Skrowaczewski's 'Imaginary Passacaglia'

Synopsis

In 1960, composer and conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski emigrated from Poland to become the music director of the Minneapolis Symphony, as the Minnesota Orchestra was called in those days.

In the decades that followed, Skrowaczewski, or “Stan” as his friends and admirers affectionately called him, became one of the most respected conductors of our time, famous for his interpretations of a wide range of repertory from Bruckner, Bartok and Stravinsky to the works of his Polish contemporaries, Lutoslawski and Pendereceki.

Skrowaczewski was born in Lwow in 1923. He composed an orchestral overture at 8, played a piano recital at 11, and performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at 13, conducting from the keyboard. His career as a budding piano virtuoso ended when his hands were injured by a collapsing brick wall during a World War II bombing near his home. After the war he won a French scholarship that enabled him to study composition with Nadia Boulanger and conducting with Paul Kletzki. His American debut occurred with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1958.

Skrowaczewski’s busy career as a conductor left little time to nuture his own talents as a composer, but even so he wrote a respectable number of chamber and orchestra works, including Passacaglia Immaginaria, which received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1996, at a Minnesota Orchestra concert. A few of his works have made their way onto recordings, including this recording of Passacaglia Immaginaria by the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony, conducted by Skrowaczewski.

Music Played in Today's Program

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (1923-2017): Passacaglia Immaginaria; Saarbrucken Radio Symphony; Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, conductor; Albany 481

On This Day

Births

• 1864 - Scottish-born German composer and pianist Eugéne d’Albert, in Glasgow

• 1892 - Italian composer and conductor Victor de Sabata, in Trieste

Deaths

• 1911 - Lithuanian painter and composer Mikolajus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 35, in Pustelnik-Minski, near Warsaw (Julian date March 28)

Premieres

• 1868 - Brahms: A German Requiem, at a Good Friday concert at Bremen Cathedral conducted by the composer

• 1886 - Chabrier: opera Gwendoline, in Brussels

• 1913 - Montemezzi: opera L’Amore dei Rre Re (The Love Three Kings), in Milan at the Teatro della Scala, with Tullio Serafin conducting

• 1919 - Fauré: Masques et Bergamasques (Masks and Bergamascas), in Monte Carlo

• 1927 - Antheil: A Jazz Symphony, at Carnegie Hall in New York, by members of the W.C. Handy with the composer at the piano

• 1935 - Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4, in London, by the BBC Symphony, Adrian Boult conducting

• 1936 - Carlos Chavez: Sinfonia India, by the Boston Symphony with the composer conducting

• 1963 - Poulenc: Clarinet Sonata, at Carnegie Hall (posthumously) with clarinetist Benny Goodman and pianist Leonard Bernstein

• 1984 - Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Prologue and Variations for strings, by the Chattanooga Symphony, Richard Cormier conducting

• 1988 - Joan Tower: Clarinet Concerto, with soloist Charles Neidich and the American Symphony Orchestra, Jorge Mester conducting

• 1992 - Michael Torke: Music on the Floor, for chamber ensemble, in Milwaukee, Wisc., by the Present Music ensemble, Kevin Stalheim conducting

• 1996 - Stanislaw Skrowaczewski: Passacaglia Immaginaria, in Minneapolis by the Minnesota Orchestra, Eiji Oue conducting

• 2005 - Gabriela Lena Frank: Ghosts in the Dream Machine for piano quintet, in Philadelphia, by pianist Simone Dinnerstein and the Chiara Quartet