Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil
(*1947)
Composer and pedagogue. Her inspirations are predominantly visual and include travel landscapes, sights captured while flying on the plane or starry night skies in the mountains. Nawratil’s predilection for musical paintings is best reflected by the titles of her works, as well as the characteristic manner in which she utilizes the fresco or the reportage. Given such tendencies, Nawratil’s audiences should not be surprised by the rich, colorful instrumentation featuring extensive percussion and woodwind parts. Coloristic effects appear as paramount in Nawratil’s oeuvre, hence her music is a combination of euphonic sounds, postspectral harmonies and neomodality with twelve-tone technique and sonorism. (KS)