Andrzej Panufnik Recordings

In 1934, when Karol Szymanowski considered writing his second violin sonata, the first important work of another composer was created. He was nineteen at the time and, like Szymanowski years before, studied music in Warsaw. This was Andrzej Panufnik (1914–1991).

His Piano Trio became the symbolic “Opus 1”, from which he began a great career as a composer. Andrzej Panufnik began his education at the Music Conservatory in Warsaw in the piano class as a 12-year-old boy, at a time when one of the lecturers of this school, and at the time also its director, was Karol Szymanowski. However, at the end of his first year there, following a disastrous performance in his yearly examination, Panufnik was removed from the list of students with the
annotation: “he has no musical talent.” It is dreadful to consider that if in 1927 he had accepted the commission’s verdict and given up on his art, Polish culture would have lost one of its most outstanding representatives! Fortunately, this did not happen and after two years the young man returned to learning music, indirectly through … jazz.

Fascinated with the new style from America, he began to improvise at home and compose short songs. One of them, Ah, pardon, with the text of Marian Hemar, was sung by Adolf Dymsza (one of the stars in Polish cinema of that time) himself; Panufnik was still only seventeen at
the time!

Because it was too late for him to study the piano professionally, Panufnik appeared again in the Conservatory as a percussionist, and, quickly filling the gaps in his knowledge of the theory of music, he finally began to follow his dream, undertaking studies in composition in 1932. He was admitted to the class of Kazimierz Sikorski, supplementing his necessary knowledge and skills under Piotr Rytel (harmony and counterpoint), Jerzy Lefeld (score- reading) and
Eugeniusz Morawski (instrumentation); the then cream of Polish musical
theorists.