Australian composer Philip Czaplowski was born in London in 1958, and emigrated to Australia with his family in 1969. He has lived in Melbourne ever since.
Philip began playing the piano 'by ear' at about age 4, and started formal music lessons at age 7. After arriving in Australia, he attended Box Hill High School and studied music privately: piano with William Lowe, and composition with Felix Werder. Philip's mother died when he was 15, an event that had a major impact: he barely passed his university entrance exams, was accepted to study music at Melbourne University, but did not complete a degree.
"When I began studying [at the Melbourne Conservatorium] I received some encouraging performances of my music, but my enthusiasm was rarely reflected in application. Although my composition teachers were generous towards me in their encouragement, I drew little satisfaction from what I was doing.
To some extent I was misled by the ease with which my early successes came, and it was only much later—when I began to hear music incorporating a return to tonality and more traditional means of expression—that I began to realise that I'd been pushed in the wrong direction."
After leaving the Melbourne University Conservatorium, Philip worked mainly as a freelance musician, particularly in the field of ballet, including a couple of years as a repetiteur for the Australian Ballet School. His compositional output was sporadic, and as a result his profile as a composer remained low—despite some noteworthy performances, both in Australia and overseas.
In 1994 Philip renewed his acquaintance with Jeffrey Crellin, principal oboist of the Melbourne Symphony, who had previously performed one of Philip's solo oboe works. Crellin generously offered to perform a new work at the 1994 Music in the Round festival. The result was the Trio for flute, oboe and 'cello, and the first two performances were a resounding success.
“The performances of my trio at Music in the Round were very significant because I finally felt that I was heading in the right direction, stylistically. Although by no means flawless, I could identify methods and materials in this work that had potential for development in future pieces.
Since this time, Jeffrey Crellin has been a wonderful supporter of mine, and has provided me with many opportunities to compose works for Australia Pro Arte and the Australian Chamber Soloists."
A steady succession of new works now began to appear, one of the most successful being the Concerto for oboe and strings. Written in 1997 at the request of Jeffrey Crellin, the premiere with Australia Pro Arte took place in August 1997, followed soon after by two performances with the Geelong Chamber Orchestra. There followed 3 performances in April 1998 by the Melbourne Symphony, again with Jeffrey Crellin as soloist and conductor, followed in June by a performance in New Zealand with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra.
“...the evolution of no other art is so greatly encumbered by its teachers as is that of music. For no one guards his property more jealously than the one who knows that, strictly speaking, it does not belong to him. The harder it is to prove ownership, the greater the effort to do so. And the theorist, who is not usually an artist, or is a bad one (which means the same), understandably takes pains to fortify his unnatural position."
Arnold Schoenberg (Theory of Harmony)
September 1997 saw the premiere of Monologue for solo oboe, also written for Jeffrey Crellin, and first performed at the National Academy of Music, Melbourne. The work was also performed in June 1998 by Linda Walsh at the International Double Reed Society Conference in Arizona, US, and has since been taken up by Polish oboist Kazimierz Dawidek.
Philip's major new work for 1998, Threnody for string orchestra, was premiered on June 23rd 1998 by Australia Pro Arte, with Jeffrey Crellin conducting. Other works from 1998 included Elegies for solo clarinet, written for Phillip Miechel, Principal Clarinetist of the MSO, and premiered on September 13th 1998 during a concert by the ‘Australian Chamber Soloists’; and Innocence for violin and piano, written in August 1998 for Melbourne violinist Deborah Fox. This year also saw Philip accepted as a 'fully represented' composer in the collection of the Australian Music Centre.
Late in 1998, Philip was awarded a grant from Arts Victoria, the Victorian State Government arts dept., to fund the composition of a flute concerto for Prue Davis, principal flautist of the MSO, which was premiered in July 1999. August 1999 saw the premiere of 'Ningaui' for solo bass clarinet, written for, and first performed by Harry Sparnaay during his visit to Melbourne.
In mid 1999 Philip was commissioned by the Melbourne Symphony to compose an orchestral work, Momentum, which was premiered in April 2000. September 2001 saw the premiere of a concerto for clarinet and strings, written for David Thomas (principal clarinetist of the Melbourne Symphony) and Australia Pro Arte. Philip's concerto for violin and strings was premiered by Mark Mogilevsky and Australia Pro Arte in September 2003.
Plans for 2004 include a work for solo horn for Graeme Evans, a wind quintet, and a concerto for bass clarinet.
In addition to numerous Australian performances, Philip Czaplowski's music has been performed in the USA, England, Austria, Holland, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Ireland, Romania, and New Zealand, and his works have been broadcast by ABC Classical FM, ABC Radio National, 3MBS FM, and Radio Adelaide.
“My Polish origins have led me to explore the music of Eastern Europe, particularly that of Poland, the Baltic states, and the former Soviet Union. But I'm greatly interested in any music where expression is a driving factor. Amongst contemporary composers, I'm particularly interested in the work of Petris Vasks, Gavin Briars, Arvo Part, John Tavener, John Adams, and Erki Sven Tuur. Looking back a little, I love the music of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Britten, and Honneger. The link between many of them is not hard to discern - tonality! Of the more experimental composers, I am most interested in Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Schnittke, Ligeti, Takemitsu, and Isang Yun.”
Philip has an arts degree from La Trobe University (majoring in cinema), and in late 2001 received an Australian Postgraduate Award allowing him to commence a PhD in Music Composition at Monash University, where he has also lectured in Music Theory. Philip and his wife Joan have two daughters, Rebecca and Natasha.
“In our times, which, as Tadeusz Baird rightly used to say, are particularly favorable to charlatans of all sorts and sizes, various conceptualisms and different other "-isms" have been concocted. These ?-isms' usually serve as smoke-screens for common indolence and mediocrity... artists for whom compositional means provide the point of departure are usually engaged in uncritical forms of creativity..."
Pawel Szymanski
(last updated November 2006)