With the upcoming centenary of Witold Lutosławski's birth, I want to pay tribute to this wonderful composer and wonderful human being by including an extract from our interview done prior to the world premiere of his Mi-parti in Amsterdam, on October 22, 1976. I have not heard the work since, but I can remember how impressed I was at the time by the sheer beauty of this music.

It was written for the Concertgebouw Orchestra, an ensemble the composer admired for the musicianship of its soloists, especially of the clarinets, the horns, the oboes, and the bassoons, and tailored the work so that it would give those instrumentalists a chance to display their qualities to best advantage. He also commented on the sound produced by the strings, providing an ideal background for the wind soloists.

In the interview, I told him of the impression the work had made on me (we talked after the dress rehearsal). I thought it was a piece of classical music, with no ambition to be “modern.”

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Witold Lutosławski (WL): Maybe. I do not mind if you consider it is not modern. You know, when one develops and reaches maturity, one aspires to a sort of synthesis. One is not terribly preoccupied with the question of whether the music is modern or not. What interests me is to say what I have to say. Nothing else.