Ninateka - Andrzej Panufnik - Playlist

It is very difficult to say which are my favourite pieces, because whichever one I’m listening to is my favourite at the time I’m listening to it. Of course, there are some works which have more sentimental value to me. Sinfonia Sacra, for instance, was the work that my husband was writing at the time of our love affair and our marriage. He just won the main prize in Monaco with it before we got married. It was somehow very much interwoven with our love affair and the beginning of our life together. And it is a wonderful work. I would recommend it really in Poland because it draws from Polish culture and Polish patriotism. And its title, Sinfonia Sacra, sounds as though it’s just a religious work, but it actually is quite a political work too. It is a statement about a thousand years of Polish statehood and independence, a statement about believing in Poland as a great country, it is also extremely anti-communist in its feeling.

Well, that is the work I would recommend. Recently the London Symphony Orchestra made a centennial concert for my husband and the two works they chose were Sinfonia Sacra and Lullaby. These are early works, very powerful and it is a good way into my husband’s music: to feel the warmth and the strength of it.