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Major music festival honours Polish composer

PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek 18.08.2017 12:05
The Sacrum Non Profanum International Music Festival opened in Szczecin, northwestern Poland, on Thursday, paying tribute to Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik.
Photo: graphicstock.comPhoto: graphicstock.com

The festival will be accompanied by an exhibition of photographs made by his wife, Camilla Jessel-Panufnik, which document the composer’s life, half of which was spent in the UK, and his artistic career.

At a press conference, Jessel-Panufnik spoke of their lives in a house in Twickenham on the River Thames, near London, a place where Panufnik wrote seven symphonies, four concertos and three cantatas.

“It was a very important place for him, as all music that he had written before he reached thirty, including two symphonies, was lost during the war. I had the privilege to fall in love with this wonderful man, take care of him and give him the peace and quiet that he needed to compose”, she said.

The festival’s inaugural concert, by the Lviv Philharmonic from Ukraine, featured Panufnik’s Tragic Overture, Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor, with Sławomir Wilk as the soloist, and works by Ukrainian composers.

Apart from Szczecin, festival events are being held in Trzęsacz, a village on the Baltic coast, and in Berlin.

The festival’s programme also includes a screening of the documentary film ”My Father, the Iron Curtain and Me”, in which Panufnik’s son Jem talks about the Polish composer.

The Sacrum Non Profanum Festival closes on 26 August. (mk/vb)

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