Grażyna Bacewicz

Born in Łódź, Grażyna Bacewicz shaped her own musical destiny – as violinist, composer and latterly teacher – with unquenchable individuality and energy. When she graduated from the Warsaw Conservatoire in 1932 she studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and throughout her career as leader of the Polish Radio Orchestra and later as Professor at the Łódź Conservatoire (a car accident ended her playing career in 1954) she composed with unflagging energy, even when the Nazi occupation forced her to give concerts in secret. For Bacewicz, music served as a space of absolute spiritual freedom, and under Communist rule she continued to pursue her own highly individual musical path, drawing on her experience as a violinist to compose powerful cycles of violin concertos (seven in total) and string quartets (also seven), as well as four symphonies and numerous scores for stage, screen and radio. In works such as her Viola Concerto (1968), her Concerto for String Orchestra (1948) and her Third Quartet (1947) she combines a modernist rhythmic drive with intense emotion and often exuberant wit: qualities that have sparked a growing revival of interest in her music in recent years, both on record and in the concert hall.