Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, famed conductor . By Richard Sandomir New York
Times . NEW YORK - Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, a conductor who defected
from his native Poland in 1960 to take charge of the Minnesota
Orchestra for the next 19 years, died Feb. 21 in Minneapolis. He was
93. Mr. Skrowaczewski led orchestras in Europe and Asia after he
stepped down from the Minnesota Orchestra, but he returned to it
annually as its conductor laureate. He conducted what turned out to be
his final concerts there in October, choosing Anton Bruckner's majestic
Eighth Symphony. Bruckner's music had transfixed him since he was a
boy. R. Douglas Wright, the orchestra's principal trombonist, recalled
in an interview that Mr. Skrowaczewski, who looked frail in October but
was vigorous on the podium, gave the musicians a speech after their
final rehearsal, thanking them for keeping him alive. "He wasn't
morose," Wright said, "but I remembered saying to my colleagues, 'He's
saying goodbye to us. Watching both concerts, Frederick Edward Harris
Jr., who wrote a biography of Mr. Skrowaczewski, "Seeking the Infinite"
said that there were noticeable differences in the way he conducted the
Bruckner symphony from one night to the next. "He was still searching,
still trying to mold this sonic clay," Harris said. "He was not
satisfied. Throughout his career, Mr. Skrowaczewski balanced conducting
and composing, twin passions that came to him early. Stanislaw Pawel
Stefan Jan Sebastian Skrowaczewski was born in Lwow, Poland (now Lviv,
Ukraine). His father, Pawel, was a physician; his mother, the former
Zofia Karszniewicz, was a concert pianist. Mr. Skrowaczewski often
recalled, rhapsodically, that as a boy he would sit beneath the piano
at home and imagine that he was hearing an organ play. He learned to
play the piano, violin and flute, and began composing as a child, he
said. Upon hearing Bruckner for the first time at 7, he was overwhelmed
- and remained so for the rest of his life. "I got sick from hearing
his gorgeous music," he told the interviewer Mary Hanson, the host of a
public television show in the Twin Cities, in 2012, "paralyzed by the
beauty and power of this symphony. Studying scores by Bruckner, Mozart,
Beethoven, and Bach inspired the composition of his own music, but he
realized that conducting would let him lead great orchestras in the
music of many other composers. He told Hanson that composing and
conducting were "completely opposite and disturbing. As a composer, he
said, "you have to be an introvert" and "forget everything else,"
whereas a conductor "should be extroverted" to show off the works of
composers. In all, he composed at least three dozen orchestral and
chamber works. Mr. Skrowaczewski was a talented pianist as well, but
any possibility of making the piano a career ended during World War II.
In 1941, two years after the Germans invaded Poland, he was caught in a
villa near Lwow during a German bombing raid. A brick wall collapsed on
his hands, causing permanent nerve damage. After the war, he began a
decade at the helm of orchestras in Krakow, Katowice, and Warsaw. In
its review of his debut, The Christian Science Monitor said that Mr.
Skrowaczewski's interpretation of Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 3
revealed him as a "leader of warm Slavic temperament," adding: "His
gestures are expansive and expressive, his conceptions highly dramatic
and communicative. If his approach to the work was individualistic, at
moments surprising, it proved exciting, human and convincing. But life
under communist rule in Poland was difficult. "It was impossible for
musicians and composers," Mr. Skrowaczewski told
ClevelandClassical.com. "We couldn't conduct whole areas of
contemporary music, including Stravinsky. He came to the United States
in 1959 and was guest conductor in several cities, including Cleveland.
He started relationships on that tour with the New York Philharmonic.
While he was in Cleveland, officials of the Minneapolis Symphony
Orchestra - the original name of the Minnesota Orchestra - made him an
offer to become its new music director, replacing Antal Dorati. "The
problem is he's in Communist Poland, and he can't say he's got this
opportunity," Harris said. "They wouldn't let him out. But he had an
engagement in Amsterdam that he was permitted to fulfill in early 1960.
He and his wife, the former Krystyna Jarosz, packed two suitcases,
leaving almost everything behind. They left Warsaw by train and headed
west.
