collaborated in the underground resistance movement with a poet on creating patriotic songs for distribution by the Home Army, some of which became extremely popular. Panufnik managed nonetheless to complete his second symphony in the midst of the war and also composed a Tragic Overture.
Tragedy indeed struck the family again and again. Mirek's wife died of tuberculosis; not long afterwards, Mirek himself was killed in the bombing - something which Andrzej and Tomasz tried to conceal from their mother, whose health was deteriorating badly. Andrzej had moved for a time to live with a young widow named Staszka in central Warsaw, taking all his manuscripts with him; his mother, meanwhile, was living in the suburbs for the sake of her health (his father remaining in the family home with his violins), and Panufnik went there to care for her, remaining for months rather than the intended few days owing to the onset of the Warsaw Uprising. In its aftermath, returning to Staszka's apartment, he discovered that although the building had not been bombed, Staszka had moved away; a stranger had taken over her apartment and, not realising the nature of the piles of manuscript paper she found there, had thrown them all away. Everything that Panufnik had composed between the ages of 18 and 30 had been destroyed.
With the defeat of Germany, a new nightmare began for Poland. The Soviet Army, moving forward to 'liberate' the country, soon proved to have anything but liberation to offer. Panufnik found employment as music director to the Polish Army Film Unit and after some difficulty managed to move his family - his frail parents and his orphaned eight-year-old niece Ewa - to Krakow, where he was approached by the new Ministry of Culture to become the conductor of the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra. Ewa was eventually resettled in the countryside with her mother's brother and his wife; but Panufnik's mother, at last informed of her elder son's death, lost the will to live and died soon afterwards.
Having lost all his compositions to date, Panufnik decided to reconstruct his Tragic Overture from memory, a task he found easier than anticipated; encouraged by his success he followed it up with the Five Polish Peasant Songs and the Piano Trio. Sadly, however, his two symphonies proved impossible and he resigned himself to their permanent loss.
There were frustrations from the Soviet control over the Film Unit and the spread of political 'education'. But Panufnik was allowed to employ visiting musicians from abroad at the Philharmonic including the English composer and conductor Constant Lambert. Panufnik felt a powerful sense of responsibility towards his shattered country and the question of rebuilding its musical life began to occupy far more of his time than composition. He was asked to assist in the creation of a State Music Publishers, Polskie Wydawbictwo Muzyczne (PWM) - the initial results of which were encouraging - and in 1946 he was appointed director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, Poland's most prestigious orchestra - which his first task was to reconstitute from scratch, as it had been left, at the end of the war, with no players, hall or administration. But bureaucratic decisions - the priority given to film over music as the most powerful tool for political propaganda, and the consequent last-minute refusal of accommodation in Warsaw for musicians from the provinces - soon led Panufnik to hand in his resignation.
With the opportunity to begin serious composition once more, Panufnik started to explore the growing European tendency to compose in the Schoenbergian Twelve-Tone system. His ambition remained to discover his own language or 'voice'; Serialism, he decided, was 'too easy a way out; the straight exchange of one convention for another'. His works from this period include the piano work Circle of Fifths (later published as Twelve Miniature Studies) and Nocturne, now one of his best-known orchestral works, inspired by night-time perambulations through Krakow. It was almost impossible for him to compose during the day because a piano-teacher cousin had moved into the apartment he shared with his father, resulting in the constant noises of unmusical pupils. His conducting activities took him on brief visits to London (to conduct the London Philharmonic in Beethoven's Eroica on one rehearsal) and Berlin, where, despite being ill with pneumonia, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a programme of Polish music including - on the orders of the Minister of Culture - his own Tragic Overture 'as an appropriate reminder to the Germans of their Warsaw crimes'. While in London, a moonscape over the Thames from Waterloo Bridge brought him an idea for a piece of music 'on three planes' corresponding to the moon and night sky over a misty city with the flow of the river beneath: this became his Lullaby for 29 solo strings and two harps.
Having abandoned the idea of reconstructing his first two symphonies, Panufnik began a new work in the genre; rather than reusing the title 'Symphony No. 1' he called the new piece Sinfonia Rustica. Most of his symphonies would bear descriptive titles rather than numbers from then on. Drawing on his affection for the native music of northern Poland, Panufnik also gave the work a focus on the concept of symmetry, an important feature of the country's folk art and its tradition of intricate paper cut-outs. His work on the symphony was interrupted, however, when the minister of culture selected him to join the governing body of the new Composers Union, where he was soon appointed Vice-President. Panufnik was glad to undertake the work, recognising the importance of a strong union, but finding time to compose was growing harder. He managed to write Suita Polska, five vocalises for soprano and piano in commemoration of the centenary of Chopin's death, for UNESCO in Paris. After further conducting trips to France and Holland he found his bureaucratic activities were being increased again: this time he was appointed a member of the Polish Committee for the Defence of Peace, an organisation drawing together luminaries from every walk of life. While he enjoyed working for his fellow composers in the Union, he soon resented the new post, 'precious composition time stolen from me through being forcibly paraded as a political pawn on public platforms'.
Worse was to come. In 1948, Panufnik had heard reports of a speech in Moscow by Commissar Zhdanov, a public figure with a close relationship to Stalin, in which he declared that in music contemporary Western 'bourgeois' tendencies were to be eliminated, and 'henceforth cultural products must serve politico-economic ends'. Panufnik recognised that political censorship of new composition would come to Poland all too soon, realising his worst fears. It was not long before Polish composers were told by Minister Sokorski that they were to subordinate every note to the interests of the Polish Workers Party, depicting 'socialist reality' in a manner 'simple and understandable to the broad masses...'
The first directive ordered the union to organise a competition for a new Song of the United Party. All composers were obliged to take part. Panufnik decided to write something so bad that it could not possibly be considered, scribbling a song 'on my knee, literally in a few minutes'. He was distressed when the jingle was awarded first prize. The event brought about much soul-searching: 'I deeply regretted that I had allowed myself to be cornered into betraying my self-imposed artistic standards'. When in 1949 his Sinfonia Rustica was awarded first prize at the Chopin Competition, Panufnik was depressed rather than delighted; he could not tell whether the honour was for artistic merit or merely a political decision.
Indeed, Panufnik felt too depressed to compose. 'I was faced with an insoluble dilemma,' he later wrote. 'How could I reject the method of Socialist Realism... and at the same time remain a loyal subject of my native country?' He found a temporary solution in the restoration of 16th- and 17th-century Polish music, which would help to reconstruct part of Poland's missing inheritance and would offer him some escapism as well. He conducted the first performance of his Old Polish Suite early in 1950, but found original composition too painful to contemplate. An official visit to Hungary in 1950 brought him the opportunity to visit Zoltan Kodaly, who was suffering similarly in Budapest. And at home, Stalin's protegée Tikhon Khrennikov, visited to take part in a debate on recent works by Polish composers at which Panufnik's prizewinning Sinfonia Rustica was declared by a music critic 'a formalist composition'. Sokorski then declared that 'Sinfonia Rustica has ceased to exist'.
Yet, while declaring the symphony extinct, the authorities promptly conferred on Panufnik the highest honour in the land: the Standard of Labour First Class, which entitled him to special facilities such as improved medical care and the right to obtain foreign medicine; he was also able to reapply to the housing minister for better accommodation, which enabled him to move his father back to Warsaw. On an official visit to the USSR, Panufnik let slip that he wished to compose a Symphony of Peace; since the news quickly spread around authorities and newspapers alike, he found himself obliged to attempt the work, especially when he waa 'awarded the privilege' of a stay in the Government Rest House at Obory in beautiful countryside near Warsaw, where he could find the peace to compose. He decided to write under the cover of an officially approved title 'a work dedicated to peace, my sort of peace, the peace the world really wanted'.
Events, however, were now to take an unexpected turn.
Another guest at Obory was a strikingly beautiful Irish woman, by the name of Marie Elizabeth O'Mahoney. Known as Scarlett, she had been in Poland for four years and was on her honeymoon with her third husband. Panufnik was instantly smitten with her. 'The explosion between us was so intense that I don't even know what happened to her unfortunate third husband,' Panufnik recalled. He soon discovered that Scarlett suffered from epilepsy, as well as an unusual nervous disposition; nevertheless he resolved to marry her, feeling that he could offer her some measure of protection. They were married in July 1951, not long after the premiere of the Symphony for Peace in May. Shortly afterwards, his father died of lung cancer.
Panufnik's compositions were increasingly coming under attack from the communist party, and his next work, the Heroic Overture, unfinished since 1939 - which he now completed - was denounced by two members of the Polish Radio Orchestra in Katowice which played its 'audition' and was duly banned from performance in Poland. Now Panufnik was warned that unless he conformed he might be excluded from all his professional activities including film music; the prospect of losing his sources of income was distressing, especially as Scarlett was now expecting a baby. Their daughter Oonagh was born in September 1952.
Early the following year, Minister Sokoski summoned Panufnik and told him that he was required lead a delegation of 200 Polish performers on a cultural mission to China. His plea that he could not leave his unwell wife and baby daughter or interrupt his compositional work went unheeded; soon he was forced to depart for a two month absence, journeying via Moscow and the Trans-Siberlian railway to China. In early May, shortly before the scheduled gala concert for Chairman Mao, news reached him of the tragedy that had befallen his family. On the nanny's day off, Scarlett had decided to break her usual rule and risk bathing the baby herself. While the infant was in the bath, Scarlett had suffered an epileptic attack and the eight-month-old Oonagh had drowned. The authorities refused to release Panufnik from the gala performance.
At home again, coming to terms with the disaster, Panufnik was still officially Composer Number One in Poland, but now felt himself 'just a stuffed dummy of a composer'. The last straw came through a meeting with Comrade Ostap-Dluski, a senior official in the Department of Foreign Affairs, who sought Panufnik's 'help', requesting that he write letters to all the leading musical figures in the West in which he would 'in a subtle way emphasise the importance and significance of the noble cause to which the World Congress for Peace is dedicated and persuade them to give their active support.' Panufnik saw that he was being required not only to spread Communist propaganda but also to spy indirectly for Moscow, since the replies would be scrutinised to see which figures in western art possessed sympathies which could be exploited. It was time for him to find a way to leave Poland.
Ironically, Scarlett did not want to leave: she had numerous friends in Warsaw and enjoyed the admiration of the 'gallant' Polish men, as well as a privileged social standing as the wife of an important composer. But since Panufnik was almost at the brink of breakdown, she recognised that it was vital for him to escape. Her father was ill in London and she would be permitted to travel there on compassionate grounds. While in Britain, she would contact some emigré Polish friends of Panufnik who could arrange for him to be invited to conduct some contemporary Polish music in Western Europe; she had meanwhile to stay in constant touch with the Polish Embassy to give the impression that she was eager to rejoin her husband in Warsaw. Back in Poland, Panufnik was suddenly allocated a luxurious apartment in central Warsaw, with which he had to appear delighted; the rationale turned out to be that the Committee for Cultural Relations Abroad would bring official visitors from the West to visit to see that standard of living enjoyed by composers in Warsaw. Panufnik had to put up with a stream of 'ghastly sycophantic Western Communists'.
When his invitation to conduct in Zurich came through as planned - with just two weeks' notice - Panufnik had to appear reluctant to accept the invitation until the Director of the Committee personally insisted. Leaving everything behind, Panufnik departed for Zurich on 9 July 1954. There his every move was watched; in London, Scarlett contacted the authorities about his forthcoming defection. Forced to dodge the Secret Police at every turn, Panufnik only felt safe when he was at last on the plane to London.
Panufnik arrived at Heathrow Airport on 14 July 1954, to be met by Scarlett and two representatives of the Foreign Office who received his immediate request for political asylum. At a press conference he spoke out about the enslavement and frustration of intellectuals, scientists, writers and all creative artists in Poland, and ended with the hope that 'my protests will help my fellow composers still living in Poland with their struggle towards liberation from the rigid political control imposed upon them...' The story of his defection and his statement spread dramatically across the newspapers. In Poland, he was denounced, his possessions confiscated, his music banned and his name no longer allowed to be printed: he effectively 'ceased to exist' in his native land.
Panufnik and his wife Scarlett now faced a new problem: how to survive in their new country. The musical world that had welcomed Panufnik as a visitor now proved less friendly. There were neither conducting invitations nor commissions to be had at first, and Panufnik worried that 'our main freedom was the freedom to starve'. But support turned up in the form of Sir Steuart Wilson, whom Panufnik had met years earlier in Paris and who was now Deputy General Administrator of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; he helped to raise a guarantee for a bank overdraft of £400 (then a hefty sum), backed up by Ralph Vaughan Williams and several other British composers. Wilson then introduced Panufnik to the concert agency Harold Holt Ltd, which arranged a London appearance conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall on 4 October 1954. But when he went to collect his fee of 50 Guineas, he found that £46 had been deducted to pay some extra players required for the performance of his Nocturne. His un-British response to this - a slammed door - marked the end of the association with Holts. He appeared a few days later conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in a charity concert at the Royal Albert Hall - unpaid, and unpublicised by the Polish community that had organised it. The pianist Witold Malcuzynski, an old friend of Panufnik's, was able to introduce him to a generous sponsor of the arts, Rosa Berenbau, an Argentinian of Polish origin, who presented the composer with a sizeable cheque 'to help me start to compose again'. Panufnik promised to dedicate his next work to her, and hoped that it would be a piano concerto for Malcuzynski. Money was less of a daily worry now, and Panufnik was soon invited to conduct the Belgian National Orchestra in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Joseph Szigeti as soloist. Some pain was caused to him, though, by the publication of a book entitled Out of the City of Fear, charting his experiences and escape from Poland with much inaccuracy, written by his wife, Scarlett.
In 1955 Panufnik met the conductor Leopold Stokowski for the first time, when the Symphony of Peace was performed under his baton in Detroit. Panufnik was alarmed by the American bureaucracy which treated him with great suspicion, asking repeatedly whether he had been a member of the Communist Party. But he was even more surprised to find that 'more Poles lived in Detroit than in the whole of Warsaw!' Stokowski became a close and lifelong friend; but Panufnik, hearing his symphony again, was less than happy with it and decided to withdraw it despite its enthusiastic reception. The same year his Sinfonia Rustica was programmed at the BBC Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, with Panufnik conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra; and Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers agreed to add his music to their catalogue. He was now able to set about revising the Symphony of Peace, which now, in one huge movement framed by lamentations for the dead and bereaved, became his Sinfonia Elegiaca, dedicated to the victims of the Second World War. His concentration, though, was frequently disturbed by the frequent, loud parties held by their Kensington neighbour, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Worse, as he set about composing a new work, Rhapsody, for the BBC to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Third Programme he became increasingly aware that his marriage was on the point of breaking down.
Several surprises now lay in store. First, he received a telegram from Stokowski in Houston, Texas, announcing that 'Today we performed your powerful and profoundly moving Sinfonia Elegiaca' - Booseys having sent Stokowski the score and Stokowski having programmed it immediately, apparently without anyone remembering to tell the composer. In the programme, sent by Stokowski, Panufnik was disturbed to read a note which referred only to the 'heroic concept of that which is being lamented...' Why were they afraid to say what the symphony was about? 'Would the West not allow music to have a theme? Did we all have to be abstract, polite, antiseptically detached from issues of importance? Was art to touch only upon the pretty sides of life and have no relevance to issues which affected huge slabs of humanity?'
The final surprise came from Poland itself, as the result of the 'Bloodless Revolution' of 1956. After Stalin's death, composers had gained greater freedom of expression. Socialist Realism was written off as old-fashioned and the younger generation of composers were turning to the influence of the European avant-garde - and the authorities, recognising a 'safety valve' that would prevent further protests and defections, permitted everything. Schoenberg was no longer proscribed and the younger Polish composers embraced their opportunity to experiment with great passion. Experimental music also proved 'an ideal language for the expression of anti-Soviet feeling which it was still dangerous to put into words'. Panufnik now watched from a distance as Sokorski was now promoting 'degenerate formalists' such as Boulez, Cage, Stockhausen and Xenakis. His own name was still banned. And in the West, he had completed only one brand new piece of music.
Panufnik was now offered the post of Music Director and Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush: Panufnik decided to accept the post rather than waiting for such a job to appear in London, since his pplication for British naturalisation might fail if he could not soon prove himself solvent. Scarlett, however, refused to go to Birmingham with him. Their marriage was effectively over. * Panufnik took up his new job in the 1957-58 season. Matters started well, but an unfortunate conflict arose with the leader of the orchestra, Norris Stanley, who, Panufnik found, seemed to be convinced that Panufnik would replace some of the violinists with Hungarian refugees and played on the fears of his colleagues that the new conductor, charged with improving playing standards, might clear out the 'dead wood'. The showdown ended only when Panufnik faced the management committee and declared that one or other of them had to leave. Stanley was dismissed with a generous financial compensation, and Panufnik engaged a young Austrian violinist, Wilfred Lehmann, in his place for the 1958-59 season. That summer Panufnik set about writing his BBC commission: the result was entitled Polonia, in tribute to Elgar's work of that name. His second season with the CBSO was a far happier experience than the first; but nevertheless, Panufnik was still finding his time eaten away and resolved to leave to concentrate on composing. As a leaving gift, the orchestra presented him with a blank sheet of manuscript paper.
A new music controller was in place at the BBC: William Glock, aided and abetted by the highly respected Viennese musicologist Hans Keller. When, back in London, Panufnik asked to hear the tape of his Polonia, which he had conducted at the Proms that year, he was informed that the tape had been destroyed. He had left his secure post in Birmingham for the uncertainties of life as a freelance composer without foreseeing that 'a new fashion was about to grip all the modern music outlets, not only in Britain but throughout the Western world, and that, as an independent Pole with an independent compositional style and a considerable obstinacy about allowing anyone to dictate to him, I would, once more, have to write with little hope of performance for a matter of many years...'
In the early autumn of 1959, Panufnik was introduced to Winsome Ward, 'a most attractive woman of my own age'. In the optimism of a new relationship of deep understanding, he began to compose his Autumn Music, somewhat under the influence of the spirit of Chopin's piano concertos, on which he was working with the Chinese pianist Fou Ts'ong. He was invited next to conduct in Buenos Aires, but came back to find Winsome confined to hospital, seriously ill with advanced cancer. 'I returned to my Autumn Music, its theme of seasonal decline now cruelly apt alongside my heart-broken consciousness of a most precious human life in a different sort of decline - which would not be renewed by the coming of another spring.'
Late in the summer of 1969, Panufnik received a phone call from a girl named Camilla Jessel, who had been the personal assistant to Neil Marten (the Foreign Office representative who had looked after Panufnik's defection) while he mounted his campaign as a parliamentary candidate. Marten won his seat and Camilla was working for Oxfam; as she had many friends in the musical world and adored music, Marten had asked her to try to arrange some introductions and performances for Panufnik, whom he knew to be in low spirits. Intrigued by her over the phone, Panufnik invited her round to meet him. 'As she was about to leave for France and I had already bought a ticket to try to redeem my fortunes in the United States, it seemed as if we had met for the first and last time.'
It was now clear that Glock and Keller at the BBC were interested in promoting only the music of the Second Viennese School - Schoenberg, Webern, Berg and their followers in the Serialist method of composition: only a few, mostly senior, British composers who did not follow this approach were now being broadcast. Panufnik had decided to abandon London and move to New York, where Stokowski welcomed him warmly and offered to help him make contacts with orchestral managements. Yet the trip proved fruitless: Panufnik was unhappy to find in America 'a complete indifference to the fate of Moscow's satellite countries'. Russian musicians were much in vogue: 'Perhaps as an anti-Communist Pole I was actually an embarrassment?'
The situation inspired a new idea for a symphony. Poland's Millennium Year would fall in 1966. 'I would compose a work which, through its emotional impact, would forcefully remind the Western world, especially the Russophile Americans, of Poland's thousand years of history as a country with its own rich culture and identity deeply rooted in the Christian tradition.' He would base the symphony on the Bogurodzica, the first hymn in the Polish language. He won a fellowship from the Polish-American Kosciuszko Foundation which would pay his way while he was writing the symphony - despite some comments and instructions which left him concerned that the foundation's trustees wished to exercise a Sokorski-like control over his artistic expression. This time he was able to defy such matters.
Panufnik returned to England and rented a room in a farmhouse in the Oxfordshire village of Adderbury, before moving to an even more isolated location at Dockenfield near Farnham in Surrey. In London Winsome was terminally ill; at the same time, he had only a few months left to complete his piano concerto, due for premiere in Birmingham in January 1962. Winsome died soon after the concerto's first performance.
Meanwhile, a chance encounter over tea with Neil Marten at the House of Commons had brought Panufnik into renewed contact with Camilla, who had agreed to tackle the huge backlog of his correspondence. The working relationship soon deepened. Panufnik had resolved, after his broken marriage to Scarlett, never to marry again. Nevertheless, after several separations from Camilla, Panufnik was longing to break the resolution. He felt that his uncertain financial situation must prevent the possibility - until his new Sinfonia Sacra was awarded first prize in a composition competition run by the Principality of Monaco. Panufnik married Camilla on 27 November 1963 and settled in a Georgian house by the River Thames in Twickenham. Riverside House had been bequeathed to the local council by Camilla's grandmother; as a wedding present, Camilla's parents bought a long lease on the house for them. They lived there - for a peppercorn rent of £200 a year! - for the rest of Panufnik's life.
The warmth and stability of family life brought Panufnik a peace of mind he had never experienced before. From having only one living relative - his niece Ewa in Poland - Panufnik now found himself surrounded by welcoming in-laws, and able to enjoy peaceful routines such as walking the dog by the river each day. The burgeoning success of his Sinfonia Sacra, which he recorded for EMI in Monte Carlo and which was performed and broadcast many times around the world, was boosting his compositional confidence as well. For a while, a sour note remained from the regime at the BBC which rejected dismissed the Sinfonia Sacra as 'unsuitable for broadcasting on any wave-length'. In the mid-1960s Panufnik only completed one further piece, the Katyn Epitaph, dedicated to the 15,000 Polish officers who had been slaughtered by Russians in Katyn Forest towards the end of the war.
'Only gradually,' wrote Panufnik, 'did my energy, my inner creative urge, begin to function again. This was a period of gestation, as my new roots were slowly working their way into the Thames-side soil.' Over about four years, working in an outbuilding that Camilla had converted into a studio for him, Panufnik searched 'for a new dimension in musical grammar and language, because I felt that somewhere within my imagination lay something different, undiscovered...' One day, however, 'I realised that my ear, together with my intuition, was beginning to win over intellectual speculation: I suddenly found a group of three notes which, as I manipulated them within the stave and on the piano, I perceived had some evocative and strangely expandable qualities...' Panufnik realised quickly that within this three-note cell lay material with which he could build both small and large-scale musical structures. In spring 1986 he completed the first of 'my new line of compositional progency', the piano piece Reflections - within days of the birth of the Panufniks' first child, their daughter Roxanna.
The start of the family and the start of Panufnik's most prolific compositional period coincided perfectly. Within the stability and routine of this new life, Panufnik plunged into composing a setting of Alexander Pope's Universal Prayer - the poet having been an illustrious resident of 18th-century Twickenham. Taking his cue from the opening words 'Order is Heav'n's first law', Panufnik focused on creating a huge symmetrical framework within which his three-note cell 'with its perpetual transpositions and reflections served me for the whole extended work'. This combination of intellectual rigour and expressive individuality would characterise his works from then on. Stokowski gave the premiere in America in the Protestant Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York, on 15 May 1970 and again that November with a chorus combining people of every religious group that he could reach. He also performed the catanata, without a fee, in the parish church in Twickenham where Pope is buried: the event was relayed on TV by BBC2. Another local yet movingly universal project took shape in the Thames Pageant, written for performance on the river with four hundred schoolchildren from the area. Soon afterwards, Andrzej and Camilla's second child, Jeremy, was born. 'With a further generation to inherit my music, the past sank even further into oblivion and present problems paled.'
In 1970 a commission for a violin concerto came from Yehudi Menuhin; after its premiere he recorded the work for EMI, together with Panufnik's Sinfonia Concertante for flute, harp and strings, composed as a tenth anniversary present for Camilla. Also in the 1970s, the record label Unicorn began to record a number of Panufnik's orchestral works, including the Nocturne, Tragic Overture, Heroic Overture and Autumn Music with the London Symphony Orchestra. Decca and several other companies made further recordings through the 1980s - although Panufnik's problems with the BBC were not yet over. But thanks to the recordings, several choreographers discovered Panufnik's music. Gerald Arpino choreographed his Elegy to the Sinfonia Elegiaca for the Joffrey Ballet, New York and Kenneth MacMillan used the Sinfonia Sacra for Kain and Abel for the Deutsche Oper Ballet in Berlin. For the latter choreographer, Panufnik worked on an extended score, partly existing music, partly new, for Miss Julie with the Stuttgart Ballet. Later David Bintley was to choreograph the Violin Concerto as Adieu for the Royal Ballet in London - with a story based on Panufnik's life and 'Adieu' to Poland. Grey Veredon then used the Sinfonia Sacra for Bogurodzica, a tribute to the suffering of the Poles under Martial Law, for the Lyons Opera Ballet. And the octagenarian Martha Graham used Nocturne for her Dances of the Golden Hall. * Further new commissions were arriving too. Triangles was commissioned in 1973 by BBC TV, based on the concept of the two interlocking triangles at the heart of Tantric philosophy. 'The idea of a musical work being contained and shaped by the perfect order of a geometric form was soon to emerge as a driving force which would permeate almost everything I wrote.' This concept held true for his next three symphonies: Sinfonia di Sfere (Symphony of Spheres), Sinfonia Mistica and Metasinfonia, all of which Panufnik represented graphically; in the televised broadcast of the Sinfonia di Sfere from the Proms in 1978, the director, Peter Butler, entered the spirit of the theme and 'made brilliant use of every circular or spherical symbol he could find within the auditorium'. In Sinfonia Mistica, 'I drew upon the phenomenon that it takes six circles precisely equal in size to encircle a seventh circle of the same size'. In 1979 he was asked to compose a special piece for the London Symphony Orchestra's 75th gala concert, and the resultant Concerto Festivo was an orchestral showpiece to be performed without a conductor in tribute to the musicians' personal virtuosity.
Panufnik's music had remained banned in Poland, however….
TO BE CONTINUED