Régine Poldowski

Poldowski was born Régine Wieniawski in 1879, contemporary with figures like Ravel, de Falla and Rachmaninoff. She was the daughter of the Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski, though her celebrated father died when she was just ten months old. However, her mother, the Englishwoman Isabelle Hampton, was also from a musical family, hence Poldowski moved in the musical aristocracy from an early age. There is some confusion about her early music education, although she may have studied piano and composition at the Brussels Conservatory from the age of twelve and she performed her own works publicly when still a teenager.

In 1896 Poldowski and her mother moved to London, where her first works were published under the name ‘Irène Wieniawska’. In 1901 she married Sir Aubrey Dean Paul, after which she was known by many combinations of her married and maiden names – a fact which sometimes makes it difficult to trace her activities. She continued her musical studies in Paris after her marriage, and following the devastating death of her first child, entered a further phase of studies at the Schola Cantorum. Two songs in particular are associated with her child’s death: ‘Soir’ and ‘Berceuse d'Armorique’; the former opens with ambiguous, oscillating chords before the plangent oboe d’amore joins and the music unfolds into a heartfelt lament. The couple had two more children, though the marriage ultimately did not survive. Around this time, she began to use the pseudonym ‘Poldowski’, which obscured her gender, a device adopted by many of her female contemporaries.

Poldowski enjoyed a successful career as a composer and pianist throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Her music was regularly heard in Belgium, the Netherlands, London and Paris, performed by a range of figures including the pianist Lazare Lévy and the conductor Henry Wood. Among her main champions was the tenor Gervase Elwes, who sang her Verlaine settings at the Queen’s Hall (London) in 1912 and continued to perform her music until his death. Other leading singers such as Maggie Teyte and Jane Bathori-Engel also included Poldowski’s works in their programmes. Her opera Silence was premiered at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London in 1920. 

In 1919–22, Poldowski lived in the USA. Following the legal separation from her husband in 1921 and her return to London the following year, she continued to move within powerful musical circles; her guests included the conductor Eugène Goossens and the composer George Gershwin. She organised concert series in New York and London which attracted international artists. The series she established in 1923 at the Hyde Park Hotel was called the ‘International Concerts of La Libre Esthétique’. She also ran a fashion boutique. Tragically, both her surviving children developed drug addictions later in their lives. Poldowski herself developed pneumonia and died in London aged 52.

Poldowski is particularly important for her 22 settings of Verlaine, which are among the finest settings of his poetry. She also set texts by William Blake, W. B. Yeats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and of her own. Her style reflects the full range of early 20th-century literary interests, with a subtle approach to harmony and text and a unique voice. Her Blake setting, ‘Song’, creates an austere, medieval atmosphere which recurs, transformed, in ‘Dans la musette’. She creates glowing, sparkling textures in ‘Sérénade’ and ‘Mandoline’, Wolfian demonism in ‘Cortège’, and guileless lyricism in ‘L’heure exquise’. ‘Effet de neige’ shows her harmonic assurance in its unfathomable, dark opening chords, as do the searching ‘À Clymène’ and the sublimely contoured ‘Dimanche d’avril’ and ‘Bruxelles’. Her cosmopolitan, modern style affords many discoveries.

© Natasha Loges, 2026

SCORES

Many scores for Poldowski's work are available to view here.

Where can I listen to Poldowski's songs?

Listen to 'Colombine' here.

'Mandoline'
 

'Mandoline' - recorded at the 2020 Festival.
 

L'heure exquise