Its program includes Panufnik’s String Quartet No. 3 “Paper Cuts”, Second Home for string quartet by his daughter Roxana Panufnik, complemented by Ralph Vaughan Williams' Quintet in D major and Benjamin Britten’s Phantasy for oboe and string trio, Op. 2.
Members of the Silesian String Quartet (violinists Szymon Krzeszowiec Arkadiusz Kubica, violist Łukasz Syrnicki, and cellist Piotr Janosik) are joined by Piotr Sałajczyk (piano), Alicja Matuszczyk (oboe), and Piotr Lato (clarinet).
Founded in Katowice in 1978, the Silesian String Quartet is Poland’s leading ensemble of its kind. It has performed at such prestigious venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Konzerthaus in Vienna, Salle Pleyel in Paris, and Carnegie Hall in New York. Its repertoire comprises over 400 pieces of chamber literature, including a selection of Panufnik’s compositions.
Born in Warsaw in 1914, Panufnik spent the best part of his life in England, where he emigrated in 1954 unable to reconcile himself with the limits on creative freedoms imposed by the communist regime. Having initially served as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, he devoted himself solely to composition. From the time of his defection in 1954 until 1977, the publication of his works was banned in Poland, and performances almost entirely so. In 1977, as a result of an intervention by the Polish Composers’ Union with the officials of the Polish United Workers Party, the censor’s ban on Panufnik and his music was lifted and in the same year his Universal Prayer was performed at the Warsaw Autumn Festival.
Panufnik made his first, and only, visit to Poland in 1990, after a lapse of 36 years, at the invitation of the Warsaw Autumn Festival, which featured a selection of his works. In the same year, he received an award from the Foreign Minister of Poland for his services to Polish culture. In 1991 Queen Elizabeth II bestowed a knighthood on Panufnik and the Music Academy in Warsaw conferred on him its honorary doctorate.
He died in October 1991 at his home in Twickenham, West London. He was posthumously decorated with the Order of Reborn Poland.
(mk/jh)
Source: Polskie Radio, NOSPR