Symphony No. 3

Sinfonia Sacra was Andrzej Panufnik’s third symphony, and the second that he completed after fleeing communist Poland to make a new life in the United Kingdom. Having survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, Panufnik found his music banned by the post-war regime too. In 1954, he made a daring escape to the West—but he remained devoted to his homeland and worked tirelessly to raise awareness of its suffering. Composed in 1963 to celebrate the millennium of Christianity in Poland (at a time when Poland was ruled by an atheist government), Sinfonia Sacra is both a protest and a heartfelt personal testimony. Panufnik declined to supply an explicit programme, but he explained that the symphony was intensely emotionally charged, and defined by the atmosphere both of prayer and of the battlefield: two constants in Poland’s long history. That’s audible from the very opening: as four trumpets sound martial fanfares from four sides of the orchestra. Three “Visions” ensue, finally erupting into violence before the symphony moves into its second part: a rapt, gradually swelling “Hymn” based on the medieval Polish war-chant which doubled as a hymn to the Virgin Mary, Bogurodzica. Struggle and prayer finally combine at the symphony’s climax: music of spiritual fervour and fearless defiance from a composer who described his career as a lifelong search for beauty and truth.