Panufnik, Andrzej

eminent Polish-born English conductor and composer; b. Warsaw, Sept. 24, 1914; d. London, Oct. 27, 1991. Panufnik's father was a Polish manufacturer of string instruments, his mother an Englishwoman who studied violin in Warsaw. He began training with his mother.

After studying composition at the Warsaw Conservatory, earning his diploma in 1936, Panufnik took conducting lessons with FELIX WEINGARTNER at the Vienna Academy of Music in 1937-38. He subsequently completed his training with Philippe Gaubert in Paris and also studied in London in 1938-39. He returned to Warsaw in 1939, remaining there during the Nazi occupation, playing piano in the underground.

After the liberation of Poland in 1945, he conducted the Krakow and Warsaw Philharmonics. However, in 1954 Panufnik left his homeland in protest of the Communist regime, setding in England, where he became a naturalized British citizen in 1961. After serving as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 1957 to 1959, he devoted himself to composition. His wife, Scarlett Panufnik, published Out of the City of Fear (London, 1956), recounting his flight from Poland. His autobiography was published as Composing Myself (London, 1986).

In 1988 Panufnik appeared as a guest conductor of his own works with the N.Y. Chamber Symphony and in 1990 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was knighted in 1991.

In his early years Panufnik belonged to the vanguard group of Polish composers. He used advanced techniques, including QUARTER TONES, and made certain innovations in notation. In several of his orchestral works, he left blank spaces in the place of rests to indicate inactive instrumental parts. In his later music he adopted a more circumspect idiom — expressive, direct, and communicative. His compositions to 1944 were destroyed during the Warsaw uprising.

Panufnik composed ten symphonies and other orchestral works, four string quartets, other chamber and piano works, and choral works.