Polska Izba Książki

PWM EDITION (Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne) has already been active for sixty years. We are the biggest classical music publishing house in Poland and a dynamic centre of musical culture development. Our publishing catalogue comprises almost two thousand of our own titles in constant sale a few hundred imported publications. In our editorial office we prepare publications covering a vast area of the field of music, published in our best and most popular series, valued in Poland and abroad. The most important of them are the complete editions of the works of Chopin, Moniuszko, Wieniawski, Karłowicz and Szymanowski, the editions of Polish old music, scores of contemporary Polish composers. An important position in the activity of our editorial department is occupied by books published in many interesting thematic series. These are music guides, lexicons, handbooks, scholarly books, thematic catalogues, as well as popular monographs like Polish Composers of the 19^th Century, Polish Composers of the 20^th Century, Illustrated Monographs of Great Composers and The Personalities of the World of Music. Our most important venture is the publishing of an Encyclopaedia of Music.

This book is the primary biography looking at the personal and artistic life of Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994). The book is in two volumes of nearly 1000 pages in total. It covers the life of Lutosławski in every detail. The authors are outstanding musicologists who have written several other interesting studies about music, they have insightfully analyzed all of Lutosławski’s works. The authors of the publication did not separate the composer's life from his oeuvre. As a result, the detailed biography of the composer is accompanied by the analyses of the musical works composed in the described periods. The reader is thus given a complete account of the creative career of one of the most excellent Polish composers of all times. The publication is illustrated with photographs and musical scores.

Bohdan Pociej is an experienced musical critic and essayist (his previous monograph was on Mahler). The chief character of this monograph is the brilliant composer, an outstanding representative of German neo-romantic music – Richard Wagner, the author of operas and music dramas: Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Nibelungenlied, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal. This book enables us to look at the excellent musician from several different points of view. We see him through the eyes of other people and in the context of history and times; he is considered as a writer with an output of over ten volumes, a theatre-lover and, finally, as a composer.

 - the Foundation for the benefit of Polish Science

 - Publishers (Jan Długosz prize)

 - the International F. Chopin Foundation

 - the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.

In all ballet dictionaries and encyclopaedias Leon Woizikovsky was always described as Polish dancer, danseur polonais, polnischer Tänzer, polskij artist, ballerino polacco. Recognized as one of the most distinguished Polish character dancers in the first half of the twentieth century and a highly esteemed teacher, he always emphasized his Polish nationality and the fact that he had graduated from the Ballet School affiliated to the Wielki Theatre in Warsaw. He was not gifted any special privileges in foreign ensembles, but attained a high position in them entirely through his talent, his indefatigable industriousness and sincere love for dance, which became the essence of his life.