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Connection: I first met Roxanna Panufnik in 2024 after performing the Dodgson Trumpet Concerto at the Barnes Music Festival. Coincidentally, I wrote my A-Level Music dissertation on the music of her father, Andrzej Panufnik. When I came across this song (originally for mezzo-soprano) last year - and realised that it had been written by them both - I asked Roxanna if I could include it on my album. The vocal line suits the flugelhorn beautifully and I love how this song uniquely combines both Andrzej and Roxanna’s musical voices and, in turn, my connection to each of them.
Programme note by Roxanna Panufnik: 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 be heard as voice & piano, piano solo, clarinet quintet and now flugelhorn and string orchestra. 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.
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