SOUNDS OF POLAND

Grażyna Bacewicz, today considered the greatest Polish female composer and an outstanding figure in 20th-century music, built her musical position with true determination, combining her career as a violinist with her work as a composer. She quickly became one of the most prominent representatives of the neoclassical movement in music, before reforming her style and giving it a highly individual expression.

Born in 1909, like many other artists from Central Europe, she had to face the political realities of her time – she witnessed, among other things, two world wars and the Stalinist regime. She studied at the Warsaw Conservatory with Kazimierz Sikorski (composition), Józef Jarzębski (violin) and Józef Turczyński (piano). Despite the music community’s dismissive attitude towards women composers at the time – at the beginning of her artistic career, its representatives saw her primarily as a violinist, often treating her creative ambitions as whims – Bacewicz continued to compose and perform her own works, gaining increasing respect and recognition. Bacewicz, however, paid no heed to this and continued to compose and perform her own works, gaining increasing respect and recognition.

Grażyna Bacewicz’s creative and artistic activity was crowned with numerous successes. She performed recitals and concerts conducted by outstanding conductors on European stages. She won awards in both fields, and her music, appreciated by conductors and performers, was increasingly present at concerts and festivals in Poland and abroad.

Today, Bacewicz’s music is experiencing a renaissance. In her concertos, sonatas, symphonies and smaller works, we find extremely interesting sound solutions. Excellent recordings are appearing (including by the BBC Symphony Orchestra), and the works are constantly being performed, in 2024 at Wigmore Hall in London, the Philharmonie de Paris, SR Berwaldhallen in Stockholm and Bozar in Brussels, among others. Bacewicz’s works also reflect the era in which she lived, characterised by a departure from exuberant romanticism, a search for beauty in classical form, but also an avoidance of well-worn patterns. Her strong, disciplined, consistent, yet feminine and sensitive musical language and rich compositional imagination reflect her personality as a creator.