Andrzej Panufnik

Andrzej Panufnik was a Polish-born British composer and conductor, who created compositions in a distinctive contemporary Polish style though he worked in a wide variety of genres. He studied composition and conducting at the Warsaw Conservatory and later with Felix Weingartner in Vienna. He became one of the leading Polish composers and conductors, and was instrumental in the re-establishment of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra after World War II. During the war, he had to hide from the Nazis and lost most of his early works in the Warsaw Uprising. He managed to reconstruct some of them later. He also composed film music and popular tunes under pseudonyms. He defected to Britain in 1954, after facing increasing criticism and censorship from the communist regime in Poland. He became a British citizen in 1961 and was knighted in 1991. He was the musical director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 1957 to 1959, and then devoted himself to his own compositions. He wrote 10 symphonies, various other orchestral works, concertos, chamber works, and choral and vocal works. He used geometric shapes and patterns, such as circles, symmetries, and mirror forms, to create musical structures and motifs. He also incorporated elements of Polish folk music, medieval chants, and religious symbolism into his works. He returned to Poland for the first time in 36 years in 1990, after the fall of communism, and conducted the European premiere of his last symphony. He died of cancer in 1991, at the age of 77.