Padlewski, Roman (EN)

Padlewski Roman, *7 October 1915 Moscow, †16 July 1944 Warsaw, Polish composer, violinist, pianist, conductor, musicologist, critic, and music activist. He started taking piano classes from his mother, Nadzieja Padlewska. In 1927–39, he studied at the Conservatory in Poznan with E. and Z. Jahnke (violin), and with T. Szeligowski and S. Wiechowicz (composition), combining it with musicological studies with Ł. Kamieński at the University of Poznan (1931–35). During the war, he studied at the secret Warsaw Conservatory with K. Sikorski (composition), W. Bierdiajew (conducting) and B. Rutkowski (organ). Exceptionally active, in Poznan he was a violinist, pianist, conductor of K. Szymanowski Choir (1938–39), speaker, author of broadcasts at the Polskie Radio station in Poznan and Vilnius, author of articles, among others in “Kurier Poznanski” (1936), “Tęcza” (1937) and “Dziennik Poznanski,” where he took up a position of a permanent music reviewer in 1938. He debuted as a composer in 1933 with String Quartet No. 1 and songs for voice and piano to words by J. Lechoń and A. M. Swinarski, which were later performed, next to two choral motets in Poznan at the Polish Music Week (1938). He was at the Oficerska Szkoła Artylerii in Włodzimierz Wołyński in 1935–37. He participated in the September Campaign in 1939 with the unit of General F. Kleeberg. After the surrender, he went to Warsaw (November 1939), where he soon became one of the most active members of the public and secret music life. He participated in works of the five out of seven secret committees of the so-called Tajny Związek Muzyków [Secret Society of Musicians], handling current affairs and programmes of reconstruction and activity of music institutions after the war. In 1941–43, he was a member of the E. Umińska String Quartet, performing mainly at the B. Woytowicz’s café, where the premiere of String Quartet No. 2 by Padlewski took place (19 February 1943). He also performed as a pianist, among others with E. Umińska, and as a conductor and soloist of an orchestra that he set up and led in 1943–44 in the Philips factory in the Wola district, Warsaw, combining this work with conspiratorial military work. He fought in the Warsaw Uprising in the Radosław group (pseudonym of Colonel J. Mazurkiewicz). Heavily injured on 14 August, he died two days later in a hospital in the Starówka district. Posthumously decorated with the Cross of Valour (August 1944), he followed the tradition of his ancestors, insurgents from 1830 and 1863 – Władysław and Zygmunt Padlewski, executed in Kyiv and Płock or dead in Siberia – Aleksander Padlewski and his son Roman (the composer’s great-grandfather).

Music critics saw an extraordinary compositional talent; however, his tragical fate resulted in the fact that only a few of his preserved compositions are more of a promise than the fulfilment of an interesting creative personality. Padlewski’s choral compositions are, rare in Polish music, a reference to pre-classical style: in 2 Motets to Psalms by M. Gomółka, in Stabat Mater to a vocal polyphony by Josquin des Prés; the linear structure of Padlewski’s Stabat Mater expanded in places to seven voices, is combined with recitando fragments of a purely sonic character, emphasised by the sharpness of the intervallic structure. Sonata per violino solo is devoid of the reminiscence of Bach, typical of the genre. The monumental outline of its form, the developed technique of permuting antithetical motifs (chromatic and diatonic) using the full 12-tone scale, as well as the virtuosity of the performance means, and the expressive style make Padlewski’s Sonata an isolated piece in Polish music of that time. Padlewski referred to baroque patterns in String Quartet No. 2 (part 1 Preludium in modo d’una Toccata, part 2 Introduzione e Fuga), combining them with general objectives of a classical sonata allegro as a basis for the development of form. The tone of strict seriousness is also characteristic of the Quartet, which appeared as well in other compositions from the period of war (A. Panufnik, A. Malawski, W. Żuławski). 

Padlewski – like many Polish composers of his generation – grew up under the intellectual and artistic influence of K. Szymanowski. Their acquaintance dates to the performance of Stabat Mater in Poznań (29 May 1929). 16-year-old Padlewski described in his diary the next visit of Szymanowski in Poznan on the occasion of the stage performance of the 2^nd act of Harnasie (14 May 1931): “I was at Szymanowski’s, and we had a nice chat. I must follow the music path!” After the premiere of Szymanowski’s Symphony No. 4 in Poznan (9 October 1932), „Leonostwo Padlewscy [and] Romek” sent a congratulatory telegram to the composer, and Padlewski published Szkic o Karolu Szymanowskim in the school magazine “Orlęta” (1932, no. 4). Padlewski wrote to his parents about his subsequent meetings with Szymanowski in Warsaw with growing concern. On 8 December 1936, he wrote: “I got a letter from Mir Chłapowski from Paris. He met Karol Szymanowski, who made an impression of a deeply hurt man. I recalled an accidental meeting with him in Warsaw. He was very depressed both by the unpleasant, defeatist atmosphere among the Warsaw musicians and by his poor financial situation. It came to the point that Jascha Horenstein was given the condition that to give a concert at the Philharmonic, he had to withdraw Karol’s Symphony No. 3 from the programme, although this great conductor had been studying it for a long time. Szymanowski cannot afford to stay at the Bristol Hotel, he lives with his sister, Stanisława. He told me that he had nothing to live off. He intends to write Concertino for piano and orchestra, with which he could tour Europe and get out of financial trouble.

In the evening, we visited his mother, an elderly woman. He remembers Roman and Zygmunt Padlewski well. Generally, we talked a lot about the Podolia region and about Władysław Padlewski’s contact with Szymanowski’s grandfather and father during the January riots.

Later Karol started talking about music life in Poland and his illness. I have never seen him so embittered before. He even confessed to me that it is only the lack of money that prevents him from leaving Poland from good.”

Less than four months later (6 and 7 April 1937), Padlewski participated in Szymanowski’s funeral in Warsaw and Krakow, taking care of the composer’s family.

During the war, Padlewski took part in the underground celebrations of the anniversary of Szymanowski’s death in Warsaw. In 1941, he gave a lecture on Szymanowski at a concert in the apartment of J. Waldorff’s mother. In 1942, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the composer’s death, he composed the Kurpie Suite, which was first performed by I. Dubiska at a special concert in P. Perkowski’s apartment.

Padlewski chose four out of twelve Szymanowski’s Kurpie Songs: 1. (Lecioły zórazie), 6. (Bzicem kunia), 8. (Leć, głosie, po rosie) and 11. (Wysły rybki, wysły), combining them into a cyclical piece played attacca with a 38-bar ad libitum violin cadence in the last movement. This extended piece, with a solo part sometimes treated interchangeably with the right-hand part of the piano accompaniment, is a kind of farewell to the composer, to whom Padlewski had paid special attention from his earliest years.

Literature: Śmierć Romana Padlewskiego, “Ruch Muzyczny” 1945 no. 4; S. Podlewski Przemarsz przez piekło. Dni zagłady staromiejskiej dzielnicy w Warszawie, Warsaw 1949; M. Żeromska Wspomnień ciąg dalszy, Warsaw 1994; A. Neuer O Romanie Padlewskim w pięćdziesiątą rocznicę śmierci, Warsaw 1994.