Krystyna Moszumańska-Nazar (1924-2008)

This is a somewhat belated obituary for Krystyna Moszumanska-Nazar, the Polish composer who died more than a month ago, on the 27th of September. She was born in Lviv. In the early 1950s she studied composition under Stanislaw Wiechowicz (a very decent composer and no mean pedagogue: Krzysztof Penderecki and Krzysztof Meyer were his students) and piano under Jan Hoffman (among his most notable pupils were the 2 phenomenal pianists Wladyslaw Kedra and Marek Drewnowski). She had received numerous national awards and a few international ones as well: a second grade (Officier) Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (in 2004), 2 prizes at the Mannheim competition for women composers (in 1961 and 1966) and the gold medal and 1st prize at the Buenos Aires competition for women composers (in 1962). She is also remembered as an excellent teacher.

She was certainly not among Poland’s best known composers and her discography is rather scant (two CDs that I’m aware of), but even if she wasn’t ever considered a genius of the highest order, she was always highly regarded, especially for her seamless craftmanship (in other words, while her pieces may not always sound inspired, the technique is invariably top notch).

Below, in the comments (to see them – click on the number of responses given under the post title), I’ll add a link to a download of her Percussion Concerto from 1998.

Also note that Polish Radio Channel 2 is offering a short 1-hour retrospective of her works in less than 7 hours (1:00 AM, UTC+1!). The full program in Polish is available here (Fresco No. 3, Orpheus and Eurydice, Percussion Concerto). For the live stream click here.