| Biography | Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (born October 3, 1923) was an internationally known classical conductor and composer. He was born in Lwów (then in Poland, now in Ukraine) and became best known for his work with the Minnesota Orchestra. As a child, he studied piano and violin; displaying talent on the piano at an early age, he made his public debut playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor. Unfortunately, a hand injury ended his piano career.
After World War II, Skrowaczewski graduated from the Academy of Music in Kraków (in the composition class of Roman Palester and conducting class of Walerian Bierdiajew) and soon, in 1946, became the music director of the Wroclaw Philharmonic, then the Katowice Philharmonic, the Kraków Philharmonic and finally the Warsaw National Orchestra. He studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In 1956 he won the Santa Cecilia Competition for Conductors.
At the invitation of George Szell, Skrowaczewski conducted the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1960 he was appointed music director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (later renamed the Minnesota Orchestra under his tenure in 1968), a position he held until 1979 when he became conductor laureate. In 1981 the American Composers' Forum commissioned the Clarinet Concerto, which Skrowaczewski wrote for Minnesota Orchestra principal clarinetist Joe Longo, who premiered it in 1981.
Between 1983 and 1992 he was principal conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. Between 1995 and 1997, Skrowaczewski served as artistic advisor to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. In 1988, he was composer-in-residence for the Philadelphia Orchestra's summer season at Saratoga. He has guest-conducted that orchestra, and many others, all over the world.
His complete set of recordings of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner, made with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, has received much acclaim, as has his 2005-06 complete Beethoven symphony cycle with the orchestra. Another noted recording is his Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 with the London Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with soloist Gina Bachauer.
Skrowaczewski's Passacaglia Immaginaria, completed in 1995, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. Commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestral Association to honor the memory of Ken and Judy Dayton, it was premiered at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis in 1996. The Chamber Concerto was commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in memory of Leopold Sipe, their first music director. The Concerto for Orchestra received a Pulitzer nomination in 1999.
He received the Commander Order of the White Eagle, the highest order conferred by the Polish government, as well as the Gold Medal of the Mahler-Bruckner Society, the 1973 Ditson Conductor's Award, and the 1976 Kennedy Center Friedheim Award.
Skrowaczewski died on 21 February 2017 aged 93 years. |