Not that they were the only tributaries. The deceptively quiet music of Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-69) is gaining attention and the dangerously devout Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1933-2010) somehow managed to write the most popular modern symphony on record. The resurgence of Polish cinema yielded two potent composers, Zbigniew Preisner and Wojciech Kilar. 

Yet, as we assess the mainstream, we ignore — as Poles do — the other, the non-contributor to the Polish story: the Jewish silence. That silence will be broken this summer at Bregenz when David Pountney stages the world premiere of The Merchant of Venice by Andrei Tchaikowsky. 

A Polish Tchaikovsky? No, it's not his real name. He was born Robert Andrzej Krauthammer in 1935, smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto by his grandmother under a Russian composer's name and kept alive for two years in a cupboard. His mother was murdered at Treblinka. Catching Arthur Rubinstein's ear at a competition, he began an international career as a concert pianist, often insinuating his own compositions between Chopin and Schumann. The pianist Stephen Kovacevich called him "the best musician of my generation".

He moved to London in 1960, developed passions for Shakespearean theatre and discreet male friendships, attempted suicide several times and died of colon cancer, aged 46, in 1982. He left his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use as a prop in Hamlet. Two years ago, David Tennant appeared holding it on a 1st-class stamp.