Performers

He studied piano with Józef Śmidowicz and Aleksander Michałowski at Warsaw’s Higher School of Music, piano with Artur Schnabel and Leonid Kreutzer and composition with Franz Schreker at the Berlin State Academy. He played Chopin in Polish Radio’s last wartime broadcast in September 1939 (and opened the PR’s first postwar broadcast with the same programme). In Warsaw Ghetto from 1940, and then hid on the Aryan side from 1943 onwards. When the war ended, Szpilman returned to Polish Radio as deputy head of the music department, and (till 1963) also head of popular music section.

Bass-baritone, he graduated from Marek Rzepka’s singing class at Cracow’s Academy of Music, as well as taking part in numerous master classes. Already as a chorister in the Boys’ and Men’s Choir of Poznań Philharmonic he performed in the most important venues and at music festivals in Poland and worldwide.

One of Poland’s most eminent violinists, she is also a chamber musician and educator. Born in 1985 in Gdańsk, she graduated from the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hanover.

Founded in 1990, the ensemble has since been directed by Anna Szostak. It has won acclaim with its interpretations of contemporary classical and early music, including numerous premieres.

Dancer, choreographer and teacher. Between 2012 and 2019, he was the director of the Castle Opera Ballet in Szczecin. He graduated from the State Ballet School in Łódź and the Faculty of Philosophy at Warsaw University. Early in his career, he initiated a partnership with the Grand Theatre in Łódź, where he worked for nine years as dancer and soloist, with a two-year hiatus when he completed his military service in the Central Artistic Ensemble of the Polish Army.

Founded in 1984 on the basis of an extended complement of Polish Chamber Orchestra members in order to perform in concert with Yehudi Menuhin (its later principal guest conductor).

One of the world’s most original and highly regarded
guitarists. Over the many years of his artistic activity, he developed his own unique style, combining
classical guitar sound with jazz and Brazilian music.

He studied composition and conducting at Cologne’s Hochschule für Musik, where he has been a lecturer since 1995. His conducting work focuses first and foremost on 20th- and 21st-century music. He has collaborated with, among others, Helmut Lachenmann, Mauricio Kagel, Klaus Huber, Nicolaus A. Huber, as well as groups such as Ensemble Modern and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. He has guest conducted Oper Köln, Schauspiel Köln, WDR Rund- funkorchester Köln, the Bochumer Symphoniker, oh ton-Ensemble, and Doelenensemble. For many years he has collaborated with E-MEX, with which he prepares both world premieres and new interpretations of 20th-century masterpieces.