Grazyna Bacewicz

‘One of the foremost women composers of all time’ was how Witold Lutoslawski remembered Grazyna Bacewicz. As a great moral conscience of modern music, Lutoslawski was never given to exaggeration, and this view of his colleague had little to do with the fact that they were fellow Poles. Yet Lutoslawski, who was four years younger and who outlived Bacewicz by a quarter of a century, recalled her with a certain amount of awe, his memories going back to student days when he had page-turned for a pianist accompanying her. ‘From her very first independent steps one could see she was a natural-born, true musician, combining – like the great masters of the Baroque – the talent of a creator and a performer into one harmonious whole.’

These days, Bacewicz can more straightforwardly be counted as one of the great Polish composers of any period. Though never really forgotten in Poland, she was never fully appreciated