Witold Lutosławski
Witold Lutosławski was a Polish composer and conductor, one of the major musicians of the twentieth century. He was born in Warsaw, in the Kingdom of Poland of the Russian Empire, on January 25, 1913, and died in Warsaw on February 7, 1994.
He was born into a landowning family. From the age of six he studied piano, and from the age of nine he was already composing music; one of his earliest pieces was a Prelude for piano from 1921. Between 1926 and 1932 he studied the violin with Lidia Kmita. In 1932 he entered the Warsaw Conservatory and graduated in 1937.
At the Warsaw Conservatory he studied with the noted Russian and Polish composer Witold Maliszewski, a pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and founder of the Odessa Conservatory. Maliszewski laid the foundations of Lutosławski's compositional technique. Lutosławski also held the music of Igor Stravinsky in especially high regard.
During the Second World War he was mobilized, taken prisoner, and escaped while being transported to a concentration camp. He earned money in Warsaw cafes together with Andrzej Panufnik, helping raise funds for artists who were in hiding. After receiving a UNESCO prize in 1959 and after the performance of his String Quartet in Stockholm in 1965, he achieved international recognition.
Lutosławski's output includes four symphonies, a Concerto for Orchestra, and many chamber and vocal works. Among his notable compositions are Symphonies Nos. 1-4, Symphonic Variations, Little Suite, Concerto for Orchestra, Musique funebre for string orchestra, Venetian Games, Livre pour orchestre, Preludes and a Fugue, Mi-parti, Novelette, the Chain works, the Cello Concerto, the Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp and Chamber Orchestra, the Piano Concerto, and vocal works including Trois poemes d'Henri Michaux, Paroles tissees, Les Espaces du Sommeil, and Chantefleurs et Chantefables. He also wrote piano, chamber, and film music, including a Piano Sonata, Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Dance Preludes, Bucolics, String Quartet, Partita, Subito, and the documentary film score Warsaw Suite.
His work Trois poemes d'Henri Michaux is regarded as a model of twentieth-century choral avant-garde. Its second part, The Great Battle, uses collective twenty-voice declamation without exact pitch fixation, creating a striking sonoristic sound world that ranges from whispering to shouting, with percussive noise effects, trumpet signals, and incantatory exclamations.
He was the first recipient of the Grawemeyer Award, receiving it in 1985 for his Third Symphony. Among his other distinctions were the Herder Prize, the Léonie Sonning Prize, the Ernst von Siemens Prize, the Kyoto Prize, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society. He was also an honorary doctor of many universities, including Cambridge. His music was performed by leading musicians such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Heinz Holliger, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Dawn Upshaw, Georg Solti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Antoni Wit, and Roman Rewakowicz.
Lutosławski and his wife were buried at the Old Powazki Cemetery in Warsaw. His memory was honored in works by Magnus Lindberg, Toru Takemitsu, Krzysztof Meyer, and Faraj Karaev. Since 1990, the International Witold Lutosławski Composers' Competition has been held in Warsaw, organized by the National Philharmonic.