Ewa Sikorska (Tomasz Sikorski’s sister)

He was a man of an incredible amplitude of personality, a blend of contradictions and paradoxes, a hypersensitive individual who was deeply affected by everything. He had something inspiring in him, he could be wonderful, show class and generosity. But he could also be cruel and mean. He himself suffered because he was like that.

His mind was brilliant, acute and even virulent. His speech was succinct and very pertinent. Interestingly, he looked up to philosophers (e.g. his fascination with Kołakowski) rather than musicians, although he did appreciate Lutosławski a lot. He was an agnostic, but religion interested him.

He accused our father of being a reactionary, but he was deeply attached to him. When he died, he said to me: ‘I thought our father would always be there.’ As children, we were cocooned and that is why we were immature for a long time. Tomek’s umbilical chord was never cut. His health was poor, he had an organic heart disease and untypical infantile rheumatism.

He felt very alienated in life. He was a loner who hated loneliness. He became a loner by choice, preventing anyone from having access to him and helping him. There was a lot of self-destruction in him. He was absurdly uncompromising, also in his work, he paid for everything himself, in every sense of the word.

He called himself a ‘war child’ and said that ‘I’ve gone too far in life, there’s no turning back for me.’ He was ‘remorse of his generation’.

He always composed at the piano, playing chords repeated many times. He wrote with himself. In his work he remained a man of one theme, like all the greats.