Witold Lutosławski

Lutosławksi was born in Warsaw and studied piano and composition at the city's conservatory, publishing his first work – his Symphonic Variations – in 1938. Briefly interned as a prisoner-of-war, he managed to escape back to Warsaw, where he formed a piano duet with Andrzej Panufnik. He was profoundly influenced by other 20th-century composers as Bartók, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, but he nonetheless remained true to himself and refused to become aligned with any particular school. While drawing, allusively, on popular motifs, he flirted for a time with serialism and, later, with aleatory music. The works of his maturity include Venetian Games (1961), his Second Symphony (1967), Livre pour orchestre (1968) and his Cello Concerto (1970), a commission from Mstislav Rostropovich. Lutosławksi, who often appeared both as pianist and conductor, achieved international recognition in the 1960s and later taught on numerous occasions both in the United States (at Tanglewood and the University of Texas and in Stockholm. He was the recipient of many honours.