'It's drama after drama': Lady Camilla Panufnik on the re-release of her husband's autobiography

When Sir Andrzej Panufnik’s autobiography was originally released in 1987, a man was arrested for illegally selling copies of the book’s chapters across Poland. Officially a ‘nonperson’ in the eyes of the government, the Polish composer's book was banned, and the dissemination of his story was an act of rebellion. Now, thanks to the work of Scottish writer Martin Anderson and the composer’s family, in particular his widow Lady Camilla, Composing Myself is about to be re-released by Toccata Press. The newly reformatted edition will offer a snapshot of Panufnik as both a family man and an artist, with never-before-seen notes and photographs, many by Camilla, giving readers a rare insight into the composer’s life.

‘It’s drama after drama,’ says Camilla Panufnik as we sit in the living room of the Panufnik family home on the banks of the River Thames in Twickenham. ‘Everything happened to Andrzej. Anything political in his lifetime happened to him personally.’ This is certainly true, the tale which unfolds between the covers of his autobiography details Panufnik’s turbulent life, from defying occupying Nazis in WWII Poland through illicit concerts to his hair-raising escape from Soviet Poland and eventually to settling in the UK, receiving a knighthood in 1991.

Readers are eased into this exciting narrative by an introduction by British actor Simon Callow. A great admirer of Panufnik’s music, he describes being introduced to the composer’s work by a record shop owner in London’s West-End. Then followed a long period of fascination before Callow met the composer at one of his performances in the late 1960s. In his foreword, Callow describes Panufnik: ‘a face like a hawk, with keen, humorous eyes, and a physical presence which was taut and full of focussed energy’. He also gives his first impression of ‘the beautiful wife, Camilla, who had made all of his composing life possible’.

‘I went head over heels.' Camilla and Andrzej were engaged before getting married in 1963. 

Camilla is modest about the pivotal role she has played in supporting her husband’s work, but it is clear from her account of the early days of their relationship that the composer had struggled with the administrative demands of his profession. British MP Neil Marten, who had been Panufnik’s Foreign Office contact regarding his defection, suggested she help the composer with his correspondence, and Camilla describes his rather hands-off approach to the task: ‘He signed a whole writing pad with his address at the top and his signatures at the bottom… he just left everything to me. It was a tremendous relief to him - he'd left being a conductor and was alone in this rather damp cottage in the country… It did really help him having me there.’

From there the relationship deepened and the two were married in 1963. Camilla recalls, ‘I went head over heels. He was so attractive and so charming… We just got on very well and then of course, sometimes as happens, it got deeper and deeper and deeper.’ Her profound affection for her late husband is evident in the family’s many projects to preserve and promote his legacy. The new edition of Composing Myself was originally intended to be published in celebration of Panufnik’s centenary in 2014, alongside Dreamscape: Songs and Trios, an album combining the composer’s work with that of his daughter, Roxanna, also a talented composer.

With Roxanna (pictured below with her father) recently announced as one of the composers asked to write new work for The King’s upcoming Coronation, Camilla recalls her childhood fascination with music: ‘As a very small child there was never any doubt. I suppose the most touching story is when she was three, she was sitting with me watching the television and we listened to the whole of a performance by violinist Ida Haendel. She was absolutely glued and afterwards, age 3, she said, “I want a violin with a stick to make it sing.” She was very determined young lady and adored by her father, of course.’ Panufnik’s family meant a huge amount to him, and was perhaps made more precious by  the life he left behind in his native country. ‘It was an amazing thing for somebody who had virtually no family left in Poland. To have children was very, very important to him.’

Camilla and Andrzej’s son Jem is also a musician, creating club music and artwork for the record label he co-founded with DJ Justin Rushmore. I ask Camilla what family life was like with so many musicians in the house – how did she foster such a variety of creativity? ‘I think that some people get lost on the way because they're stuffed too much with the formal side of learning. But I think that people who've got that power tend to find it. It doesn't always work, but I've seen with both my children that it will develop if there’s an opportunity to develop it.’ She adds hastily, ‘That doesn't mean if you have a piano that they're going to want to practise, Andrzej had to be bribed with chocolate by his grandmother.’

It is clear that Panufnik’s legacy is very much alive in his descendants, Camilla even talks about Jeremy’s son, who takes lessons on the 19^th century piano opposite where we’re sitting, having his grandfather’s hands. Camilla also supports the promotion of her husband’s musical oeuvre by attending every performance of Panufnik’s work she can get to. She recalls telling a fellow concert-goer about the music’s significance for her, ‘I told him who I was and what I was feeling, and he was almost in tears when he realised.’ Certainly, hearing his music is an emotional experience for Camilla, but she takes it in her stride. ‘It's certainly very deeply felt, but quite funny at the same time. The great thing about Andrzej was that he was absolutely buckled to his work, but he also loved to laugh and eat good food and enjoy the things he had never had in Communist Poland or during the war’.

Panufnik with the family labrador, Sappho

This sense of humour doesn’t distract from the gravity of Panufnik’s autobiography, however, and Camilla notes this as a driving factor in her choice to add her own afterword to the new edition, chronicling her husband’s life up until his death in 1991. Alluding to the story which opened our conversation, she says, ‘The reason I started writing my afterword was because of the fact that a chapter of this book, a part of this story, could cause somebody to go to prison.’ In Composing Myself Panufnik tells a story which is unquestionably relevant to the current global political climate, but for Camilla, re-releasing this book was a chance to relive precious memories, not just of a composing colossus, but of a treasured husband and father. ‘He was the great love of my life. That’s a sort of soppy thing to say, but he was. I just adored him, and I would have done anything for him in the world’.

The new edition of Composing Myself by Andrzej Panufnik with preface by Simon Callow and afterword by Lady Camilla Panufnik will be released on 28 March by Toccata Press. You can find out more here.