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Stanislaw Skrowaczewski at 90

Jun. 28, 2013

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski at 90

On October 3, 2013, the international music community celebrates the 90th birthday of renowned composer-conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. The creative output of this accomplished artist includes distinguished orchestral works and an impressive array of chamber compositions.  Skrowaczewski's music is principally represented worldwide by Schott Music. How does the nonagenarian plan to mark his special day? The always dynamic and agile artist is scheduled to conduct a series of concerts in Japan in honor of the event.

Born in 1923 in Lwow, Poland, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski has occupied a dual role in the world's musical community. Perhaps best known as an internationally prominent conductor, he is also the composer of a significant corpus of orchestral and chamber works, two of which, the Concerto for Orchestra and the Passacaglia Immaginaria, having been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Skrowaczewski continues to live and work in Minnesota, his residence since becoming music director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, now known as the Minnesota Orchestra, a position he was to retain for nineteen years (1960-79). He has guest conducted virtually all major orchestras and is particularly acclaimed as one of the most inspired and authoritative Bruckner conductors, having performed and recorded all of the Austrian master's orchestral compositions.

His reverence for Bruckner is manifest in Skrowaczewski's own Concerto for Orchestra, the massive second movement of which bears the inscription "The Ascension of Anton Bruckner." Among his most often performed works are Music at Night and the Symphony for Strings, but he has also done transcriptions of works by Bach, Rameau, and Strauss and even a colorful orchestration (in a singable key) of the National Anthem.

No two Skrowaczewski scorings are exactly the same. He creates a unique tonal canvas for each piece, proceeding from a palette devised for the substance of the piece, always plumbing the deepest pools of sound and exploiting exotic percussion. The result is highly colored, evocative music rendered in a free harmonic language that heightens the emotional content of each work.

Skillful, imaginative, and full of passion, the works of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski challenge a musician's technique while expanding the listener’s awareness of the power of music to describe the indescribable. For the composer, all art is a dialogue with the unknown. "This dialogue," he writes, “encompasses all the fundamental human concerns such as the meaning of life and death, love and cruelty, and sacrifice and redemption in the constant hope to know that which cannot be known. Art thrives on metaphysical ideas... and is a powerful antidote for the spiritual ills of our chaotic, violent and troubled times."

Learn more on the life and work of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski at www.schott-music.com.

Concerto for Orchestra (1985, re. 1998)
3(3.pic).3.3(3.bcl).3(3.cbsn)-4.4.2.btbn.1-timp.perc-hp.cel.pno-str
31’

Music at Night (1948)
for orchestra
2(2.pic).2(2.ca).2(2.asax).2-4.2.3.1-timp.2perc(cym, tamb, b.d, tam-t, bng)-hp.pno-str
17’

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