01/05/2025 Roxanna Panufnik In Focus

Roxanna Panufnik Babylonia for solo piano
Winnie Su piano

When Margaret Fingerhut commissioned this piece, we both felt that we’d like to celebrate our Jewish roots. We decided to look into Iraqi Jewish music to conjure up a vanished world. Jews had lived in the region for over 2,000 years until they had to flee the country only a generation ago. 

Dangoor Education then kindly offered to sponsor the commission, and we soon came across the beautiful ‘D’ror Yikra’ – often sung during Shabbat meals, to a haunting Iraqi folk melody. 

My piece follows the words of the song, which were written by Morrocan poet, linguist and musician Dunash ben Labrat, in 960 CE.  There are biblical references and the first verse draws from Leviticus declaring liberty to everyone. The music opens with hints of the theme to come, played inside the piano evoking the haunting Iraqi Santur. Returning to the keyboard, the theme becomes established and embellished over a rocking accompaniment as the words implore rest, on this Sabbath day. 

The remaining five verses of the song alternate between Longing and Anger.  A. Longing, for a sign that better times are to come takes the descending notes of the theme and leans into them, yearning for deliverance. B. Anger, let our enemies be defeated takes us to the very depths of the keyboard as the theme becomes sporadic and unpredictable and thoughts of crushed foes abound. We glide to the heights of the keyboard for C. Longing, for places of beauty and serenity. Again the theme is yearning and wistful over a heartbeat rhythm of chord clusters created from the Hidjaz mode, in which this ancient melody was composed. I also use the Phrygian scale which is also commonly used in Iraqi Jewish music. 

A sense of danger and unpredictability ensues in D. Anger, again at foes but praying for unity. An old Iraqi metre of 10/16 (3+2+2+3) raises the music adrenalin as thoughts of foes return. However, returning to the very bottom note of the keyboard we hear the reiteration of an octave-based motif as the words implore unity – even with their foes. The final verse, E. Longing, for a glorious future – regal in its wisdom and beauty, has a majestic and stately feel to it. It sounds like it is heading for hope and a happy ending but we end in quiet, bittersweet contemplation – in memory of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Jews who had to leave the country, never to return. And it is to them, that I dedicate this piece. 

I am hugely grateful to Margaret Fingerhut for commissioning the piece and to Dangoor Education for supporting it. Also, to Sara Manasseh, who aided my extensive research into this field, inspiring me with her beautiful singing. Thank you to Rabbi Michael Hilton for talking me through the words of the song and the sentiment between the lines.

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Roxanna Panufnik A Wind at Rook’s Haven for solo flute
Isabeau Hansen flute

Mel Cox was murdered by the IRA in the late 1980s. This setting of A Wind at Rooks Haven was commissioned by his sister Olivia Cox-Fil for their father’s 80th birthday in October 1997. It’s a beautiful poem – but conjures a sparse landscape. Hence a very spacial feel in the music which is created by having just a “sad, lovely” flute accompanying but also small phrases where voice or flute are playing on their own. There is a lot of word-painting and the bird-like figurations in the flute represent the rook. 

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Roxanna Panufnik Mine Eye; Sweet Love Remember’d for mezzo-soprano and piano
Jemima Gray mezzo-soprano
Chichi Li piano

Mine Eye (William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 24):

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath steeled
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein ‘tis held.
And perspective it is best painter’s art,
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictured lies,
Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

Sweet Love Remember’d (William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29):

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possesses’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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Haodong Wang In the Summoning of Rain for solo flute (world première)
Isabeau Hansen flute

Rain is not only a natural phenomenon but also carries symbolic meanings across cultures. It is often associated with life, growth, and renewal, yet it can also evoke feelings of sadness, loss, and isolation. 

Growing up in Northern China, I often eagerly awaited the arrival of summer rainstorms. As a child, I would listen to the sound of raindrops hitting various surfaces for hours, fascinated by the contradictions within rainfall – how it could be both isolating and cleansing, peaceful yet invigorating. Over time I developed complex and personal feelings toward rain. 

In my piece, In the Summoning of Rain, I aim to capture this sense of anticipation, secrecy, tension, and obsession through the act of calling for rain. In this imaginative ritual, the music begins with a soft, ritualistic chant, creating an atmosphere of mystery and quiet tension. As the invocation builds, the music grows more insistent and obsessive, reflecting the growing urgency and longing of the ritual. The tension mounts, but the rain remains elusive, refusing to fall despite the intensifying summons. Only at the very end, after a secret “sacrifice”, does the atmosphere shift, and the first raindrops finally arrive – just as the music abruptly cuts off. 

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Roxanna Panufnik Hora Bessarabia for solo violin
Rachel Stonham violin

This piece was commissioned for senior competitors at the Menuhin Competition London 2016 coinciding with Yehudi’s centenary year (the duet version, with Double Bass, was commissioned by one of the finalists Ariel Horowitz for her and Sebastian Zinca to play). It’s because of this that I wanted to write something that was a bit more personal to him – he loved gypsy music and, as it happens,  so do I.  

Meet Roxanna as she joins our Deputy Principal Manus Carey on stage for an in-depth conversation.

Andrej Panufnik and Roxanna Panufnik Modlitwa for string sextet
Archie Freeman, Nina Doig violins
Estelle Gonzalez, Paula Bowes violas
Elena Edwards, Maya Tucker cellos

In 1990 the Polish poet Jerzy Pietrkiewicz, a close friend of my father’s, showed him a prayer that he had written to the Virgin of Skempe. My father set the second verse to music but left the first to be narrated as he didn’t want to obscure the beauty of the words with music. It is a beautifully poignant and simple setting which Jerzy asked me, 9 years later, to “complete” by setting the narrated words to music, also. The outer sections are by my father and the inner one by me.

The original version of this was commissioned by the Al Bustan Festival for the Chilingirian String Quartet but it has been requested in a variety of formats since – it can now be heard as voice & piano, piano solo, string orchestra and now a clarinet quintet.

My father often likened the sound of stringed instruments to the human voice – referring to the “singing qualities” of particularly the ‘cello. It is for this reason that I have given much of the melody to what is traditionally a bass instrument in its string versions.

From lake to lake,
from islet to islet a pagan Skempe.
But you baptised it with your smile,
Maiden, bent over sin.
In the image and likeness
of the waiting girl
a transient chisel brought you out to light,
so that even from this conception in wood,
shavings of miracle would fall into penance.

Oh, angel my guardian
whose face and name I do not know,
stand always by my side
at a precipitous distance of conscience.

Jerzy Pietrkiewicz (1953)

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Roxanna Panufnik Kyrie after Byrd; O Hearken; Celestial Bird for chamber choir
RNCM Chamber Choir
Stuart Overington director

Kyrie after Byrd:

When new super-choir ORA came to me, asking for a Kyrie that related to Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices, I immediately went to YouTube to listen to Byrd’s original.  I loved the way that the melody of the first Kyrie eleison almost immediately transposes and capitalized on this harmonically by taking my version through several quite chromatic changes and adding an extra bass voice, thereby extra harmonic potential. I’ve kept the Christe eleison as a calmer and more ethereal section, floating gently back into the chromatic Kyrie, which almost forgets itself in harmonic and dramatic propriety but suddenly takes stock of itself and ends with quiet reverence. The piece is dedicated, with gratitude, to ORA and its founder and conductor, Suzi Digby OBE. 

O Hearken:

O hearken thou unto the voice of my calling, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I make my prayer. (Psalm 5. 2, 8 & 13)

This piece was a raffle prize at Westminster Abbey Choir School Summer Fete in 2015. It was meant to be a fanfare using settings of the winner’s family’s names – however, the prize was won by Pamela Carrington, a great supporter and friend of the choir. Pamela selected these words and asked me to write something for them instead and the choir’s Director, James O’Donnell, requested an Introit that was “pithy” and celebratory. This was also the first time I’d heard my son, who is in the choir, sing my music – I am so delighted that this raffle prize has turned into something so useful and personally gratifying! The music starts with layers of summoning “O hearkens” followed by a more ethereal section depicting the making of prayers in the text. Then it ends as it starts, with a flourish. 

Celestial Bird:

O Sweet and luminous Bird,
Having once heard Your call, lovely and shy,
I shall be hungry for the finished word.
Across the windy sky  

of all voiced longing and all music heard,
I spread my net for Your bewildering wings,
but wings are wiser than the swiftest hands.
Where a bird sings 

I held my heart, in fear that it would break.
I called You through the grief of whip-poor-wills,
I watched You in the avenues that make
a radiant city on the western hills. 

Yet since I knew You not, I sought in vain.
I called You Beauty for its fleet white sound.
But now in my illumined heart
I can release the hound 

of love upon whose bruising leash I strain.
Oh, he will grasp You where You skim the sod,
nor wound Your breast, for love is soft as death,
swifter than beauty is, and strong as God.  

Jessica Powers, (1928;1946)

This piece was written for VOCES8 as a thank you for participating in a recent CD. It’s written very much with them in mind – their “Sweet and luminous” voices soared through my imagination as I composed. When I read this stunning poem for the first time, I heard a Celtic folk influenced style of music – I discovered after setting it that Jessica Powers had Scottish and Irish ancestry (she later became a Carmelite nun in Wisconsin, renaming herself as Sister Miriam). I have heard her described as an “artist, painting words” – which fits my overt style of word-painting in music. The piece is dedicated to VOCES8 with love and thanks and lasts about 5 minutes. 

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Roxanna Panufnik Letters from Burma for oboe and string quartet
Anna Turner oboe
Georgina Bloomfield, Rachel Stonham violins
Paula Bowes viola
Maya Tucker cello

i. Aung-ze paing-ze
ii. Young Birds outside Cages
iii. Thazin
iv. Kintha Dance

When the Summer Music Society of Dorset commissioned this piece, for Douglas Boyd and the Vellinger Quartet, I had a look at what else was to be programmed with it. I noted Janacek’s Intimate Letters and wondered whether I could compose some ‘Letters’ of my own. Then I came across a remarkable book ‘Letters from Burma’ – 52 letters written by the famous dissident Aung San Suu Kyi to a Japanese newspaper, between November 1995 and December 1996. They describe every aspect of Burma – its culture, scenery, religion, politics etc. – copious inspiration for a new composition!

With the help of Burmese music expert John O’Kell, I discovered a stunning traditional Burmese folk Song Aung-ze paing-ze – a laudatory song of benediction about the power and valour of the King. The first movement (of the same title) is a straight transcription of part of the song in the oboe, with a new accompaniment in the strings. The whole piece is influenced not only by this melody but by its appoggiaturas (‘grace notes’), portamentos (subtle ‘glissandos’) and quarter-tones (pitches between the 12-tone scale used in Western music traditions).

2.Young Birds outside Cages (which follows the first movement without a gap) was inspired by Suu Kyi’s harrowing depiction (of the same title) of children trying to touch their parents who are political prisoners behind bars. She writes of one child burrowing a small hole in the netting that separates them and pushing their fingers through to touch their father. On discovering this, the authorities would patch the holes up with tin but the children would just try to work their way through again. She describes them as “…young birds fluttering helplessly outside the cages that shut their parents away from them.” As a mother myself, that really got to me. In this movement, the string quartet represents the cold and relentless bars of a cage and the oboe is the child/bird trying to get through.

3.Thazin is the name of a Burmese orchid – it is an “exceedingly romantic” national symbol and a great excuse for me to be equally romantic! I depict the “tiny exquisite blooms” that Suu Kyi describes by using those little grace note figurations and enhancing the romanticism with maybe less-than-subtle glissandos.

4.Kintha Dance is a composite of all of Suu Kyi’s descriptions of dance throughout the book. Kintha is a type of bird to which she likens the “precise and graceful” gestures of a “Mon” dancer. She also describes sword dances with flashing “well-honed blades” and dancers that “thrust and parried and swirled in action”. I’ve represented that swirling with another common trait in Burmese music – lightening runs of demi-semi-quavers. At various points small and clumsy chordal interruptions occur in the string quartet – this is my analogy for the current oppressive regime trying and failing to quench the vivid and irrepressible Burmese spirit.

I would like to thank John O’Kell for his tireless and never-ending help in my quest to understand the basics of Burmese music and David Sharpe and Campbell Hughes for helping me to transcribe Aung-ze Pain-ze. This piece is dedicated to its commissioner and first performers: Dione, Dougie and the Vellingers. It lasts approximately 12 minutes.

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Yelin Zhou Atlantis for string sextet (world première)
Archie Freeman, Nina Doig violins
Estelle Gonzalez, Paula Bowes violas
Elena Edwards, Rhys Nicholson cellos

What would happen if you knocked on the door of an unknown world? Would you be greeted by a stunning view or the fear of death, or both? 

Atlantis is written for string sextet. The original inspiration for this piece was a documentary that introduced me to the mysterious island of Atlantis. The myth reminds me of times that I faced unknown places and people, as well as the importance of holding an adventurous spirit in your journey through life.

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Roxanna Panufnik Heartfelt for string quartet
Bruno Robalo, Audrey Doyle violins
Michaela Jones viola
Jasmine Blackshaw-Britton cello

At the time that the Sacconi Quartet approached me to write a new piece for them, they were involved on a wonderful multi-media experience for audiences who were connected to the performers’ heart monitors, via wi-fi, to create a multi-sensory listening experience. This captured my imagination and seemed an obvious source of writing – since music, for me, is all about the heart. 

The court musicians of 17th century Uzbekistan used to set the tempo of their performances by first feeling their pulse. This would ensure that their music would have a “stately” start, however ebullient their dance music became. Whilst listening to some examples, I imagined a grand and regal caravan of camels and carriages, travelling down the Silk Road. In 1. Uzbek Processional, each stage of the convoy has its own music – for this I use “Shashmaqam” dance rhythms and snatches of authentic melodies. The speed of the first one, Nasr, is determined by one of the player’s pulse and continued by foot to enhance the 2/4 march, with pizzicato tremelos to evoke the combined sound of the plucked ‘Dutar’ and the hammer dulcimer ‘Chan’. The speed picks up in Talqin, as the combination of 3/4 and 3/8 give it a dancey feel. Nasrulloee starts in an orderly fashion, combining a triple time 6/4 with 2/4 and 4/4, but struggles to keep it together as participants – animal and human – try to go astray… This leads into the delicate Ufar waltz, evoking the ladies of the caravan in their ornate silks. All four dances are super-imposed for the ending. Initially loud and proud, the music becomes quieter as the caravan disappears into the distance and we’re left with a lonely wind blowing over the plains…

2. Lament for a Bulgarian Dancing Bear was inspired by Witold Szabłowski’s evocative and sometimes harrowing book “Dancing Bears”, which describes rescues of maltreated animals from their exploitative owners, when bear dancing became illegal in Bulgaria. I have used the slow rhythm of an Eastern European brown bear’s heartbeat (under general anaesthetic but the same tempo as if it were hibernating) on just one note (F sharp) which runs all the way through the piece. On top of this is a traditional-style Bulgarian folk melody which would have been played, by the bear-keeper, on a “gadulka” – a stringed instrument which has a very distinctive reedy sound, thanks to the sixteen or so sympathetic strings that run underneath the main three to five melodic ones. This sound is recreated by the quartet, by employing a leather mute and playing poco sul ponticello (with the bow near the bridge) with light pressure in the left hand. The movement ends happily as the bear’s heartbeat elevates in joy, as he is rescued.

I am deeply grateful to the following people who helped with my extensive research for this piece: Dr Razia Sultanova and her excellent book “Shashmaqam as a Cultural Phenomenon”; Bristol Zoological Society’s Wild Place Project, vet Michelle Barrows and Albie the bear; Angel Stankov and Elena Stankova for introducing me to the gadulka and its beautiful, plaintive music. Also to the Sacconi Quartet for commissioning the piece and to the Friends of the Sacconi Quartet and the Vernon Ellis for funding the commission.  

Heartfelt is dedicated to the Sacconi Quartet and lasts approximately 11 minutes. 

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Roxanna Panufnik All Shall Be Well for cello and chamber choir
RNCM Chamber Choir
Stuart Overington director
Andre Chan conductor
Rhys Nicholson cello

I’ve been longing for an opportunity to work with Bogurodzica (pronounced Bo-goo-ro-dgee-tsa), a 14th Century plainsong hymn which Polish knights sang as they went into battle. So when The Exultate Singers commissioned a piece for their concert, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, this seemed the perfect chance. I have also had my eye on Julian of Norwich’s (also 14th Century) Divine Revelations – especially the profoundly comforting words spoken to her by God in chapter 32: “All things shall be well.”

When I looked closely at these two texts together, I noticed that they seemed to form a conversation. The knights’ pleas for safety in victory and “paradise” (i.e. Heaven) after life, are answered by God’s/Julian’s comforting assurance “…that all manner of thing shall be well. Have faith, and have trust, and at the last day (i.e. the day you die) you shall see it all transformed into great joy.”

I have tried to represent this conversation with two choirs in stereo, over a solo ‘cello – the latter often taking the main melodies and sometimes contributing gusto to the lower-pitched bass lines.

From the last four lines of Bogurodzica (“Hear the prayer we offer”) all Polish and Middle English words change into modern English as the conversation becomes more ardent and cohesive, concluding in “Paradise” and “great joy”.

I would like to thank David Ogden and The Exultate Singers for this commission, and David and ‘cellist Richard May for their technical help in the penultimate draft stages. This work lasts approximately 9 minutes and is dedicated to its commissioners and the memory of my father, Sir Andrzej Panufnik, who never thought he would live to see the wall come down and be able to return to his native Poland – but he did return in 1990, the year before he died.

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Roxanna Panufnik Love Endureth for chamber choir

This setting of Psalm 136(135) was commissioned as part of a psalm series by Soli Deo Gloria, devoted to promoting music in the Biblical tradition, for Westminster Cathedral Choir. The original brief referred to the “old Hebrew psalms” which planted the idea in my mind to bring a strong Jewish flavour to both the music and the words. I have used two fragments of Spanish Sephardic chants (from both this psalm and the previous one) and, half way throughout the piece, substituted the English response for its Hebrew equivalent “Ki L’olam chasdo” – “For forever His mercy.” 

I am deeply indebted to Cantor Jaclyn Chernett, Dr Alexander Knapp and Victor Tunkel for their help and advice; to Peter Bannister and Soli Deo Gloria for this commission and to Westminster Cathedral’s Martin Baker and Fr Alexander Master, for their continued support and guidance, during the composition process. 

The work is dedicated to Martin Baker and Westminster Cathedral Choir. 

Roxanna has a great love of world music – this has culminated in her Four World Seasons for violinist Tasmin Little, the world premiere of which was picked by BBC Radio 3 to launch their Music Nations weekend, celebrating the London Olympics; her multi-faith Warner Classics CD Love Abide (www.loveabide.com) and Dance of Life: Tallinn Mass for Tallinn Philharmonic (www.tallinnmass.com), commissioned to celebrate Tallinn’s reign as European Capital of Culture.

In 2021, she was awarded the Gloria Artis Merit to Culture Bronze Medal (from the Polish Minister of Culture, National Heritage and Sport) and in 2023 a Coronation Medal by the UK nation for her services to the Coronation. In 2024 Roxanna received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection.

She is especially interested in building musical bridges between faiths (more details: PASSIONATE CAUSES) and her first project in this field was the violin concerto Abraham, commissioned for Daniel Hope, incorporating Christian, Islamic and Jewish chant to create a musical analogy for the fact that these three faiths believe in the same one God. This work was subsequently converted into overture Three Paths to Peace commissioned by the World Orchestra for Peace and premiered in Jerusalem and London under the baton of Valery Gergiev, in 2008 and at the 2014 BBC Proms. The BBC Last Night of the Proms in 2018 commissioned and premiered Songs of Darkness, Dreams of Light which brought together Jewish text, modes, Maronite Syriac chant and Sufi rhythm and structure.

Roxanna’s 50th Birthday year saw some exciting commissions and premieres. As well as the Proms, the oratorio Faithful Journey – a Mass for Poland for City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Poland, marked Poland’s centenary as an independent state. Recent commissions include Across the Line of Dreams for two conductors, two choirs and symphony orchestra premiered by Marin Alsop and Valentina Peleggi with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Ever Us commissioned by the Rundfunkchor Berlin, for 10 choirs and symphony orchestra, to premiere in 2024/25. Her operas, Silver Birch and Dalia commissioned by Garsington Opera received audience and critical acclaim.

2023 saw the premiere of the reworking of her father Andrzej Panufnik’s Five Polish Folk Songs for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the Ravinia Festival. She was commissioned by King Charles III to write Coronation Sanctus for his Coronation in May 2023, an orchestration of this was commissioned by Washington Choral Arts premiered at the Last Night of the Proms with Marin Alsop and the BBC Singers. Other recent premieres have also included a BBC Proms and VOCES8 co-commission Floral Tribute (in memory of the late Queen Elizabeth II), a song cycle Gallery of Memories co-commissioned by the Oxford Lieder and Presteigne Festivals (for whom she is 2023 composer-in-residence), choral pieces for The Exultate Singers and Edmund’s Trust and Tears, no more for harpsichordist Jane Chapman and the London International Festival of Early Music.

Roxanna is currently working on commissions for Septura, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Liberal Jewish Synagogue.

An ardent fan and passionate partaker of the UK’s unique liturgical choral scene, Roxanna has been raising funds through her epic ‘Diamond Cycles’ for the Diamond Fund for Choristers, for whom she is a patron (more details: PASSIONATE CAUSES).

Roxanna is Associate composer with the London Mozart Players.

Roxanna’s compositions are published by Peters Edition Ltd/Wise Music Classical and recorded on many labels including Warner Classics, Signum, Chandos, and EMI Classics.