Andrzej Panufnik is appreciated primarily for his symphonic works. Yet his oeuvre includes several compositions with the participation of a chorus, and they are collected on this album.

All of them come from the second, UK period of the composer’s life, although it should be noted that in some of them he refers to both Polish themes and music created before he left Poland in 1954. Then, taking advantage of a short stay at a recording session for Swiss Radio, Panufnik, instead of returning to the country, thanks to the help of friends got to London & asked for political asylum. He visited Poland only in 1990, after the democratic changes. His music and name were banned in his native country until 1977. At that time, he was building his life in the United Kingdom.

Panufnik’s 5 years in the UK were not easy, but getting married, as well as the composition award he received in Monaco a few months earlier (for Sinfonia sacra), allowed him to look into the future more optimistically. Therefore, Song to the Virgin Mary can be seen as an expression of all these feelings, and the work itself can be treated as a kind of gift to the Mother of God. It is a simple choral piece with a prayerful character, for which Panufnik chose the text of a medieval anonymous Polish Latin poem…

Artists

Roman Perucki (soloist), Małgorzata Krzemień (soloist), Natalia Rubiś (soloist), Małgorzata Pańko-Edery (soloist), Wojtek Gierlach (soloist), Krystian Adam Krzeszowiak (soloist), Polski Narodowy Chór Młodzieżowy, Jakub Waszczeniuk, Grzegorz Krause, Eloy Panizo Padrón, Filip Kołaczyk, Malwina Lipiec-Rozmysłowicz, Elżbieta Korelus, Krzysztof Waloszczyk, Piotr Bugaj, Wojciech Jeliński, Iñaki Cuenca, Daniel Kamiński, Tomasz Kowalczyk, Agnieszka Franków-Żelazny, Łukasz Borowicz