Grażyna Bacewicz : [ɡraˈʐɨna baˈt͡sɛvit͡ʂ]; (Łódź, 5 februari 1909 – Warschau, 17 januari 1969) was a Polish composer and violinist. She is the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition, the first being Maria Szymanowska in the early 19th century.
Bacewicz was born in Łódź. Her father and her brother Vytautas, also a composer, identified as Lithuanian and used the last name Bacevičius; her other brother Kiejstut identified as Polish. Her father, Wincenty Bacewicz, gave Grażyna her first piano and violin lessons (Anon. 2014). In 1928 she began studying at the Warsaw Conservatory, where she studied violin with Józef Jarzębski and piano with Józef Turczyński, and composition with Kazimierz Sikorski, graduating in 1932 as a violinist and composer (Thomas 2001). She continued her education in Paris, having been granted a stipend by Ignacy Jan Paderewski to attend the École Normale de Musique (Anon. 2014), and studied there in 1932–33 with Nadia Boulanger (composition) and André Touret (violin). She returned briefly to Poland to teach in Łódź, but returned to Paris in 1934 in order to study with the Hungarian violinist Carl Flesch (Thomas 2001).
After completing her studies, Bacewicz took part in numerous events as a soloist, composer, and jury member. From 1936 to 1938 she was the principal violinist of the Polish Radio Orchestra, which was directed then by Grzegorz Fitelberg (Thomas 2001). This position gave her the chance to hear much of her own music. During World War II, Grażyna Bacewicz lived in Warsaw. She continued to compose, and gave underground secret concerts (premiering her Suite for Two Violins) (Lein 2008).
Bacewicz also dedicated time to family life. She was married in 1936, and gave birth to a daughter, Alina Biernacka , a recognized painter.Following the Warsaw uprising they escaped the destroyed city and temporarily settled in Lublin (Bacewicz n.d., 1).
After the war, she took up the position of professor at the State Conservatoire of Music in Łódź. At this time she was shifting her musical activity towards composition, drawn by her many awards and commissions. Composition finally became her only occupation from 1954, the year in which she suffered serious injuries in a car accident (Lein 2008). She died of a heart attack in 1969 in Warsaw.
Many of her compositions feature the violin. Among them are seven violin concertos, five sonatas for violin with piano, three for violin solo (including an early, unnumbered one from 1929), a Quartet for four violins, seven string quartets, and two piano quintets. Her orchestral works include four numbered symphonies (1945, 1951, 1952, and 1953), a Symphony for Strings (1946), and two early symphonies, now lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gra%C5%BCyna_Bacewicz
Hinweis: Entsprechend den derzeit geltenden Einschränkungen im Rahmen der Corona-Pandemie in Deutschland treten in dieser Livestream-Reihe aktuell nur Ensembles bis kammerorchestraler Größe auf. Die erforderlichen Mindestabstände werden dabei respektiert. Auch das Streaming erfolgt in einem reduzierten Setting.
Musical education
Having first learnt to play the piano and violin with her father, Vincas Bacevičius (Wincenty Bacewicz), Bacewicz continued her musical education in 1919 at Helena Kijenska-Dobkiewiczowa’s Musical Conservatory in Łódź. There, she studied piano, violin, and music theory. Her family moved to Warsaw in 1923, and in 1924 she enrolled at the Warsaw Conservatory to study composition under Kazimierz Sikorski, violin under Józef Jarzębski and piano under Józef Turczyński. Meanwhile, she enrolled in a philosophy course at Warsaw University but gave it up after a year and a half. She also stopped playing the piano, and eventually graduated from the Conservatory in 1932 with diplomas in violin and composition. Thanks to the generosity of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, she received a grant that same year to study composition at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. She studied there under Nadia Boulanger from 1932 to 1933, as well as through private violin lessons with Henri Touret. She would return to Paris later in 1934 to study under the Hungarian violinist Carl Flesch.
Violin soloist and teacher
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Bacewicz’s first solo success came in 1935, with her first mention at the 1st Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Warsaw. From 1936 to 1938 she played first violin at the Warsaw Polish Radio Orchestra led by Grzegorz Fitelberg, where she developed her knowledge of instrumentation. Bacewicz played a number of concerts before World War II, for which she visited Lithuania, France, Spain and other countries, often appearing with her brother, the reputed pianist Kiejstut. During the Nazi occupation she played clandestine concerts, as well as playing for the Main Relief Council. After the war she continued to play concerts up until 1953, giving recitals in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the USSR, Romania, Hungary and France. Meanwhile, in 1945, she joined the National Conservatory (now the Academy of Music) in Łódź as a lecturer of music theory and a violin teacher. Throughout the 1950s she devoted herself almost exclusively to composing and teaching. From 1966 till her death she worked at the National Higher School of Music (now the Academy of Music) in Warsaw, where she led a composition class and was made professor in 1967. She also often sat on the juries of violin and composition competitions throughout Europe, including in Liège, Paris, Moscow, Naples, Budapest, Poznań and Warsaw. She also served as vice-chair of the Polish Composers’ Union from 1955 to 1957, and again from 1960 to 1969.
In the 1960s, Bacewicz took up writing in addition to her music, completing several novels and short stories. None was published except for a volume of short stories entitled Znak szczególny/ The Distinguishing Mark, which was published by Czytelnik in 1970 (2nd edition in 1974).
Female composers
Bacewicz was one of the few female composers in Poland, or, for that matter, in the world. It is a field in which women have always been heavily underrepresented. Some other examples of female composers include the Benedictine sister Hildegard of Bingen in the Middle Ages and Francesca Caccini, the daughter of Giulio Caccini, who composed the first Baroque operas. Incidentally Francesca, who was less famous than her father, has a special significance in Poland since she devoted her opera, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina, to the Polish prince and future king Władysław IV Wasa. Another important figure in the history of Polish music is Maria Szymanowska, an accomplished pianist and piano composer who rose to fame in the early 19th century. Germaine Tailleferre, who co-founded the group Les Six along with a number of French composers (most more famous than she), also occupies a special place in the history of 20th century music. France produced another noted female composer, Nadia Boulanger, who was known chiefly as an outstanding composition teacher. It was from her that Bacewicz learned the technique she would skilfully use to compose her various pieces, most of which were neoclassical in style.
As a trained and practicing violinist, Bacewicz always had a special interest in violin and string music; she composed seven violin concertos, one viola and two cello concertos, seven string quartets, five violin and piano sonatas and two sonatas for solo violin. To this day at least some of these compositions, along with a few of Bacewicz’s chamber and symphonic pieces, still rival the work of her male colleagues in the concert hall. https://culture.pl/en/artist/grazyna-bacewicz