Performers

This is the youngest of the three orchestras operating at the Henryk Mikołaj Górecki Silesian Philharmonic in Katowice. The Orchestra was founded by Jan Wincenty Hawel in 1981 as an ensemble consisting of the then alumni of the Katowice Academy of Music. The Orchestra’s current artistic director is Piotr Pławner. Boasting a vast repertoire, the Orchestra presents, apart from classical masterpieces, also less frequently performed works as well as arrangements of chamber music by such composers as Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Pyotr Tchaikowsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Dulcimer player, born in 1980 in Chișinău (Moldova). He learned the dulcimer at secondary music school (Chișinău’s Liceul de Muzică ‘Ciprian Porumbescu’) and subsequently at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica (Slovakia).

She was first taught the piano by her father. In 1932 she studied with Alfred Cortot in Paris, later until 1939 with Józef Turczyński at Warsaw Conservatory. Having settled in Kraków during World War II, she continued her studies with Zbigniew Drzewiecki at that city’s State Higher School of Music in 1945–1949.
Winning (jointly with Bella Davidovich) the 1st prize in the 4th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw (where she also received the Polish Radio award for the best performance of mazurkas) launched Halina’s worldwide career.

Conductor, composer and educator, author of books on music. A pupil of Tadeusz Szeligowski and Valerian Berdyaev, he graduated from Poznań’s State Higher School of Music (now the Paderewski Academy) in 1952. He held the posts of conductor in Poznań’s Stanisław Moniuszko State Opera (now the Grand Theatre), second conductor to the Great Symphony Orchestra of Polish Radio, artistic director and principal conductor of Łódź Philharmonic (1957–1960) and Krakow Philharmonic (1963–1967), conductor at Warsaw Opera (1961–1962), and music director of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker (1971–1974).

Visual artist and spectacle director, theatre and television actress, voiceover artist, singer, and illustrator, graduate of the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw.

Conductor Marzena Diakun graduated with an honours degree in orchestra and opera conducting from Mieczysław Gawroński’s class at the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław (2005), and completed postgraduate studies with Uroš Lajovic at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. She gained international fame conducting the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France in a series of concerts broadcast by Radio France, medici.tv, and ARTE

A graduate of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, a master programme at the Conservatoire National Superior de Musique et de Danse in Paris as well as Yale University in New Haven, Długosz has won numerous prizes in flute competitions in Paris, Odense, Mannheimm Viggiano, and others.

Lorenza Donadini – a member of Ensemble Peregrina