In many ways, it is astonishing that Polish musicians were able to achieve so much under Nazi oppression. Despite the loss of many scores written both during and before the war, most devastatingly during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, many substantial pieces survived or, notably in the case of Panufnik, were reconstructed from memory. Some works, of course, had to wait until after 1944 to be performed. Thanks to detailed forward planning by the Polish musical underground during the war, institutions were rapidly established in 1945, including Polish Radio, radio and concert orchestras in various cities, the Polish Composers' Union (ZKP), and the Polish Music Publishers (PWM) in Kraków. Music schools and conservatories soon followed. In contrast to the wholesale destruction of Warsaw, Kraków had survived virtually unscathed and therefore had the facilities to provide the focus for the nation's musical activities. One of the first events was a Festival of Contemporary Polish Music at the beginning of September 1945. In the opening concert, exactly six years to the day from the Nazi invasion, the newly formed Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra premiered Bacewicz's Overture (1943) and Palester's Second Symphony (1942). Bacewicz's Overture shows how she was distancing herself from Parisian chic and developing a particularly vigorous slant on neo-classicism, while still maintaining an essentially diatonic idiom and strong adherence to the tonic key. She also tellingly incorporates the rhythmic ‘Ⅴ’ for ‘Victory’ motif into the symphonic argument, although it has a less pervasive role than in Panufnik's Tragic Overture.