A01=Andrzej Panufnik
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Andrzej Panufnik
Anglo-Polish
Author_Andrzej Panufnik
Autobiography
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Bartok
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AVGC6
Category=WZ
Cold War
Communism
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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Language_English
Nazism
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
Szymanowski
Twentieth Century
World War II
Product details
- ISBN 9780907689904
- Weight: 1122g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Mar 2023
- Publisher: Toccata Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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First volume of a gripping collection of the writings of one of the twentieth century's finest composers, the Anglo-Polish Sir Andrzej Panufnik (1914-91), consisting of a new edition of his 1984 autobiography Composing Myself, his complete programme notes on his own compositions, his essays and articles and his interviews.
Sir Andrzej Panufnik used to say that he communicated in music, not words. But his literary legacy is substantial, as this anthology demonstrates. Its first volume consists of a fully annotated new edition of Composing Myself, the autobiography he wrote in 1985, long since a collector's item. It provides a graphic account of an often dramatic life. Panufnik's early success in pre-World War II Poland was soon eclipsed by the horrors of the Nazi occupation. Composing Myself documents in striking detail the desperate circumstances in which Panufnik repeatedly found himself - and the personal courage with which he responded.
Post-War Poland then progressed from the overt terrors of Nazism to the deadening hand of Communism, and Panufnik charts the methodical attempts of Party orthodoxy to stifle independent thought. In spite of the success he enjoyed as a conductor, Panufnik was unable to compose under such restrictions, feeling he was being suffocated. Though a patriot to his bones, he boldly decided that escape to the west was the only option, and his account of his defection - in 1954, at the height of the Cold War - reads like a le Carré thriller. Safe in England, he was able to rebuild his career, overcoming official neglect of his music to become one of Britain's best-respected composers - and to be greeted as a national hero when he finally managed to return to his beloved Poland, free at last.
