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The Partita dates from 1955, after Bacewicz had recovered from a serious car accident in the fall of 1954 that led to a lengthy hospital stay. The neoclassical traits apparent in her earlier work gave way to a distinctly “innovatory streak" according to Adrian Thomas, an authority on modern Polish music, that “carried through into the Partita, especially in its Intermezzo.”

Each of the four movements carries a traditional genre title. In the opening Preludium, like a tolling bell, the low strings and bassoon play a series of chords that alternate somberly: they lay out a track over which the first violins spell a darkly expressive melody rising from the depths. Both the second and fourth movements (Toccata and Rondo) are radically contrasting in character, showing an almost whimsical attitude of defiant virtuosity.

The emotional heart of the Partita—brief though it is—arrives with the third movement, an Intermezzo marked “Andantino melancholio.” Bacewicz incorporates the first three letters of her name into a sustained, cloud-like chord (B-A-C, which also implies the signature of J.S. Bach, a composer whose music had healing power for Bacewicz during her time of recovery). “I belong to the loners, turned inward and filled with internal disincentives,” the composer confided to a friend.