Stanisław Skrowaczewski obituary
Conductor and composer who was inspired by Anton Bruckner
He was not on the list.
The benevolent spirit of Anton Bruckner hovered over the life and career of the conductor and composer Stanisław Skrowaczewski, who has died aged 93, from childhood until performances last year. It was while walking in the streets of his native Lwów, in Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), at the age of seven that he heard the strains of the Adagio of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony emanating from an open window.
“I was in a trance,” the transfixed child later recalled. “I was in heaven – the world didn’t exist for me.” In his 20s, as music director of the Silesian State Philharmonic of Katowice (1949–54), he programmed Bruckner every season. In Minneapolis, where he enjoyed a 56-year relationship with the Minnesota Orchestra (formerly known as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra), first as music director, latterly as conductor laureate, his regular performances of Bruckner symphonies drew criticism from some quarters: “If they must be played, one per season is quite enough,” protested one patron.
He frequently conducted Bruckner too in his years in Manchester as principal conductor of the Hallé (1984–91), a fine recording of the Fourth Symphony establishing his Brucknerian credentials with the wider public. He went on to record the cycle of 11 symphonies – Nos 1-9 and two early works – with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra and when he presided over the Fifth Symphony with the London Philharmonic in October 2015 he became the oldest conductor to perform at the Royal Festival Hall.
Having experienced the horrors of the second world war and three occupations of Lwów, Skrowaczewski found in Bruckner a source of spiritual strength and renewal; his finest performances reflected both those life experiences and the indomitable will to overcome them.
One performance from the twilight of this career, recorded by Hessischer Rundfunk in November 2014, when Skrowaczewski was 91, may stand for many. The stooped, craggy, white-haired figure standing on the podium in front of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra wields a tiny pencil-like baton. His head is lowered and he looks only intermittently at his players, but his face is certainly not buried in a score because he is conducting from memory.
What emerges is a reading of enthralling power and conviction of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony. The tempi are unhurried, the better to allow the lyrical sections to unfold with generosity and warmth. The piling up of scrunching dissonances at the end of the first movement is overwhelming, while the conclusion of the symphony as a whole leaves an abiding impression of a titanic struggle achieving resolution.
The son of Pawel, a doctor, and Zofia (nee Karszniewicz), Stanislaw made his debut as a pianist on Polish Radio at the age of 11, but a hand injury sustained during the war put an end to hopes of a keyboard career. He began studies in conducting, composition, musicology and philosophy in Lwów at the conservatory and university, graduating from the conservatory in Kraków in 1945. Having won the Szymanowski composition prize in 1947 he obtained a French government grant to study in Paris – composition with Nadia Boulanger and conducting with Paul Kletzki.
Appointments with the orchestras of Wrocław, Katowice and Kraków led to the conductorship of the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra (1956–9). He made his American debut in 1958, at the invitation of George Szell, conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. This led to engagements with the New York Philharmonic and, in 1960, to his appointment in Minneapolis. It was a turning point in Skrowaczewski’s career.
He and his wife, Krystyna, made their home in Minnesota and he held the directorship of the Minneapolis SO for 19 years. When that tenure ended in 1979, he returned every year as conductor laureate. During his half-century relationship with the orchestra, he helped it to expand from a part-time ensemble into an internationally recognised year-round orchestra, lobbying hard for the acoustically outstanding new concert hall, eventually opened in 1974.
When, in 2012, the musicians of the orchestra entered into dispute with management over salaries and contractual conditions, leading to a 15-month lockout, Skrowaczewski demonstrated his support of the players by conducting them in an independently organised concert at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
During his time with the Hallé, in addition to Bruckner he recorded Brahms and Shostakovich with them. He also conducted leading orchestras elsewhere in Europe and the US in a repertoire that included his compatriots Witold Lutosławski and Krzysztof Penderecki, and made occasional appearances at opera houses including the Metropolitan, New York, and the Vienna Staatsoper.
Of his more than 70 compositions, the Concerto for Orchestra, recorded in 1985, is notable for the title of the second movement: Anton Bruckner’s Journey to Heaven. During the last year of his life he was composing a requiem for orchestra and chorus.
Averse to self-promotion, he had no time for the ego-driven, tyrannical behaviour often associated with his role. Rather, the modesty and courtesy of the man, known to friends and colleagues as Stan, combined with a business-like approach to rehearsal, brought him both respect and affection.
Krystyna died in 2011. He is survived by his sons, Paul and Nicholas, and daughter, Anna.
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