Romuald Twardowski (1930-)
Douze carols pour voix et piano
Dix carols pour voix et piano

Leszek Skrla, baryton
Anna Mikolon, piano

Romuald Twardowski was born in Vilnius, where he spent his childhood and youth. In the times of the German occupation he was learning to play the violin, and after the war he also learnt to play the piano and the organ. In the years 1952–1957 he studied piano and composition in the class of Julius Juzeliunas in the State Conservatory of Lithuania in Vilnius. After the studies in 1957 he shortly worked in the music school in a Lithuanian town Poniewiez, and then he moved, together with his mother, to Warsaw. There he started to continue studies in the Warsaw State Higher Musical School under professor Boleslaw Woytowicz. He left for Paris in 1963 to study further under Nadia Boulanger. He was in Paris twice: he went there again in 1966 to study Gregorian chorale and polyphony of Middle Ages. While studying in France he also travelled to Italy and Africa. After coming back from France he settled first in the Silesian town Bytom where he staged his first opera Cyrano de Bergerac (1962) composed to his own libretto based on E. Rostand’s comedy. He soon left for Warsaw where he has been living up to now, and where he was cooperating in the years 1972–2010 with the F. Chopin Music Academy.