Performers

The Great Symphony Orchestra of Polish Radio (WOSPR) in Katowice (now as the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, NOSPR) was founded in 1935 in Warsaw by Grzegorz Fitelberg, who directed it until World War II. In 1945 it was reactivated by Witold Rowicki in Katowice.

Born in Dunajowce (now Dunaivtsi in Ukraine), he learned the piano with Aleksander Wielhorski. He studied at universities in Kiev (a doctorate in Slavic philology) and Warsaw (law and mathemat-ics), as well as piano with Aleksander Michałowski and composition with Felicjan Szopski and Witold Maliszewski at the conservatory in Warsaw. He continued his composition studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris (1929–1932).
In 1927 he received an honourable mention in the 1st International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

NFM Orchestra (formerly Wrocław Symphony, and
Wrocław State Philharmonic in 1958–2014) is now
part of the National Forum of Music, established in
2014 on the initiative of Andrzej Kosendiak. Witold
Lutosławski has been the Orchestra’s patron since
1994.

He studied violin with Józef Jarzębski at Warsaw Conservatory and with André Gertler at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels (1947–1948). Leader of Sopot Philharmonic Orchestra from 1945. From 1949 he taught at Warsaw’s State Higher School of Music, whose vice-chancellor he was in 1973–1975, and where he organised an Institute of Music Pedagogy. He also taught at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington (1965–1986).
Wroński gave performances throughout Europe as well as in Hong Kong, India, Iran, Japan, and the United States. He performed with orchestras, in a duo with Władysław Szpilman, with his own string quartet, and the Warsaw Quintet.

He studied cello with Andrzej Bauer at Warsaw’s Chopin University of Music (an honours degree and the medal ‘Magna cum Laude’), with Julius Berger at the Leopold-Mozart-Zentrum Augsburg, as well as musicology at the University of Warsaw. He won the Witold Lutosławski International Cello Competition in Warsaw (2007) and represented Polish Radio at the International Forum of Young Performers New Talent in Bratislava, winning its main prize (2008). Zdunik’s repertoire ranges from the Renaissance to contemporary; he is also a music composer.

A charismatic percussionist, singer and composer. She graduated in percussion (class of Jan Antoni Wichrowski) and solo voice (class of Danuta Paziuk-Zipser) from Wrocław’s Academy of Music. In 2000 she continued her studies at the Conservatorium Hogeschool Enschede.