A Life in Music
by Fred Harris

Currently, the nearly eighty-five year old Stanislaw Skrowaczewski is the only eminent musician who is working internationally with incredible success as a conductor and a composer. In a tradition that reaches back to Mendelssohn, Wagner and Gustav Mahler, the classical music world has seen very few conductor/composers who are consistently active in both realms.

With the death of Leonard Bernstein in 1990, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski is the only such musician who consistently conducts the leading orchestras of the world, actively fulfills commissions and leads critically acclaimed performances of great 19th and 20th century repertoire as well as his own music.

Contents:

• Conducting on the world stage
• Composing
• Recording
• Legacy

Conducting on the world stage

Since his first appointment at the age of 23, as Music Director of Wroclaw Opera Orchestra of Poland, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski has held positions with major orchestras every year of his professional career. After holding music director/principal conductor positions with all the major orchestras in his homeland of Poland, Skrowaczewski became Music Director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (today Minnesota Orchestra) in 1960, the first musician from behind the Iron Curtain ever to lead a major American orchestra. For 19 years he developed and nurtured the Minnesota Orchestra into one of the best orchestras in the United States, making important recordings, and shepherding the development of Orchestra Hall, among the finest concert halls in the world.

In 1984, Skrowaczewski began his appointment as Principal Conductor of the oldest and among the most prestigious of the major orchestras in England, the Hallé Orchestra. His celebrated seven year tenure leading the Hallé Orchestra included major tours in Poland and throughout Europe, and the orchestra's first ever tours of the United States and South America. Skrowaczewski also made renowned recordings with the Hallé, including a complete Brahms symphony cycle and symphonies of Mahler, Bruckner and Shostakovich.

Since 1979 Skrowaczewski has maintained a close relationship with the Minnesota Orchestra as its Conductor Laureate. He has made award-winning recordings with them and he continues to be commissioned by and lead premieres of his own compositions with the ensemble. In 2010, he will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his professional affiliation with the Minnesota Orchestra, the longest such relationship any conductor has ever had with a major symphony orchestra in American history.

In addition to his position in Minnesota, Skrowaczewski is presently the Principal Guest Conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, and in 2007, at age 84, he was appointed Principal Conductor of the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo, Japan, with whom he tours and makes recordings and DVDs.

As a guest conductor, Skrowaczewski has worked with all of the major European orchestras, with great critical success: in Germany (Berlin Philharmonic - 15 year relationship, Munich Philharmonic, Cologne Radio Orchestra, NDR Hamburg, WDR Köln, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie among others), Austria (Vienna Philharmonic, Salzburg Festival, Vienna Symphony, Vienna State Opera, Bruckner Linz Orchestra), Netherlands (Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra), France (French National, Paris, Lyons), United Kingdom (London Symphony, London Philhamonic, BBC orchestras in England and Scotland), Belgium, Switzerland (Tonhalle), Russia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. Skrowaczewski has also conducted all the major orchestras in Canada (Montreal, Toronto, Ottowa), South America, Austalia, Japan and he has toured Europe with the Israel Philharmonic.

Since his 1958 U.S. debut with George Szell's Cleveland Orchestra, Skrowaczewski has consistently guest conducted all of the major American orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra (32 year relationship), Clevelend Orchestra (25 year relationship - see picture), Boston Symphony Orchestra (32 year relationship), New York Philharmonic (40 year relationship), Chicage Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, San Fransisco Symhpony, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Detroit symphonies.

Composing

From early performances of his music at international music festivals in the 1950s through to his major compositions of the 1970s, '80s, '90s and today, Skrowaczewski's music has consistently received wide international recognition. Essentially a self-taught composer (Nadia Boulanger was his advisor for several years in Paris following the Second World War), Skrowaczewski has developed a unique compositional voice in the world of music. "He is one of the finest composers now writing," said Amerian composer John Harbison, "Any encounter with his vibrant, adventurous, gripping music stays in the mind long after".

"Skrowaczewski's Symphony [2003] is a wake-up call," said composer, film music scholar and astronomer, Randall Meyers, "from an artistic soul who has spent a lifetime passing on the musical flame to the remaining 'starved' spirits in need of truth."

Click on the link below to hear Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conduct the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra in an extract from his own Passacaglia Immaginaria :

A body of work that spans 50 years and includes chamber music, concertos for English horn, violin, saxophone, piano, flute, large-scale orchestral compositions and transcriptions and arrangements of music by Gesualdo, Bach, Rameau and Bruckner, Skrowaczewski's music has been embraced by musicians around the world. Ricercari Notturni earned the first Kennedy Center Friedheim Award in 1978 and Passacaglia Immaginaria and Concerto for Orchestra both received Pullitzer Prize Nominations in 1997 and 1999. Skrowaczewski was composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1988 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, where a number of his orchestral and chamber works were performed.

Skrowaczewski's music has been performed by the world's leading ensembles including the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, New York Phiharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra and many other ensembles in Europe, Japan and America. Musica a Quattro was a featured composition at the 2005 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood. In October 2007, a 'Skrowaczewski Festival' took place in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The Minnesota Orchestra, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie and leading chamber ensembles have recorded Skrowaczewski's music. A forthcoming all-Skrowaczewski CD on the Oehms Classics label will feature his latest composition, Fantasie for Flute and Orchestra: Il Pifferno della Notte performed by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie and conducted by the composer. In the fall of 2008, Maestro Skrowaczewski will lead the Minnesota Orchestra in the world premiere of A Symphony of Winds, a work commissioned by an international consortium of ten orchestras from the US, UK, Germany, Austria and Japan.

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Recording

Beginning with his 1961 professional recording debut with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, performing the music of Schubert on the famed Mercury Living Presence label, to his most recent 2007 release with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie of the complete Schumann symphonies, Skrowaczewski has created an impressive recording legacy of quality and diversity. Nearly all of his recordings remain in print and a re found on prestigious classical music labels including RCA, Columbia/Sony Classical, Philips, EMI/Angel, Chandos, Vox, Erato, Denon, Muza, Arte Nova, and Oehms Classics.

Skrowaczewski has recorded well over 100 separate compositions with orchestras such as the Minnesota Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Warsaw Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, among others, of composers ranging from Handel, Mozart and Mendelssohn, to Beethoven, Brahms, Berlioz and Bruckner, to Ravel, Shostakovich, Penderecki and his own works. His discography includes Chopin's complete works for piano and orchestra (Alexis Weissenberg), Chopin Piano Concerto No.1 (Arthur Rubenstein), complete orchestral works of Ravel, the major works of Berlioz, Stravinsky, Bartok and Prokofiev, Shostakovich symphonies 1, 5, 6 and 10, complete Brahms smyphonies, complete overtures and incidental music of Beethoven, overtures by Weber and Wagner and music of Schumann, Mahler, Lutoslawski and the Spanish composer Maurice Ohana.

Hear Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conduct the opening of Bruckner's seventh symphony with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra:

2001 saw the release of Skrowaczewski's internationally acclaimed Bruckner cycle of all 11 symphonies with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, which won the Cannes 2002 Award for 'Best Orchestral Recording of 18th/19th Century Orchestral Work'.

"If forced to recommend a single Bruckner cycle at any price," said David Hurwitz of ClassicsToday.com, "I'd gladly choose Skrowaczewski. He's that good." The American Record Guide declared Skrowaczewski's 2007 complete Beethoven symphonies , also with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, as "among the best ever." Skrowaczewski recently completed a cycle of all four Schumann symphonies and will complete a second cycle of Brahms symphonies in 2009.

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Legacy

In an age where popularity and commercialism increasingly dominate our airwaves and concert halls, Skrowaczewski remains a beacon of pure artistry. A musician's musician who is seemingly devoid of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement, he has spent his life in the service of the arts of conducting and composing, and as a steward for the highest levels of orchestral performance.

Despite the longevity and quality of his international career, Skrowaczewski has consistently been described for decades as an "underrated conductor". Why has he fallen off the list of famous maestros of the 20th century? "It's because he has too much integrity," says Gunther Schuller, "He's too honest, he's too modest. He's all the good things that people should be." Skrowaczewski's introverted and deeply probing artistic nature has not meshed with the dictates of the marketing and business of music. "He has an aversion to self-promotion," notes British critic and writer Michael Kennedy, "I think this is part of his character. He has no interest in selling himself." "He's an artist," says Schuller, and he's not going to compromise his art by playing games or trying to become the most famous conductor in the world."

For over 60 years, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski has conducted and composed on his own terms. He has inspired thousands of musicians in hundreds of major orchestras all over the world. Through his concerts, compositions and recordings, he has created a substantive and rare legacy of quality. His musical life continues to represent the kind of artistic integrity that deserves to be celebrated for its own merits and as a testament for generations of musicians to come.