Poldowski

Poldowski was the professional pseudonym of a Belgian-born British composer and pianist born Régine Wieniawski (16 May 187928 January 1932), daughter of the Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski. Some of her early works were published under the name Irène Wieniawska. She married Sir Aubrey Dean Paul, 5th Bt (1869–1961), becoming Lady Dean Paul. Her name appears in a number of forms: Régine Wieniawski Irène Wieniawska Irene Regina Wieniawski or Wieniawska Lady Dean Paul Lady Irene Dean Paul Lady Irene Poldowski Paul (Madame) Poldowski, Poldowsky or Poldowska.

==Biography== Régine Wieniawski was born on 16 May 1879 in Ixelles, Brussels, where her father, the Polish virtuoso violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski, had earlier settled on his appointment as a professor of the Brussels Conservatory. Her mother was an Englishwoman, Isabelle Bessie Wieniawski (née Hampton), the niece of Irish pianist and composer George Alexander Osborne (who studied under Johann Peter Pixis, François-Joseph Fétis and Friedrich Kalkbrenner and was a close friend of Frédéric Chopin and Hector Berlioz) and a member of a London family that had had associations with Rossini, Meyerbeer, Jenny Lind, Michael William Balfe and Anton Rubinstein. She was named Régine after her paternal grandmother Regina Wolff.