Jan Tomasz Adamus – conductor, organist, harpsichordist, creator of culture; he studied in Cracow and Amsterdam, was a long-time lecturer at the Academy of Music in Wrocław. Since 2008, he has been the chief and artistic director of the Capella Cracoviensis cultural institution – a Cracow chamber choir and a period-instruments orchestra – with which he has performed at many significant Festivals and in renowned concert halls: Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Theater an der Wien, Haydn Festspiele Bruhl, the Festival of Polish Music, the Concert Hall of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, SWR Festspiele Schwetzingen, Bachfest Leipzig, Handel Festspiele Halle. He has made numerous recordings featuring a solo organ repertoire, early Polish music, baroque operas and romantic works on period instruments (Chopin, Schubert, Moniuszko).

One of Europe’s best chamber orchestras; an unquestioned leader in this field in the Polish music scene; Poland’s flagship ensemble, representing its country worldwide for nearly 20 years. Founded by a group of graduates from the Katowice Academy of Music and by Marek Moś – an eminent violinist, conductor and chamber musician – the orchestra has been designed from its inception as a platform for artistic explorations and creative development, and for the joint creation of best quality art.

AUKSO means ‘growing’ (from Greek). The word is also the Orchestra’s motto, reflects the aspirations of its members and the direction of their professional progress. The orchestra’s name stands for self-improvement, determination, openness and the acceptance of ever new challenges. AUKSO’s educational projects are part of this programme. The AUKSO Summer Philharmonic, organised and hosted by the ensemble since 2000 in the region of Podlasie (Podlachia), in the unique atmosphere of one of Poland’s most splendid destinations, offers master classes, open rehearsals and concerts which attract musicians and music lovers from all over the country.

The Orchestra’s repertoire comprises works from the classics to contemporary, with special focus on Polish music. Composers such as Wojciech Kilar, Zbigniew Bujarski, Aleksander Lasoń, Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil, Piotr Moss, and Cezary Duchnowski have entrusted the Orchestra with the task of presenting the world premieres of their new compositions. AUKSO’s highly regarded interpretations of Polish music include numerous albums of works by Grażyna Bacewicz, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Witold Lutosławski, Wojciech Kilar, Zbigniew Preisner, and others. AUKSO has also scored successes with its recordings of film music (by such world-famous composers as Elliot Goldenthal) as well as soundtracks for computer games.

The musicians take special interest in crossover projects, combining classical music with jazz, alternative music and rock, and attempting to find a common denominator for all these genres or conversely – playing with and clashing opposed, separate types of musical language. In this field, AUKSO has performed with such great music personalities as Leszek Możdżer, Tomasz Stańko, Urszula Dudziak, Michał Urbaniak, and Motion Trio.

AUKSO’s much publicised joint projects with Aphex Twin and Jonny Greenwood, presented as part of the European Culture Congress in Wrocław (2011), earned the Orchestra the “Coryphaeus of Polish Music” Award for “Event of the Year 2011”, as well as bearing fruit in the form of the well known album ‘Krzysztof Penderecki / Jonny Greenwood’, released a year later by the cult US label Nonesuch, which presents works by Professor Penderecki side by side with pieces by Jonny Greenwood inspired by the music of the Polish composer.

AUKSO’s album in the series ‘Chopin. The National Edition’, recorded with pianist Janusz Olejniczak, won the 2011 Fryderyk Award of the Polish Phonographic Academy for the Best Recording of Polish Music.

The Orchestra’s numerous tours have taken the musicians throughout Europe, as well as to Asia and South America. AUKSO boasts numerous excellent collaborations with artists of such calibre as Jerzy Maksymiuk, Marc Minkowski, Rudolf Barshai, Howard Shelley, Jacek Kaspszyk, Władysław Kłosiewicz, Daniele Alberti, Piotr Anderszewski, Andrzej Bauer, Kaja Danczowska, Agata Szymczewska, Janusz Olejniczak, Olga Pasichnyk, The Hilliard Ensemble, and others. The Orchestra has played at Poland’s most important festivals, such as the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival, the Wratislavia Cantans, the Warsaw Autumn, Sacrum Profanum, Film Music Festival, Dialogue of Four Cultures Festival, Jazz Jamboree, and the International Festival of Stars in Międzyzdroje. Abroad, AUKSO has performed, among others, at the Barbican Centre, SESC São Paulo, Auditorio y Palacio de Congresos in Zaragoza, Teatro de Caja España-Duero in Salamanca, and the festival Armonie sotto la Rocca.

Ars Antiqua Austria was founded in Linz in 1989 with the aim of introducing audiences to the roots of specifically Austrian baroque music played on period-instruments. The music performed at the imperial court in Vienna in this period shows the strong influence of Italy and later of French forms, while Spanish court ceremonials also shape the character of the works. The typical Austrian sound of the period also betrays the influence of the many Crownlands. The influence and social boundaries of Austria in the baroque era were far wider than in the 20th century. Elements of Slav and Hungarian folk music mingle with alpine sounds and can be heard in the artistic music of the period. The Austrian sound also reflects the temperament and character of the Austrians of that period – a unifying element in the melting-pot of many different cultures: the joie de vivre of the South, Slav melancholy, French formality, Spanish pomp and the Alpine character of the German-speaking regions. This fusion of court- with folk music and a strong element of dance music form the typical Austrian sound.

During its early years, Ars Anti qua Austria gave numerous concerts while researching the achievements of Austria’s baroque composers in depth. Thanks to their director Gunar Letzbor’s unflagging commitment, many works received their first performance in modern times. Enthusiastic reviews welcomed CDs with music by Weichlein, Biber, Conti (together with the mezzosoprano Bernarda Fink), Viviani, Mealli, Arnold, Caldara, Aufschnaiter, Vilsmayr, Vejvanovsky, Schmelzer, Muff at and of course J. S. Bach.

In 2000, Ars Anti qua Austria commenced a cycle of concerts in the Vienna Konzerthaus focused on Austrian baroque music.

Beginning in 2001, the ensemble has been playing a leading part in a concert series with more than 100 concerts called “Sound of Cultures – Culture of Sound”. Recent tours have taken the ensemble to the Festival de la Musique Baroque at Ribeauville, Berlin Festival of Ancient Music, Festival Printemps des Arts at Nantes, Mozartfest at Wurzburg, Tage alter Musik at Herne, Festival de Musique de Clisson et de Loire Atlantique, Folles Journees de Nantes, Musee d’Unterlinden Colmar, Monteverdi Festival Cremona, Festival Baroque du Sablon, Salzburger Festspiele, Vlandern Festival, Festival Bach de Lausanne, Bologna Festival, Vendsyssel Festival, Concerti della Normale Pisa, Resonanzen Wien, NDR Das Alte Werk, Oude Muziek Utrecht...

Ars Antiqua Austria’s recording of Viviani’s “Capricci Armonici” received a Cannes Classical Award.

Slovakian mezzo-soprano Jarmila Balážová studied at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. After graduation she began fruitful working partnerships with the prestigious Slovakian early music ensembles Solamente Naturali and Musica Aeterna. She also works with orchestras such as the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra Olomouc, the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava, Ensemble Opera Diversa, L’Armonia Terrena, the Brno Contemporary Orchestra and the Czech Virtuosi chamber orchestra. She has appeared at many important festivals, among them the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Janáček Festival in Brno, the Prague Spring Festival, Smetana’s Litomyšl and the Bratislava Music Festival.

In 2018 Jarmila Balážová made her debut at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava as La Ciesca in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, followed by appearances as Polina (The Queen of Spades) and the Mayor’s Wife (Jenůfa) at the National Theatre in Brno followed. She also sang this last role alongside Karita Mattila at the 2020 Janáček Festival, where in addition she appeared as Kosinká in Robert Carsen’s production of Osud (Fate). She regularly performs at the State Opera of Banská Bystrica, where her roles have included Emilia in Rossini’s Otello, and Lola (Cavalleria rusticana). As a member of the Slovak National Theatre’s opera studio, she sang Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

In February 2022 she returned to this opera house as a guest artist, making her role debut as Kate in Dvořák’s The Devil and Kate. She subsequently appeared as Third Lady (Die Zauberflöte) at the National Theatre in Brno and as a soloist in performances of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass under Jakub Hrůša at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Jarmila Balážová’s plans for the 2022/23 season include her role debut as Aljeja (From the House of the Dead) at the 2022 Janáček Festival and her debut at the Prague State Opera as Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro).

Skrzypek i kompozytor. Ukończył z wyróżnieniem studia w Akademii Muzycznej w Katowicach w klasie Henryka Gembalskiego. Był stypendystą Berklee College of Music w Bostonie. Od 2012 roku związany z prestiżową oficyną wydawniczą ACT z siedzibą w Monachium.

Nazywany „cudownym dzieckiem skrzypiec”, karierę rozpoczął w wieku 14 lat. Szybko został okrzyknięty innowatorem łączącym dokonania muzyki poważnej i współczesnego języka skrzypcowego z talentem improwizatorskim. W krótkim czasie stworzył własny styl, który stał się inspiracją dla nowej generacji improwizujących skrzypków.

Swoją muzykę prezentował na najważniejszych festiwalach jazzowych, w prestiżowych salach koncertowych, m.in. w: Polsce, Niemczech, Korei Południowej, Chinach, Japonii, Stanach Zjednoczonych, Kanadzie, Austrii, Islandii, Portugalii, Azerbejdżanie, Holandii, Szwecji, Norwegii, Finlandii, Włoszech, Hiszpanii i Indonezji. Koncertuje i nagrywa z wybitnymi artystami, takimi jak: Yaron Herman, Agata Zubel, Cezary Duchnowski, Helge Lien, Aaron Parks, Lars Danielsson, Nils Landgren, Iiro Rantala, Marius Neset, Jacob Karlzon, Joachim Kuhn i Billy Cobham. Otrzymał liczne nagrody i wyróżnienia, w tym: Grand Prix i nagrodę indywidualną festiwalu „Jazz nad Odrą” (2006), ECHO Jazz – nagrodę niemieckiego przemysłu muzycznego (2013), Złoty Krzyż Zasługi (2016) oraz Odznakę „Zasłużony dla Kultury Polskiej” (2016). W 2020 roku wraz Adam Bałdych Quartet znalazł się w finale prestiżowej nagrody BMW Welt Jazz 2020, której rozstrzygnięcie zaplanowane jest na styczeń 2021.

Adam Bałdych coraz częściej zwraca się w stronę klasycznej twórczości kompozytorskiej, pisząc na zamówienie renomowanych orkiestr. W 2015 roku na zamówienie Baltic Neopolis Orchestra ze Szczecina stworzył kompozycję Mozaika–Impresje, a w 2016 roku dla Orkiestry Muzyki Nowej napisał utwór Antiphona do tekstów znalezionych w grotach Qumran. W 2019 roku na zamówienie orkiestry AUKSO przygotował Early Birds Symphony na festiwal auksodrone, a przed nim już kolejne zamówienia dla AUKSO. W 2021 r. w Stuttgarcie swą premierę będzie mieć także nowa kompozycja Adama Bałdycha przygotowywana na zamówienie Stuttgarter Kamerorchester.
Adam Bałdych ceniony jest za kreatywność na polu jazzu i wykonawstwa muzyki współczesnej, twórcze łączenie obu tych dziedzin oraz za wielką wyrazistość swoich muzycznych interpretacji.

Brał udział w nagraniach blisko 20 płyt. Najnowsza, wydana w 2020 roku – Clouds – to jego szósty album autorski zrealizowany przez ACT. Na płycie tej artysta współtworzy muzykę z wybitnym francuskim wiolonczelistą Vincentem Courtois oraz holenderskim pianistą Rogierem Teldermanem.

Double bass and bass guitar player, graduate of the Jazz Department at the Academy of Music in Katowice at the age of 14 his talent was recognised during music workshops by the US clarinettist Brad Terry, which resulted in the young instrumentalist joining Terry’s quartet (with pianist Mateusz Kołakowski and drummer Tomasz Torres) and giving numerous performances with that ensemble in the United States. He thus developed his skills at the very source of contemporary jazz. Barański won the Grand Prix of the 40th Jazz on the Oder Festival (2004, band category), the Jazz Angel Award of the Jazz Blizzard Festival in Bielsko-Biala (2005), the main prize (Swinging Raven) of the 3rd Hot Jazz Spring Festival in Częstochowa, and (with Kołakowski and Torres as ensemble Triology) – the 4th prize in the International Jazz Contest ‘Jazz Hoeilaart’ in Belgium. He has given performances in, among others, New York’s Knitting Factory, the Los Angeles Jazz Bakery, Boston’s Berklee Performance Center, at the Vail Jazz Festival in Colorado, USA.

He has played with such Polish and American jazz musicians as Bennie Maupin, Dan Tepfer, Nigel Kennedy, David Dorůžka, Tomasz Stańko, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Michał Urbaniak, Henryk Miśkiewicz, Piotr Baron, Janusz Muniak, Grzegorz Nagórski, Joachim Mencel, Maciej Sikała, José Torres, Grzech Piotrowski, Aga Zaryan, Mieczysław Szcześniak, Kuba Badach, Dorota Miśkiewicz, Anna Serafińska, Natalia Niemen, and Mate.O, as well as the Afromental and New Life bands, and the TGD (Trzecia Godzina Dnia) gospel choir.

Tenor Rafał Bartmiński graduated from Eugeniusz Sąsiadek’s class at Katowice’s Academy of Music. His accolades include the 3rd prize in the Ada Sari International Vocal Artistry Competition in Nowy Sącz as well as 2nd prize and 11 other awards in the 6th International Stanisław Moniuszko Vocal Competition in Warsaw.

He made his opera debut in 2002 at Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera as Lensky in P. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (dir. Maciej Prus). He has performed the main tenor parts in that opera house ever since. In Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre he debuted as the Drum Major in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck (dir. Dimitri Tcherniakov, cond. Teodor Currentzis).

Born in Kyiv in Ukraine in 1988, Antonii Baryshevskyi won first prize at the prestigious Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition 2014 in Tel Aviv. A laureate of many other competitions such as the Santa Cecilia International Competition, the Premio Internazionale Pianistico “Alexander Scriabin”, the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition and the “Premio Jaen” competition, he has participated in the MDR Musiksommer Festival, Progett o Martha Argerich, Klavier Ruhr Festival, Busoni Festival, Copenhagen Summer Festival, Peace and Piano Festival, etc.



Antonii has performed in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Berliner Philharmonie, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, Teatro Comunale di Bologna; Schoenberg Center Vienna and Kolner Philharmonie. He has performed with some of the leading European orchestras, including the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, the Heidelberg Philharmonic Orchestra and La Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, under the baton of maestros like Asher Fisch, Valenti n Uryupin, Kirill Karabits, Frederic Chaslin, Howard Griffiths, Douglas Bostock, George Alexander Albrecht, Roman Kofman, Marcus Bosch, Oksana Lyniv and many others. He has recorded for numerous CDs with many different labels, as well as radio and TV productions of the Italian, Danish, Spanish, German, Slovakian and Serbian radio-television agencies. The CD Antonii Baryshevskyi: Piano Recital was released by the Naxos recording label; another, Moussorgskyi & Scriabin, was released by CAvi-music. Moreover, in 2017, a CD with all piano sonatas of Galina Ustvolskaya was released, and 2018 saw the release of a CD with the choral music of Lili Boulanger Hymne au Soleil and one with the orchestral music by Shostakovich. Finally, O Schöne Nacht, a CD with music by Brahms, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, and Heinrich von Herzogenberg was released in 2020.

Gabriel Bebeşelea enjoys a vibrant international career, being invited by acclaimed ensembles including the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra de Castilla y Leon, Tonkunstler Orchestra, PKF-Prague Philharmonia, the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
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In 2020, Gabriel Bebeşelea took up the position of Principal Conductor of the“George Enescu” Philharmonic Orchestra Bucharest, adding to his positions as Principal Conductor of the ”Transylvania” State Philharmonic Orchestra of Cluj-Napoca.

Highlights of the 2022/23 season include his debut with Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, a tour with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia, leading a new production of the opera Manon Lescaut at the Slovenian National Theatre Maribor, and a CD recording with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra with works by George Enescu that Bebeşelea orchestrated.

Born in 1987, Gabriel Bebeşelea won 1st prize at the “Lovro von Matačić” Conducting Competition (Zagreb 2015) and 1st prize at the“Jeunesses Musicales” Conducti ng Competition (Bucharest 2011).

In 2011, he was awarded a scholarship consisting of an internship at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, where he had the opportunity to assist at the rehearsals and concerts of some of today’s greatest conductors: Mariss Jansons, Bernard Haitink, Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Philippe Herreweghe, David Zinman and Eliahu Inbal.

In 2015, Gabriel Bebeşelea studied with two of the world’s most appreciated conductors: Bernard Haitink at the Lucerne Festival at Easter and Kurt Masur at the Aurora Classical Festival.

In 2018, Gabriel Bebeşelea obtained his PhD with “summa cum laude” at the National University of Music Bucharest.

Slovak bass Jozef Benci, who recently gained critical acclaim for his “velvety timbre and an open,
expressive voice” in a performance of Dvořák's Requiem at the Musikverein Vienna, has been a member of
the ensemble of the Slovak National Theater in Bratislava since 2004 and has made regular guest
appearances at opera houses, concert halls and at festivals in Europe and Asia.
Upcoming performances include three concerts featuring Janáček's Glagolitic Mass with the orchestra of the
Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Rome under the baton of Jakub Hruša as well as a concert performance
as Dikój in Katja Kabanova at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.
Jozef Benci studied at the Conservatory and at the Academy of Music and Drama in Bratislava and at the
Janáček Academy of Music in Brno. He won prizes in national and international competitions, including the
International Singing Competition of Hariclea Darclée 2001, George Enescu Singing Competition in
Bucharest 2001 and the Competition Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg 2006.
After completing his studies he was a guest at the Slovak National Theater Chamber Opera in Bratislava
before before being contracted at the State Opera in Banská Bystrica in 2002.

Composer, music theorist, improviser, and ethnomusicologist. She graduated from the Department of Composition, Conducting and Music Theory at the Academy of Music in Katowice, as well as the Postgraduate Studies in Ethnomusicology at the University of Warsaw.

She is one of the few Polish composers specialising in music for the contemporary dance theatre. She has written music and scenatios for about a dozen balet spectacles created by eminent Polish choreographers, such as Ewa Wycichowska, Aleksandra Dzirosz, Jacek Przybyłowicz; Her compositions have been performer in Poland, Puerto Rico, Germany, Ukraine, on Taiwan, in the Czech Republic, Mexico, Brazil, and United States.

Bilińska is a member of the Polish Society for Electroacoustic Music (PSME), ‘Open Zone’ Association, as well as ISME – the International Society for Music Education. Her interests include 20th- and 21st- century composition techniques, electroacoustic music, the correspondence of arts, music in interdisciplinary forms (the contemporary dance theatre in particular), and, most of all, the output of Polish women-composers, to which she dedicated her doctoral dissertation entitled The instrumental Works od Polish 20th- and 21st- Century Women Composers in Its Cultural Context. Selected Examples from 1945-2005 (Katowice, 2018)

Pianist. She completed her doctoral studies at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in the class of Ivan Klánský, as well as Arkadi Zenzipér’s Meisterklasse at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden. She also participated in masterclasses taught by Lazar Naumovich Berman, Michel Béroff, Klaus Hellwig, Eugen Indjic, Stefan Sheja, Avedis Kouyoumjian, Robert Lehrbaumer, David Lively, György Sandor, and Tamás Vasary. She has been successful in a great number of national and international competitions; her greatest successes include being selected among the world’s 32 best pianists in the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv (2014), the 2nd prize in the Anton G. Rubinstein Competition in Dresden (2012), admission to the semi-finals of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels (2010), and the 2nd prize in the Maria Canals Competition in Barcelona (2007). Her accolades include: the Zdeňka Podhajská Award, award for the best performance of works by Frédéric Chopin and Eugen Suchoň, grand prix of the Prague Junior Note, Rassegna Internazionale di Giovani Musicisti Pinerolo’s ‘primo premio assoluto’, and the Pro Bohemia Piano Competition award for the best performance of Czech music. Veronika has given recitals in the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Belgium, Italy, France, Switzerland, USA, Mexico, Japan, and China. In 2014, she recorded a CD of works by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky for Supraphon. She co-operates regularly with leading European and world orchestras, and currently has 30 piano concertos in her repertoire. In 2016, she debuted (alongside Israeli conductor Lahav Shani) with the Czech Philharmonic in a piano concerto by Josef Páleníček. In the same year she achieved her greatest success so far, appearing in the famous Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall in New York

She graduated with distinction from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw (cello class of Andrzej Bauer and Bartosz Koziak) and Berlin Universitat der Kunste (class of Jens Peter Maintz). She has developed her abilities at master classes in Brussels, Salzburg, Kronberg and on Musikinsel Rheinau.

The 2021/2022 season is the third year of Andrey Boreyko’s work as artistic director of the National Philharmonic in Warsaw. The conductor’s commitments with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra planned for this season include performances during the Eufonie Festival, the final concert and the concert of laureates of the 18th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, as well as part of the celebration of the 120th anniversary of the foundation of the Warsaw Philharmonic. The ensemble conducted by Andrey Boreyko is also planning to tour Japan and the United States. The current season is the eighth and last year of Andrey Boreyko as the music director of the Artis–Naples philharmonic orchestra, which, thanks to his inspiring leadership, has significantly raised its artistic level. The conductor ends his term of office without ceasing to explore the relationships between various art forms, creating interdisciplinary concert programmes.

The most significant events in previous years included: a concert tour with the State Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation (including Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich) and with Filarmonica della Scala (festivals in Ljubljana, Rheingau, Gstaad and Grafenegg). The artist has also performed as a guest with ensembles such as the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, Sinfonia Varsovia (together with Piotr Anderszewski during the Bridging Europe Festival at the Palace of Arts in Budapest), Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Frankfurt Museumsgesellschaft, as well as with the Sydney, Toronto, Seattle, Minnesota, San Francisco, Dallas and Detroit symphony orchestras, and the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 2019, he also led the Cleveland Orchestra. As an advocate of contemporary music, in 2017 Andrey Boreyko promoted the works of Victoria Borisova-Ollas as part of a complex concert and recording project with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. In previous years, Andrey Boreyko was the music director of such ensembles as Jenaer Philharmonie, Symphoniker Hamburg, Berner Symphonieorchester, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre national de Belgique.

Pavol Breslik made a name for himself as a Mozart tenor; he sang the role of Idamante (Idomeneo) at the reopening of the Munich Cuvillies Theatre and has frequently interpreted Belmonte (Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail) in Munich and Ferrando (Cosi fan tutte) at the London Royal Opera House. He sang the part of Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) already at his professional debut at the age of twenty-one in Prague, but also in Salzburg and Munich. The latter is still in his repertoire today, as is Tamino in The Magic Flute. Breslik has sung that role on a number of occasions in diverse productions in Munich, where he made his debut in that part in 2006, Barcelona, Baden- Baden and the Met Opera in New York.



For some years now, the lyrical tenor from Slovakia, who was a member of the Berliner Lindenoper ensemble from 2003 to 2006 and has since worked as a freelancer, has increasingly conquered the bel canto repertoire. In addition to the central role of charming Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, he performed as the young Gennaro with Edita Gruberova as his mother Lucrezia Borgia as well as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor with Diana Damrau in the title role, among others. In the case of Verdi, the tenor has expanded his repertoire from Macduff (Macbeth) and Cassio (Otello) to Alfredo in La traviata and the rapturous Fenton in Falstaff , to whom he is still able to lend boyish charm. In addition to Italian music, Breslik also devotes himself to French music, e.g. Gounod’s Faust (in Zurich), Romeo, and Nadir in Georges Bizet’s Les pecheurs de perles, for example in Zurich and Sydney. The Slovakian, who also

speaks Czech and Russian, has an excellent timbre and temperament in his Slavic repertoire: as Lensky (Eugene Onegin) at the Vienna State Opera, in London and alongside Anna Netrebko in Munich, Števa (Jenůfa) and Jenik

(The Bartered Bride) in Dresden and Munich.



Breslik is very keen on 20th-century music, starting with Richard Strauss – the role of Narraboth in Salome that he sang at the Salzburg Easter Festival. The demonic Peter Quint in Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (Zurich) and the double role of Maler/Neger at the Salzburg Festival production of Alban Berg’s Lulu were also brilliant. At the opening of the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie on 11 January 2017,



Breslik gave a spectacular performance in the premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Reminiszenz on the basis of text by Hans Henny Jahnn.

When Ivan Fischer founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra (BFO) in 1983, it was his personal dream come true. The Orchestra’s core philosophy has been to form a team of creative musicians who are not afraid to take risk and who want to develop their musicianship in the orchestral, chamber music and solo repertoire. The orchestra is now a frequent guest of major international festivals. The BFO has comissioned and prmiered many new compositions.

Szymon Bywalec graduated with distinction in orchestra and opera conducting from the class of Jan Wincenty Hawel at the Academy of Music in Katowice.

As the Chief Conductor of Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej (New Music Orchestra) he has performed with his ensemle at various modern music festivals, including Warsaw AUtumn Festival, Musica Polonica Nova.

Capella Cracoviensis (CC) – a chamber choir and orchestra – is one of the most interesting modern ensembles specializing in early music. Its repertoire ranges from renaissance polyphony to early romantic operas, all performed on period instruments and in accordance with the historical performance practice. The ensemble is invited to important Festivals and concert halls: Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Bachfest Leipzig, SWR Festspiele Schwetzingen, Handel Festspiele Halle, Haydn Festspiele Bruhl, Opera Royal Versailles, Theater an der Wien, NOSPR in Katowice, the Szczecin Philharmonic, Misteria Paschalia in Cracow. The group’s guests include Evelino Pido, Christophe Rousset, Alessandro Moccia, Giuliano Carmignola, Paul Goodwin, Andrew Parrott , and Paul McCreesh.

One of the greatest achievements of CC was the performance of all of Beethoven’s symphonies on period instruments in one day; the event, which took place on 27 August 2016 in Cracow, was broadcast live on the radio. 90 instrumentalists, 44 singers, and 5 conductors from 14 countries participated in the project, and a total of 2,300 people were in the audience.

Recent achievements of the ensemble include the first Polish performance of Wagner’s works on period instruments with the partiacipati on of Waltraud Meier (Wesendonck-Lieder) and recordings of Pergolesi’s and Porpora’s operas for Decca: Pergolesi – Adriano in Siria (Fagioli, Basso, Sancho, Adamus) & Porpora – Germanico in Germania (Cenčić, Lezhneva, Adamus). Other CD recordings include Te Deum / Lully & Charpentier with Le Poeme Harmonique (cond. Vincent Dumestre) and Bach’s motets (cond. Fabio Bonizzoni) for Alpha as well as Schubert’s Piano Concerto in F minor and Symphony No. 8 ‘Unfi nished’ (Klimsiak, Adamus) for AviMusic.

In May 2018, CC launched a six-year project called “Haydn – Complete Symphonies 2018– 2023,” including concerts and live recordings. CC has implemented stage versions of the following operas: Amadigi di Gaula by Handel, The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, and Orfeo ed Euridice by Gluck as well as special stage projects: Monteverdi’s madrigals in a milk bar, Mendelssohn’s choral songs in the forest, Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring children with visual impairments as actors, and “mozart requiem karaoke” directed by Cezary Tomaszewski.

CC was established in 1970 on the initiative of the then director of the Cracow Philharmonic, Jerzy Katlewicz, who entrusted Stanisław Gałoński with the task of creating an early music ensemble. Over the years, CC has become organisationally independent, performing a diverse repertoire from the Middle Ages to contemporary music premieres.

Since November 2008, the positions of the managing and artistic directors of CC have been held by Jan Tomasz Adamus.

Max Emanuel Cencic is one of the most fascinating and versatile singing artists in the world today, and one dedicated to the revival and performance of the music of the 18th century.

In the 2020/2021 season, the Counternor's outstanding projects are about to begin. This season includes a new production of Dalbavie's Le Soulier de Satin (world premiere) at the Paris Opera, at the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival he will sing the role of Lottario and direct the new production of Porpora’s Carlo il Calvo, the title role in Vinci's Gismondo re di Polonia, Carmina Burana in the Wiener Konzerthaus, Hasse's Cajo Fabrizio, Carlo il Calvo in concert at the Theater an der Wien and in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Once more, he will take on Rossini's La Donna del Lago at the Zagreb Opera and at the festival in Saarema, where hewill direct the opera and sing the challenging role of Malcolm.

With his remarkable mezzo-soprano voice, Max Emanuel Cencic demonstrates that Baroque singing can be both technically brilliant and at the same time modern and emotionally engaging. For over two decades he has been performing in first rank opera houses, including the Wiener Staatsoper, Theater an der Wien, the Opernhaus Zürich, the Opéra Royal de Versailles, the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, Barcelona’s Gran Teatro del Liceu, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris and Brussels’ La Monnaie.Concert engagements have taken him to the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Carnegie Hall (New York), the Barbican Center (London), Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Wiener Musikverein and Wiener Konzerthaus, and the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow. In addition, he has sung at numerous festivals worldwide including the renowned Salzburger Festpiele. He regularly works with such conductors as William Christie, René Jacobs, Ottavio Dantone, Diego Fasolis, George Petrou, Emmanuelle Haïm and Riccardo Muti. His education as a singer began as a member of the Wiener Saengerknaben (Vienna Boys’ Choir), with a solo career as a soprano from 1992, and as a counter-tenor from 2001.On 21st September 2017, Max Emanuel Cencic celebrated the 35th anniversary of his first appearance on stage, with a performance of Orfeo in Gluck‘s Orfeo ed Euridice.

Since september 2020, Max Emanuel Cencic has been Artistic Director of the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival. The first edition of the spectacular festival took place despite the corona crisis and was a huge success with the public and the press. 400,000 worldwide viewers followed the broadcasts online and all the performances in Bayreuth were sold out. Max Emanuel Cencic directed the new production of Carlo il Calvo where he also sang the role of Lottario. The production was awarded by the French magazine Forum Opera, best new opera production of the year 2020. In his first season as the artistic director, Max Emanuel Cencic invited world stars such as Joyce DiDonato, Franco Fagioli and Jordi Savall to Bayreuth. He also sang the title role in the concert version of the opera Gismondo re di Polonia by Vinci on the stage of the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth

He studied composition, conducting and piano at the Israel Conservatory of Music. He later developed his conducting skills with Pierre Dervaux in Paris, Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, and Franco Ferrara in Siena.

In 1971 he won the 1st prize in the Herbert von Karajan Foundation’s International Competition for Conductors in Berlin and the Gold Medal in the Concorso Internazionale per Giovani Direttori d’Orchestra in Milan’s Theatro alla Scala.

He died in Brussel in 2020.

The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir began its professional artistic activity in 1953, under the direction of Zbigniew Soja. Its successive choirmasters were: Roman Kuklewicz (1955-71), Józef Bok (1971-74), Antoni Szaliński (1974–1978), and Henryk Wojnarowski (1978–2016), and since January 2017, the post has been held by Bartosz Michałowski.
The Choir has performed in the most important centres of European music life along with such major orchestras as e.g. the Berliner Philharmoniker (September 2013). Highlights of the Choir’s career include appearances in opera productions at Milan’s La Scala, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, as well as operas in Pesaro, Palermo and Paris. The singers also took part in three gala concerts for Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.

The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir has sung under such eminent Polish and international masters of the baton as Gary Bertini, Sergiu Comissiona, Henryk Czyż, Jacek Kaspszyk, Kazimierz Kord, Jan Krenz, Lorin Maazel, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Zubin Mehta, Grzegorz Nowak, Seiji Ozawa, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir Simon Rattle, Witold Rowicki, Jerzy Semkow, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, Stanisław Wisłocki, Antoni Wit, and Bohdan Wodiczko.

The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir’s vast repertoire comprises more than 400 large-scale vocal-instrumental and unaccompanied works from the Middle Ages to the present day. Polish music, particularly by Krzysztof Penderecki, takes pride of place in this repertoire. The Choir has performed all of the composer’s large-scale vocal-instrumental and unaccompanied works. In February 2017, the Choir received the most prestigious award of the phonographic industry, a Grammy, in the Best Choral Performance category, for the first CD in the Penderecki Conducts Penderecki series. The Choir’s recordings have earned them six Grammy nominations (five for Penderecki’s music, one for Szymanowski’s), as well as a Fryderyk Award (for Moniuszko’s Masses Vol. I) and the Orphée d’Or – Prix Arturo Toscanini of the French Academie du Disque Lyrique (Masses Vol. II). The Choir also received the Fryderyk Award for their CD releases

Estonian chamber choir Collegium Musicale was founded by conductor Endrik Üksvärav in October 2010. The repertoire extends from renaissance to contemporary music. The special place in the repertoire belongs to the Estonian composers: Arvo Pärt, Veljo Tormis, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Helena Tulve, Tõnu Kõrvits, Mirjam Tally, Pärt Uusberg etc. The aim is to offer high level musical emotions and be the ambassadors of Estonian music.
The choir has co-operated with different orchestras and ensembles – Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Rascher Saxophone Quartet, Tallinn Baroque Orchestra, NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra (Poland), Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, baroque orchestra Barrocade (Israel), Eesti Sinfonietta, Corelli Consort, Klaaspärlimäng Sinfonietta, string quartet Prezioso etc and conductors including Tõnu Kaljuste, Andres Mustonen, Kaspars Putninš (LT), Aapo Häkkinen (FIN), Simon Carrington (UK), Jos van Veldhoven (Holland), Gianluca Marciano (Italy), Darrel Ang (Singapur/FRA), Mihhail Gerts etc.

Collegium Musicale has had concert tours in Italy (Rome, Arezzo, Gorizia etc), France, Russia, Finland, Germany, Poland, Czech, Malta and Japan. In Japan Estonian composers Erkki-Sven Tüür and Arvo Pärt participated in the choir’s concert in Tokyo. 2017 the choir had concert tours in six countries: Israel (10 concerts), Holland, Poland, Germany, Russia, Finland

A protege of Lord Yehudi Menuhin and Mstislav Rostropovich, Coppey was first acclaimed at the age of 18, winning “First Prize and Prize for the Best Bach Performance” at the prestigious Leipzig Bach Competition (1988).

Coppey has carved out an impressive solo career, working regularly with many of the world’s finest orchestras and conductors –including, among others, Lawrence Foster, Alan Gilbert, Kirill Karabits, Emmanuel Krivine, John Nelson, Pascal Rophe and Yan Pascal Tortelier.


He has given world premieres of cello concerti by such celebrated composers as Jacques Lenot, Marc Monnet and Eric Tanguy, and French premieres of works by Elliott Carter, Mantovani, and Erkki-Svena Tüüra..
Recent and forthcoming highlights include performing as a soloist with the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Orquestra, and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others. As conductor, Coppey collaborates with the Deutsche Kammerakademie and the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie. In 2021, Coppey was Artist-in-Residence with Orquestra Sinfonica do Porto Casa da Musica. Coppey is a much-acclaimed recording artist, working exclusively with the audite classics label. 2021 saw the release of Shostakovich: Cello Concertos (with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra – NOSPR/Lawrence Foster), and 2022 saw the release of Kodaly: Music for Solo Cello, and The French Cello (Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg/ John Nelson). His recordings have received considerable acclaim, including a Diapason d’Or and “Choc” in the Monde de la Musique for his recording of the Duti lleux Cello Concerto (with Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege/ Pascal Rophe), and the highly sought after “ff ff ” from Telerama, amongst other awards.

Marc Coppey is a Professor at Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris, Artistic Director of the Saline Royale Academy d’Arcet-Senans, Artistic Director of Festival Les Musicales de Colmar and Music Director of the
Zagreb Soloists (2011–present). He was made Officier des Arts et des Lett res by the French Cultural Ministry in 2014.
Coppey’s regular sonata partner is the esteemed Russian pianist Peter Laul. Marc performs on a cello by Matt eo Gofriller (Venice, 1711), known as the “Van Wilgenburg”.

Alvin Curran has carved out a long and fruitful career as a composer/ performer/installation artist, writer, and teacher in the American experimental music tradition. Born in Providence in 1938, he studied with Ron Nelson, Elliott Carter and Mel Powell, and co-founded the group Musica Elettronica Viva in 1966 in Rome, where he currently resides. His music, whether chamber works, radio-art, large-scale environmental theatre, or solo performances, embraces all types of sound, space, and audience. He has taught at Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts, Mills College, and the Mainz Hochschule für Musik, published numerous articles, given thousands of live performances, and published more than thirty solo and sixty collaborative recordings. A book about his work, Alvin Curran: Live in Roma (2010), was edited by Daniela Tortora, whereas in 2015 he published the alvin curran fakebook, an illustrated compendium of more than 200 (mostly) notated pieces.
Recent highlights: A Banda Larga, a street symphony (2018); The New York Armory (2018), with Clark Coolidge (Other Minds 2018), and with Ciro Longobardi (2018); Passi, with visual artist Alfredo Pirri (2017– 2018), Dead Beats (solo piano 2018), and Endangered Species (fractured standards, 2018); Omnia Flumina Romam Ducunt (Baths of Caracalla, 2018–2019); Der Goldene Topf, with Achim Freyer (2019). Best-known works: For Cornelius, Hope Street Tunnel Blues, and the Inner Cities cycle for piano; Schtyx for piano-violin-percussion trio; VSTO for string quartet; Theme Park for percussion quartet; Electric Rags for saxophone quartet; Oh Brass on the Grass Alas for 300 amateur brass-band musicians; the Maritime Rites, concert series; Crystal Psalms and Maritime Rites for radio; the Gardening with John, sound installation; solo performance pieces from Songs and Views from the Magnetic Garden and Canti Illuminati to Endangered Species. Current projects include: Era Ora on Wheels for two mobile pianos, brass band and percussion; Dead Beats (revision) for solo piano; Double Trio for piano, violin and cello, Diskklavier, percussion and tuba (baritone horn)

He studied the violin and conducting at the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava and the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. He attended a conducting course with Karl Österreicher, a course in choral conducting with Jan Wierszyłowski, and completed doctoral studies with Bohdan Warchal. For two years after his studies he was the concertmaster of the Slovak Radio Symphony and the Slovak National Theatre Orchestras. Since 1985 he has held the post of concertmaster to the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2001, after Bohdan Warchal’s death, he took over the position of artistic manager of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist and conductor Danel has performed throughout Europe as well as overseas (Japan, Korea, Egypt, Panama, Brazil, and the USA). He cooperates on a longterm basis with the Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal de São Paulo, the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, Akita Chamber Orchestra, Tokyo Harmonia Chamber Orchestra, and has been a guest performer with, among others, the KlangVerwaltung München, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, Osaka Symphony Orchestra, the Sakata Philharmonic Orchestra, PKF – Prague Philharmonia, Orquesta Filarmónica de Málaga, and the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava.

In 2008–2014, he was the Principal Guest Conductor of the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra. His rich experience as a chamber musician includes his work as leader of the Slovak Quartet since 1986 and co-founder of the Slovak Piano Trio since 1987. In 1992–1996, he was the artistic manager of the Bratislava Chamber Orchestra Cappella Istropolitana. He taught at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (1987–1998) and held the position of Visiting Professor at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in Nagoya in Japan (1999–2003, 2007–2009). In 2001, he taught masterclasses for professional orchestral musicians at the Affinis Music Festival in Japan. At present, he teaches at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica. Long-term collaborations with amateur church choirs and music ensembles as conductor, organiser and sacred music composer are an important part of his artistic life.

Andrea Danková was born in Slovakia. She studied at the Žilina Conservatoire and the Academy of Music in Bratislava.
She is the winner of several competitions and prizes including the Toti Dal Monte competition in Treviso, following which she was subsequently invited to sing Micaela in Carmen at Teatro Comunale in Treviso under the baton of Peter Maag.

Further engagements quickly followed, including reprising the role of Micaela at Teatro La Fenice; Mimi in La boheme at Opera de Lyon; concert performances of Micaela with Kent Nagano and Orchestre de L’Opera National de Lyon in Tokyo, Liu in Turandot and Amelia Grimaldi in Simon Boccanegra with Daniele Gatti at Teatro Comunale di Bologna; her successful US debut as Micaela and Liu at the San Francisco Opera under Marco Armiliato; and her UK debut as Micaela and Desdemona in concert performances with the London Symphony Orchestra under Jose Cura and Colin Davis.

Andrea has had huge success in the roles of Kata Kabanova and Jenufa, which she has performed at La Scala, Milan, Teatro Real in Madrid, and Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, as well as in Brussels, Turin, Bologna, Palermo and Stuttgart. Her repertoire also includes many Italian roles such as Amelia (Un ballo in maschera), Elisabetta (Don Carlos), Aida and Tosca.
Andrea’s concert repertoire includes Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, which she has performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall under Tomaš Netopil, with the London Symphony Orchestra under Colin Davis, with the Orchestra of Deutsche Oper Berlin under Jiři Kout, and at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. She has also sung Dvořak’s Te Deum with the LSO and Colin Davis in London and New York, Mahle’s Symphony No. 2 with the LSO and Myung-Whun Chung at the Barbican, Dvořak’s Stabat Mater at the Vienna Musikverein, and Rachmaninoff’s The Bells at the Maggio Musicale Fiorenti no. She sang The Eternal Gospel by Leoš Janaček with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski at Royal Festival Hall in London. She also sang Zemlinsky’s Lyrische Symphonie with Wiener Symphoniker under the baton of Tomaš Netopil at Musikverein Wien.

Critically acclaimed as one of the greatest flute virtuosi of our times, Długosz is the most awarded Polish flautist. A graduate of soloist studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich and Master’s studies at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Paris and Yale University in New Haven. The winner of more than a dozen prestigious international flute competitions in Paris, Munich, Odense, Viggiano and others. He performs with many renowned orchestras. As a soloist he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Musikverein’s Goldener Saal and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Munich’s Gasteig CarlOrff-Saal and Herkulessaal, Beijing’s Poly Theatre, Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou, Shanghai Concert Hall, Opera House in Qatar, Shin Kobe Oriental Hall in Kobe, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, and many other venues, under the baton of such stars as Zubin Mehta, James Levine, Mariss Jansons, and Jesús López Cobos, Walerij Giergijew, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Jan Krenz, Jerzy Semkow, Jacek Kaspszyk, Gabriel Chmura, Agnieszka Duczmal and Mirosław Jacek Błaszczyk. He has frequently been invited to play Krzysztof Penderecki’s Flute Concerto under the composer’s baton.

Długosz’s CD debut was Michael Colina’s flute concerto Isles of Shoals with the London Symphony Orchestra (2010). The artist has recorded extensively for radio and television in Poland and abroad. He has released 48 albums, mostly with Polish music, highly rated by Polish and European critics, and distinguished with many prestigious international phonographic awards, including the International Classical Music Award (ICMA), the Pizzicato Supersonic Award and Fryderyk Awards. Długosz’s concerts are frequently broadcast by such major radio broadcasters as BBC Radio 3, NDR, SWR, BR4, Mezzo, Deutschland Radio Kultur, Polish Radio 2, Radio France, and RMF Classic. To date, as many as 124 works dedicated to Łukasz Długosz and his wife Agata Kielar-Długosz have been written. Most of them are symphonic compositions which continued to be promoted and recorded phonographically after their premiere. His numerous artistic accolades and scholarships include: the Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, Gasteig Musikpreis and Zeit-Preis. In 2012, he was honoured with the Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis in 2016 with the Orpheus statuette of the Association of Polish Musicians, and in 2021 with the Honorary Award of the Polish Composers’ Union for expanding the repertoire of contemporary flute compositions and ‘for stimulating compositional creativity in this area and promoting new Polish music.’ In 2019, he received the title of Professor of Art from the President of the Republic of Poland.

Born in 1982. Polish pianist, composer and improviser. He holds a doctorate in classical piano from The Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy Of Music In Poznań, where he currently works as a lecturer at the jazz piano division.

As a young musician, he received many prestigious awards for both classical and jazz music: third prize at the International Piano Competition of the Russian Conservatory Alexander Scriabin, (Paris, France, 2007), and jazz music: second prize at the Warsaw Jazz Pianist Contest (Warsaw, Poland, 2006), Grand Prix at the “Jazz nad Odrą” Festival with the Soundcheck quartet (Wrocław, Poland, 2006).

His first original album, entitled “toys”, recorded by Krzysztof Dys Trio, the other members of which are Andrzej Święs (contrabass) and Krzysztof Szmańda (drums), was released in 2016.

Olari Elts’ passion for distinctive programming rich with invention has earned him much praise on the international music scene. He began his tenure as Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in 2020. Since 2018, he has also been Artistic Advisor of the Kymi Sinfonietta. In the 2021/2022 season, Elts will lead the ENSO on tour to Poland, as well as guest conduct orchestras with which he has regularly collaborated such as the Helsinki Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Weimar, the Slovenian Philharmonic and Sinfonietta Riga. He also looks forward to his debut with the Oslo Philharmonic, Prague Radio Symphony, the Polish Baltic Philharmonic in Gdansk, and further afield with Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec in Canada and the National Symphony Orchestra in Taiwan. Other highlights include conducting a new ballet production based on the life of Sibelius, in celebration of the Finnish National Ballet’s 100th anniversary.
As a champion of contemporary Baltic composers such as Erkki Sven Tüür and Heino Eller, Elts has released recordings of Heino Eller’s symphonic poems, as well as Eller’s violin concerto with Baiba Skride and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. Also widely celebrated by critics are his Ondine recordings of Erkki-Sven Tüür works with Tapiola Sinfonietta. Elts’ discography also includes the Borgström and Shostakovich violin concertos with Eldbjørg Hemsing and the Wiener Symphoniker under the BIS label, and Poul Ruders Symphony No. 5 with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra by Bridge Records. His upcoming albums will feature music by Kalevi Aho, recorded with the Kymi Sinfonietta under the BIS label, and music by the same composer recorded with the Antwerp Symphony. Elts was Principal Guest Conductor of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in 2007-2020 and held the same position at the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in 2011- 2014. He was also Artistic Advisor of the Orchestre de Bretagne in 2006-2011, Principal Guest Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in 2007-2010, and Chief Conductor of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra in 2001-2006. Born in Tallinn in 1971, Elts is the founder of his own contemporary music ensemble, NYYD Ensemble.

Russian bass Nikolay Didenko graduated from the Moscow Academy of Choral Art in both singing and conducting. He was previously a soloist of the ‘New Opera’ in Moscow and a member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio.

His operatic roles include Don Geronio (“Il Turco in Italia”) with the Royal Danish Opera, Shostakovich’s “Rayok” at the Liceu Barcelona, Cappelio (“I Capuleti e I Montecchi”) with Opera North (UK tour), Ramfis (“Aida”) and Oroveso (“Norma”) at the Teatro Comunale, Trieste (“La Forza del Destino”) and Comte des Grieux (“Manon Lescaut”) at Cologne Opera, “La Sonnambula” at the Bolshoi Theatre, Pistola (“Falstaff”) at the Bilbao Opera and Filippo II (“Don Carlo”) and Leporello (“Don Giovanni”) both with the Opera Köln. He continues to perform across the world with many significant companies including the Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, Metropolitan Opera and Bilbao Opera. He recently sung Don Pasquale at the Bolshoi Theatre and Iris at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier.

As a versatile performer, he is also established on the concert platform performing with Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Malmö Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra to name a few. He performed in the world premiere of “Green Mass” by Raskatov with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski.

Engagements this season and beyond include his debut at Dallas Opera for King Dodon (“The Golden Cockerel”) and “Turandot” with Cologne Opera. On the concert platform, he reunites with Vladimir Jurowski for “Frau ohne Schatten” at the Enescu Festival, Bucharest, and performs Rachmaninov’s “The Bells” at the Gulbenkian Festival.

Nikolay features on the Grammy award-winning disc “Penderecki conducts Penderecki”, for Best Choral Performance (2017).

Eesti Riiklik S ümfooniaorkester, ERSO) has become the most prominent Estonian orchestral ambassador abroad. It was created in 1926 as a small radio orchestra, but since then it has increased its international scope, particularly in recent decades. Olari Elts has served as its Chief Conductor and Artistic Director since 2020/2021. Neeme Järvi, ERSO’s longest-serving chief conductor, continues to cooperate with the orchestra as Honorary Artistic Director for Life, while the Artistic Adviser of the orchestra is Paavo Järvi.

The orchestra has dazzled the world with numerous tours and has participated in reputable international music festivals. They have played in prestigious venues such as the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Avery Fisher Hall (current David Geffen Hall) in New York, the Grand Hall of Saint Petersburg Philharmonia and the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, the Kölner Philharmonie, Helsinki Music Centre, the Berwaldhallen in Stockholm, and many more. In 2019, ERSO and Neeme Järvi opened the highly acclaimed Festival de Radio France et Montpellier. In addition to their praiseworthy live performances, the high quality of the musical recordings of the orchestra has been recognised by several renowned music magazines, and the recordings have won several prizes, including a Grammy Award (conductor Paavo Järvi).

The orchestra has enjoyed fruitful cooperation with highly acclaimed record companies such as Chandos, BIS, and Onyx, and in the past also with Alba Records, Harmonia Mundi and Melodiya. In 2018, Neeme Järvi received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the magazine Gramophone, and ERSO had the honour of performing at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards Gala. In addition to local radio and television channels, ERSO’s concerts have been broadcast by Mezzo and medici.tv. In 2018, when the Republic of Estonia celebrated its 100th anniversary, ERSO was deeply involved in the celebration programme, both in Estonia and internationally. In addition to tours in the US, Hong Kong, Armenia, and Georgia, Estonia’s first oratorio – Jonah’s Mission by Rudolf Tobias – was performed at the Konzerthaus Berlin, conducted by Neeme Järvi. Performances were also given at the Sibelius Festival in Lahti and the Baltic Symphony Festival in Riga. Furthermore, ERSO’s musicians gave 100 concerts in one week all over Estonia.

As the winner of the worlds most prestigious organ competitions and awards, László Fassang is one of the most versatile organists of his generation. He focuses on teaching and promoting classical compositions for the organ. To this end, he performs all over the world, teaching and giving public lectures in which he strives to bring both his pupils and audiences ever closer to the versatility of the organ and the wealth of its repertoire.
He plays an active part in what he considers the important task of the preservation and professional maintenance of historical organs. As an improvising keyboard artist of exceptional ability, his interests range from the harpsichord to the fortepiano, and from the piano all the way to the Hammond organ. As well as playing in classical chamber music ensembles, he regularly participates in world music and jazz performances.
László Fassang graduated with honours degrees from the Liszt Academy of Music and the Paris Conservatoire. In 2000, he spent a year in Japan, where he was organist-in-residence at the Sapporo Concert Hall. His competition prizes include the 2002 Calgary Gold Medal for improvisation as well as the Grand Prix for interpretation and the audience prize at the 2004 Les Grandes Orgues de Chartres.
Between 2004 and 2008 he taught improvisation at the San Sebastian College
of Music, followed by an organ teaching position at the Liszt Academy in Budapest.
Alongside his teaching activities he is a regular jury member in international organ competitions and performs in Europe, North America, and the Far East.
He is the artistic director of an v2 organ concert series at the Palace of Arts in Budapest. In 2006, his accomplishments were recognised with the Liszt Prize and the Prima Prize, and in 2013 – with the Gramophone Award. Since 2014 he has been teaching keyboard improvisation at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSM), where he succeeded Philippe Lefebvre.
He was selected by composer/conductor Peter Eötvös to collaborate on the creation of his organ concerto, Multi versum (2017) for the pipe organ, Hammond organ and orchestra, in which Fassang plays the solo Hammond organ part.

The winner of the 2017 Concours Musical International de Montreal for piano. He appeared in recitals throughout Europe and the United States in such prestigious venues as Carnegie’s Weill Hall in New York, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, Library of Congress in Washington DC

He is founder and Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Music Director of Berlin’s Konzerthaus and Konzerthausorchester, and from 2018, he is the Artistic Director of Vincenza Opera Festival. In recent years he has also gained reputation as a composer, with his works being performed in the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, Germany and Austria.

Lawrence Foster has held the post of music director in many institutions including Orchestre de Monte-Carlo, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra or Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne.



Born in 1941 in Los Angeles to Romanian parents, Lawrence Foster has been a major champion of George Enescu’s music. In January 2003, he was decorated by the Romanian President for outstanding services to Romanian musical culture.

Percussionist, graduate of a music school in Bydgoszcz; he studied at the Academy of Music in Cracow. He stresses that he owes his abilities to excellent teachers, such as Maciej Korpal, Mirosław Żyta, and Jan Pilch, as well as brilliant musicians with whom he has had the opportunity to play, including Janusz Muniak, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Zbigniew Wegehaupt, Adam Pierończyk, Michael ‘Patches’ Stewart, Leszek Możdżer, Dominik Wania, Adam Bałdych, Paweł Kaczmarczyk, Sebastian Bernatowicz, and Jerzy Małek. Fortuna regularly performs in the Adam Bałdych Quartet, New Bone, NSI Quartet, the Kuba Płużek Quartet, the Dominik Wania Trio, PeGaPoFo, and the Cracow Jazz Collective.

A soprano born in Warsaw, holder of scholarships from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (twice), the Pro Polonia and Young Poland (2014) programmes, as well as ISA2012. Her accolades include a Magna cum Laude medal (2013), the prestigious Orphée d’Or – Prix de la SACD awarded by the Académie du Disque Lyrique for the best contemporary music album (2016), nominations for the Fryderyk Award (in two categories for the real life song album, 2016) and for the Coryphaeus of Polish Music (2017), as well as the Passport Awards of the ‘Polityka’ weekly in the category of classical music (2017). Freszel has won prizes in vocal competitions: the Halina Halska-Fijałkowska, J.E.J. Reszke, the Karol Szymanowski, the Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, and the isa12 – J:opera Voice Competition, to name a few. She also reached the finals of the Concorso Internazionale di Musica Viotti. The artist has recorded music for films and radio dramas. Her festival appearances include: the ‘Festival of Premieres: Polish Modern Music’, the ‘Warsaw Autumn’, Festival d’Aix-enProvence, ‘Contrechamps’, ‘Sacrum Profanum’, ‘The Silesian String Quartet and Its Guests’, ‘Saaremaa Opera Days’, ‘Opera in the Town Hall Festival’, ‘Musica Polonica Nova’, ‘Melos-Ethos’, and many others.

She collaborates with the Estonian National Opera, Grand Theatre – Polish National Opera in Warsaw, and the Grand Theatre in Poznań. Her opera appearances include: Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème, Vénus and Phrygienne in Rameau’s Dardanus, Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust, The Machine in Wołek’s Nici (Needles), Susanna in Langer’s Figaro Gets a Divorce, Psyche in Różycki’s Eros and Psyche, Inanna in Nowak’s ahat ilī – Sister of Gods and She in the same composer’s Drach, as well as Ellenai in Przybylski’s Anhelli. The singer has been invited to perform by, among others, Warsaw Philharmonic, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR), the Sinfonia Varsovia, the Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra, the Beethoven Academy, the Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, orkest de ereprijs, AUKSO Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy, Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej (New Music Orchestra), as well as the philharmonic orchestras in Poland (Podlasie, Cracow, Silesian, Szczecin, Świętokrzyska, Zielona Góra) and abroad (Lviv, Odessa, and Donetsk). Though the soprano specialises in contemporary music, she successfully performs works from all periods. Freszel also graduated in environment protection from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences (SGGW). In 2019, she obtained her DMA degree with honours She has made guest apparances on albums by the Silesian String Quartet, Ewa Liebchen, Rafał Łuc, and Andrzej Karałow. Her second CD, Śpiewnik polski (Polish Songbook) was released early in 2019 by Orphée Classics.

Stage and film actor, graduate of Cracow’s State College of Acting (PWST, now the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts). He made his stage debut as Edmund in Aleksander Fredro’s Maidens’ Vows (dir. Mikołaj Grabowski, Słowacki Theatre, Cracow 1978). He played in productions directed by Krystian Lupa, Jerzy Jarocki, Jerzy Grzegorzewski, Mikołaj Grabowski and Grzegorz Jarzyna.

Marta Gardolińska is rapidly developing into one of the most exciting young conductors and is currently Music Director of Opera national de Lorraine. She was also recently announced as Principal Guest Conductor of Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona from the 22-23 season following her hugely successful debut last season.

Marta came to international attention in 2018 as Young Conductor in Association at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra where she led the orchestra in two highly successful subscription concerts. This led to her being offered a Dudamel Fellowship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic during the 2019-20 season which included an invitation to be to be second conductor to Gustavo Dudamel for their Grammy award winning live Deutsche Grammophon recording of Ives Symphony No. 4. Marta returned to the Los Angeles last summer to make her debut with the Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl which led to an immediate re-invitation to return in August 2022.

The 21-22 season saw Marta make important debuts with the London Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse and Royal Northern Sinfonia. Other recent highlights have included her Paris debut with the Orchestre Chambre de Paris, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Along with her work as a symphonic conductor, she is also active in the field of opera. During the 20- 21 season she made her hugely successful French debut with Opéra national de Lorraine conducting a new production of Zemlinsky’s Der Traumgörge and the 21-22 season saw acclaimed productions of Messager’s Fortunio in Nancy and her debut at Opera du Rhin in Strasbourg conducting Carmen with Stéphanie d’Oustrac. During the 22-23 season she will conduct a much-anticipated new production of Manru by Paderewski and a revival of La Traviata at Opera national de Lorraine. Between 2013-2015 she served as the second conductor with the company Johann–Strauss–Operette Wien, learning the purest style of the Viennese musical tradition.

Symphonic highlights of the current season include further important debuts with Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra and the Halle Orchestra, as well as a return visits to Birmingham to lead the CBSO Youth Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and three visits to Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona.



Inspired by the experience of singing in her school choir and fascinated by the colours of symphonic music, it led her to study conducting at the Frederic Chopin Music University of Warsaw, the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and in many masterclasses and workshops with artists such as Bernard Haitink, Peter Eötvös, Simone Young, György Kurtág and Marin Alsop.

In 2015, she was named Conductor in Residence of the Akademischer Orchesterverein Wien and during the 17/18 season she held the position of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of TU-Orchester Wien.

Among her many accolades she has received an Honourable Mention and the Special Orchestra Prize of the Witold Lutosławski Conducting Competition in Białystok, Poland (2016), the 3rd Prize and the Special Orchestra Prize from the Felix Mendelssohn International Conducting Competition in Thessaloniki, Greece (2016) and she has been one of eight semi-finalists in the 1st International Hong Kong Conducting Competition in 2018. In 2016, Marta was awarded the title “Outstanding Pole in Austria” for her efforts in popularizing Polish culture and music outside of the country. She was also named Associate Fellow for the seasons 2017-2019 by the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship established by Marin Alsop.

Before deciding to become a musician, she spent several years professionally training acrobatics, swimming, and middle distance running while at the same time studying flute and piano.

Rossen Gergov is gaining widespread recognition for his work both on the concert platform and in the orchestra pit, in repertoire from Mozart to the most challenging of contemporary works. Gergov held the position of Chief Conductor of the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra until 2017. He is currently Principal Guest Conductor of the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra.

Born in 1981, Rossen studied piano and clarinet before taking conducting lessons with Mikhail Angelov; subsequently he studied conducting with Leopold Hager and Seiji Ozawa.

In 2004, he graduated from the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw in clarinet. Composer, teacher, soloist and chamber musician. Co-founder of Kwartludium – an ensemble specializing in contemporary music performance. Author of music for theatrical performances and films. As an improviser, he has worked with such artists as Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Dror Feiler, Ken Vandermark, Mikołaj Trzaska, Zdzisław Piernik, Butch Morris, John Butcher and Mark Sanders. He is the author of the “music to languages” concept consisting in creating music to the languages of the world (Yiddish, Japanese, Indonesian, Iranian, English). As a soloist, he has cooperated

with the Wrocław Philharmonic, Szczecin Philharmonic, New Music Orchestra, AUKSO – Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy and the Silesian String Quartet. For several years, he has specialized in contrabass clarinet, performing contemporary, classical, ethnic and improvised music. In addition to Kwartludium, he is a member of such ensembles as Bastarda, Polonka and William’s Things.

Inspired mainly by the diversity of 20th- and 21st-century music (from Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit to Mikołaj Górecki Jr.’s Sonata), she also performs piano works by great Classical and Romantic composers, such as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, and others. Dialogues between different epochs and styles are the central field of her musical explorations, which she carries out in collaboration with other musicians, including conductors: Reinbert de Leeuw, Jacek Kaspszyk, Antoni Wit, Agnieszka Duczmal, Jerzy Maksymiuk, David Lloyd-Jones, Roland Bader, Marek Moś, Stephen Ellery, Volker Schmidt-Gertenbach, Wojciech Michniewski, and Marek Pijarowski. The pianist frequently premieres works by contemporary composers, some of which (such as Mikołaj Górecki Jr.’s and Tomasz Kamieniak’s piano sonatas) were written specially for her. She has appeared at the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music. The works of her father Henryk Mikołaj Górecki occupy an important place in her repertoire.

After her triumphant debut at London’s Wigmore Hall (1994), reviewer Rick Jones commented in the Evening Standard: ‘Anna Górecka proved herself an outstanding pianist […]. Gorecka’s talent is more than just a result of having had lessons since the age of four. There is God-given ability here. […] Her performance of the middle section of Ravel’s masterpiece Gaspard de la Nuit […] was one of the most moving pieces of piano playing I have ever heard.’ In 1998, Górecka took up an important and inspiring collaboration with excellent violinist Krzysztof Bąkowski. The duo’s album of Karol Szymanowski’s music (CD Accord, 2005) was voted Record of the Month on the MusicWeb International website.

The pianist has given performances in the world’s most prestigious concert halls such as: The Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Festival Hall in Osaka, Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, Vienna’s Bösendorfer Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Bristol’s Colston Hall, Warsaw Philharmonic, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra’s NOSPR Hall in Katowice, and the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio of Polish Radio in Warsaw. Górecka serves on the juries of Polish and international piano competitions, and teaches courses for young pianists. She is a professor at the Academy of Music in Katowice and a teacher in a secondary music school.

Doctor of ethnomusicology and Singer of Bulgarian descent; head of the Studio of Ethnomusicology at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences; coordinator of the Studio of Traditional Music at the Institute od Music and Dances (2015-17); co-founder and president of the Polish Seminar in Ethnomusicolgy. Three albums featuring this artist were nominated for the Fryderyk Award, while her own original CD project The Kurpie Ethnophonies was nominated for the prestigious Coryphaeus of Polish Music Award.

Since winning the Cello First Prize and Gold Medal in the 14th International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011 at the age of 22, Narek Hakhnazaryan has performed with most major orchestras, as well as in recital and chamber ensembles across the globe at many of the world’s most prestigious festivals. He has been described as “dazzlingly brilliant” (The Strad) and “nothing short of magnificent” (San Francisco Chronicle), while after his LAPO debut in the LA Times commented that “his command of the instrument is extraordinary”.

Narek Hakhnazaryan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, into a family of musicians. In September 2017 he was awarded the title of “Honoured Artist of Armenia” by the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan. Hakhnazaryan plays a 1707 Joseph Guarneri cello using F.X. Tourte and Benoit Rolland bows.

The Orchestra consists of eminently talented musicians from Poland as well as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. It was founded on the initiative of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as the flagship project of the International Cultural Programme of the Polish Presidency of the EU Council in 2011. The instrumentalists develop their technique under the supervision of outstanding conductors and orchestral musicians representing the world’s best orchestras.

Considered as one of the best sopranos of her generation; a soloist at Poznań’s Grand Theatre, also appearing at Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw.

She graduated with an honours degree from Poznań’s Academy of Music (class of Ewa Wdowicka). Jer accolades include a Grand Prix and Gold Medal at the International Maria Callas Grand Prix in Opera competition in Athens, 3rd prize and special Mozart award in the Ada Sari International Vocal Artistry Competition in Nowy Sącz and much more.

Composer, producer and sound artist. Creates electroacoustic music combining electronically prepared sounds with acoustic instruments (several solo albums). He also works with other artists, in a variety of media including video, visual art, choreography and photography. Composes movie scores for FILM and live theatre music. Member of Polish Society for Electroacoustic Music. Member Of Polish Film Academy.

Biosphere is the main recording name of Geir Jenssen, a Norwegian musician who has released a catalogue of ambient electronic music. He is well known for his works on ambient techno and arctic themed pieces, his use of music loops, and peculiar samples from sci-fi sources. In 2001, his 1997 album Substrata was voted the best classic ambient album of all time by the users of the website hyperreal.org.



Jenssen is also an active climber and mountaineer. It is hobby that provides him not only with inspiration for his work, but also a source of natural sound samples. His highest feat was in 2001, when he climbed the Cho You (Himalaya, 8201 meters) without supplementary oxygen. In 2006, the artist released the album Cho You 8201m – Field Recordings from Tibet (as Geir Jennsen).

Tomáš Juhás is a finalist in the International Opera Singing Competition“Iris Adami Corradetti” 2007, which took place in Padova, Italy. He participated in a masterclass led by world-famous tenor Sergej Larin. On foreign stages, he has performed in Janaček’s opera From the House of the Dead (Čerevin) at L’Opera Bastille in Paris and at Teatro Real in Madrid.

At the Narodne divadlo (National Theatre) in Prague, he has sung in the opera La Traviata (Alfredo), and at the Stavovske divadlo (Estates Theatre) in Prague, in Rudolf Karel’s opera Ilsea’s Heart (Domino).

At the summer Openair Festival in Swiss Solothurn, he appeared in the operas Turandot (Pong) and Pagliacci (Peppe). He has performed in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria – on Vienna Radio ORF and at the Konzerthaus in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. He has cooperated with such conductors as Marc Albrecht, Friedrich Heider, Stefan Lano, Ivan Anguelov, Giorgio Crocci, Tamas Vasary, Ondrej Lenard, Jaroslav Kyzlink, Oliver Dohnanyi, Jiři Bělohlavek, Jakub Hrůša, Janos Kovacs, Zoltan Kocsis and many others. His first CD is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Chihiro Hayashi (Slovart Records).

In 2008, he sang in an open-air production of La traviata in St. Margarethen in Austria as Alfredo Germont. In 2011, he sang the role of Jenik in The Bartered Bride (Smetana) with conductor Jiři Bělohlavek for BBC London (a concert and CD recording). In Tokyo in 2011, he performed Stabat Mater by Dvořak with conductor Jakub Hrůša. In Budapest and at the Miskolc Philharmonic – Budavari Te Deum (Kodaly) with Zoltan Kocsis. At Theater an der Wien, he sang in La Traviata and Il trovatore (Ruiz). In 2015, he worked as a stand-in at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (Lenski) and at Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile as Steva in Jenůfa.

Currently, he is preparing for the roles of Gabriele Adorno (Simon Boccanegra) and Rodolfo (La Boheme) in Paphos, Cyprus. At the Czech National Theatre in Prague, he sings as Boris in Kaťa Kabanova (Janaček) directed by Robert Wilson.

Tõnu Kaljuste has established himself as one of the world’s leading choral and orchestral conductors. A prolific recording artist, he has bulit an extensive discography, with releases for ECM Records, Virgin Classics, BIS and Caprice Records.



Since 2010, Kaljuste has been Professor and Head of the Conducting Department of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. He founded both the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, and held the position of Principal Conductor with both the Swedish Radio Choir and the Netherlands Chamber Choir.

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (EPCC) is one of the best-know Estonian music ensembles in the world. It was founded in 1981 by Tõnu Kaljuste, who served as its Artistic Director and Chief Conductor for 20 years, to bbe followed by Paul Hiller (2001-07), Daniel Reuss (2008-13) and now Kaspars Putnins (since 2014).

The repertoire of the Choir extends from early music period to the music of the 21st century, with a special focus on the works of Estonian composers.

One of Poland’s foremost conductors, Jacek Kaspsyzk has previously held positions as Artistic Director
of the Warsaw Philharmonic, NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic, Music Director of the Polish National Radio
Symphony Orchestra and of the Polish National Opera as well as Principal Conductor and Music Advisor
of the Noord Nederlands Orkest. He is also Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Beethoven
Academy Orchestra in Krakow.
Since his early success at the Karajan Conducting Competition in Berlin, Jacek Kaspszyk has conducted
many major orchestras throughout the world including Berlin Philharmonic, Symphonieorchester des
Bayerischen Rundfunks, RSO Berlin, Orchestre de Paris, Vienna Symphony, the Oslo, Stockholm,
Rotterdam and Czech Philharmonics, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with whom he toured
Australia. He has worked with all the major London orchestras, the BBC Orchestras (including at the
BBC Proms), as well as the Royal Scottish National, the Hallé and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
orchestras. He has toured extensively with the Warsaw Philharmonic in Europe, Asia and most recently
in the USA to great critical acclaim.
Last season saw performances with the Janacek Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and
the Orchestre National de l’Ile de France with pianist Louis Lortie. Jacek Kaspszyk is regularly invited to
China, and in the past he has conducted the China Philharmonic, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou
Symphony Orchestras.
Highlights of the 2019/20 season will be concerts with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, Bern
Symphony Orchestra, Slovenian and Slovak philharmonic orchestras and Orchestra di Padova e di
Veneto as well as being welcomed back to the Warsaw Phiharmonic and the Sinfonia Varsovia. He will
also return to China to conduct the Shanghai and Guangzhou Symphony Orchestras.
Recent guest conducting engagements include the Lucerne, Lahti and Yomiuri Nippon symphony
orchestras, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra, the Orquesta de Valencia, the Symphony Orchestra of
India and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as performances with the St. Petersburg
Philharmonic, following his highly acclaimed debut with the Mariinsky Opera Orchestra at the White
Nights Festival 2017 in St. Petersburg. In addition, he regularly appears at major summer Festivals such
as La Roque d’Anthéron, Chopin and his Europe, Kissinger Sommer, the Lugano Festival and the
Prague Spring Festival.
In opera, Kaspszyk has worked at renowned opera houses including the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in
Düsseldorf, Opéra Comique in Paris, Opéras de Lyon and Bordeaux, English National Opera, Zurich
Opera, and Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. For the Staatstheater Nürnberg, he conducted Szymanowski’s
masterpiece King Roger to great international acclaim.
Widely represented on CD, his recording of Lutosławski’s Symphonies No 2 & 4 with the NFM Wroclaw
Philharmonic received the 2011 Fryderyk Award as Album of the Year, Symphonic and Concert Music.
Kaspszyk has also made a ground-breaking recording of Szymanowski’s King Roger with Polish National
Opera. He enjoys a fruitful collaboration with Martha Argerich, having regularly conducted at the Progetto
Martha Argerich Festival in Lugano, documented on several acclaimed CDs for EMI. Recent recordings
with the Warsaw Philharmonic for Warner Classics include a critically acclaimed performance of
Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater and Symphony No. 3, while his latest CD release (spring 2018) features
Mlynarsky’s Symphony Polonia, Penderecki’s Polonaise and Weinberg’s Polish Melodies. Further
recordings for Warner Classics are in the pipeline.
Kaspszyk has received the prestigious Elgar Medal in recognition of his many fine performances of
Elgar's works, joining distinguished colleagues like Daniel Barenboim, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andrew
Litton and Leonard Slatkin. Following an all-Lutoslawski programme for the Warsaw Autumn Festival in
October 2013, he was also awarded the Lutoslawski Medal.

Sigvards Kļava has been the artistic director of the Latvian Radio Choir (LRC) since 1992. As a result of his steady efforts, the LRC has become an internationally recognised, vocally distinctive musical group, sought-after by top music festivals and invited to collaborate with the most outstanding composers and conductors. Sigvards Kļava studied conducting at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, the Bachakademie Stuttgart, the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and attended masterclasses at the Oregon Bach Festival. He has been a professor in the conducting department of the JVLAM since 2000.

Sigvards Kļava has received the Great Music Award of Latvia several times. He is also a recipient of the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers Award and the Order of the Three Stars. He has been principal conductor of the Latvian Song Festival since 1990. Sigvards Kļava is a professor in the Choral Conducting Faculty at the JVLAM. He has also taken part in numerous competitions as a member of the jury. Kļava has conducted concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Elbphilharmonie, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic and elsewhere. He serves on international juries and takes part in educational projects. As a guest conductor, Kļava has performed with the Netherlands Radio Choir, the Netherlands Opera Choir, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, Cappella Amsterdam, the Berlin RIAS Chamber Choir, the MDR Leipzig Radio Choir and many others.

One of the most promising talents of her generation, Anastasia Kobekina debuted with an orchestra at the age of six. Since that time she has had the opportunity to perform with many renowned orchestras, such as Moscow Virtuosi, Kremerata Baltica, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and many others – under the guidance of Krzysztof Penderecki, Heinrich Schiff, Vladimir Spivakov and Valery Gergiev. In June 2019, Anastasia won the Bronze Medal at the XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition in St. Petersburg. In 2018, she became a ‘New Generation Artist’ of the BBC 3 Radio Scheme and was also awarded the Prix Thierry Scherz and the Prix André Hoffmann at the Swiss Winter Music Festival ‘Sommets musicaux de Gstaad’, a prize that comprises a recording with orchestra for the Swiss recording label Claves (released in April 2019). Highlights of the 2021/2022 season include debuts with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre Nationale de Lille, the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (OBC), as well as her debuts at the Verbier Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. One of the young cellist’s main dedications and passions is chamber music and she has participated in many festivals, performing with artists such as Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Giovanni Sollima, Denis Matsuev, Fazil Say, Vladimir Spivakov and András Schiff. Born into a family of musicians, she received her first cello lessons at the age of four at her home in Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Ural region of Russia. Following the completion of her studies at the Central Music School in Moscow, she was invited to study at the famous Kronberg Academy in Germany with Frans Helmerson. She continued her studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin in the class of Prof. Jens Peter Maintz. She is currently a student of Jérôme Pernoo at the Conservatoire of Paris and at the Frankfurter Hochschule in the class of Kristin von der Goltz (Baroque Cello). Anastasia Kobekina performs on Violoncello Antonio Stradivarius from the year 1698 generously loaned by Stradivari Stiftung Habisreutinger.

Bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny studied acting in Łódź, as well as solo singing at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy (presently, University) of Music and with Christian Elsner at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden. As an actor he made his debut in Andrzej Wajda’s The Ring with a Crowned Eagle. He later played in many film, television and theatre productions, and directed plays (among others, Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid at Warsaw’s Adekwatny Theatre, 1996). Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera) has been his artistic home since 2009.

He is one of the Viennese audience’s favourites. After his sensational success in R. Wagner’s Ring Cycle (cond. Franz Welser-Möst), the brilliant interpretations of the parts of Jochanaan in R. Strauss’s Salome, Wotan in the Ring Cycle (2011) and Jack Rance in the premiere performance of G. Puccini’s La fanciulla del West for the inauguration of Vienna’s operatic season 2013/14, Konieczny has secured his place among the world’s best young bass-baritones performing the German repertoire. On 9 March 2019, Konieczny debuted in Wagner’s Das Rheingold at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. After the spectacle, Anthony Tommasini wrote in the New York Times: ‘The standout member of the cast was Tomasz Konieczny, a powerhouse bass, in a breakthrough Met debut as Alberich.’ On 3 May 2017, the Austrian Council of Ministers (Ministerrat) granted Konieczny an honorary citizenship of that country. On 16 January 2019, at the request of Wiener Staatsoper, the artist received the highest professional title in the German-speaking opera world: that of Österreichischer Kammersänger.

Among Tomasz Konieczny’s latest roles, it is worth mentioning the part of Janusz in Halka, staged with great success in the Moniuszko Year (2019), including at the Theater an der Wien, the title role in Paul Hindemith’s Cardillac at the Grand Theatre – National Opera in Warsaw (premiere in June 2021) and participation in the performance of Wanda – with music by Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa, based on the play by Norwid, presented by the Krakow Opera in September 2021 at the Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow.

Described as a “visionary and poet of the cello”, Bartosz Koziak has gained the acclaim of music lovers and critics not only for his extraordinary interpretation of works by both classical and contemporary composers but also for his thoughtful and often daring program choices.

As an established performer of contemporary music, Bartosz Koziak was a long time and regular guest participant in Krzysztof Penderecki's concert projects. He participated in the first CD recording of the Concerto grosso conducted by the composer and has performed most of his cello works.

Bartosz Koziak has given first performances of a number of works including the “DoubleCello Concerto” by Hanna Kulenty, the Cello Concerto by Anna Zawadzka-Gołosz, “Sixth commandment” by Elżbieta Sikora, performed together with “Quando stanno morendo. Diario polacco no.2" by Luigi Nono as part of the Sikora/Nono project with Les Métaboles ensemble and SWR Experimentalstudio

His discography includes recordings of Grażyna Bacewicz's Second Cello Concerto, Krzysztof Meyer's Cello Concerto "Canti Amadei", Bohuslav Martinů’s Cello Concerto No.2 and the premiere recording of Feliks Nowowiejski's Cello Concerto (DUX), two CDs with Justyna Danczowska of cello and piano works by Schubert, Schumann, Franck and Shostakovich, and an album of Martinů, Kodály and Ravel, recorded with Anna Maria Staśkiewicz (Sarton)

Widely considered one of the greatest clarinetist on the planet, he has been praised internationally as a key innowator in moder klezmer as well as a major voice in classical music. In 2015 he received a Grammy nomination in the Chamber Music/ Small Ensemble category as solist with the conductorless orchestra A Far Cry, and a Juno nomination for the CD Akoka with cellist Matt Haimovitz.

Over the past decade Krakauer has emerged as an electrifying symphonic soloist who brings his singular sound and powerfull aproach to the concert stage. He has appeared with the world’s finest orchestras including the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Baltimore Symphony, the Weimar Staatskapelle.

-Among the world’s leading violinists, Gidon Kremer has perhaps pursued the most unconventional career. He was born on 27 February 1947 in Riga, Latvia, and began studying at the age of four with his father and grandfather, both distinguished string players. At the age of seven, he enrolled as a student at Riga Music School where he made rapid progress, and at sixteen he was awarded the First Prize of the Latvian Republic. Two years later he began his studies with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. Gidon Kremer went on to win a series of prestigious awards, including prizes in the 1967 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels and 1969 Montreal International Music Competition and first prize in both the 1969 Paganini and 1970 Tchaikovsky International Competitions.

Over the past five decades he has established and sustained a worldwide reputation as one of the most original and compelling artists of his generation. He has appeared on almost every major concert stage as recitalist and with the most celebrated orchestras of Europe and North America, and has worked with many of the greatest conductors of the past half century.

Gidon Kremer’s repertoire is unusually wide and strikingly varied. It encompasses the full span of classical and romantic masterworks for violin, together with music by such leading twentieth and twenty-first century composers as Berg, Henze and Stockhausen. He has also championed the work of living Russian and Eastern European composers and has performed many important new compositions by them, several of which have been dedicated to him. His name is closely associated with such composers as Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Luigi Nono, Edison Denisov, Aribert Reimann, Pēteris Vasks, John Adams, Victor Kissine, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass, Leonid Desyatnikov and Astor Piazzolla, whose works he performs in ways that respect tradition while being fully alive to their freshness and originality. It is fair to say that no other soloist of comparable international stature has done more to promote the cause of contemporary composers and new music for violin.

Robert Kružik belongs to the youngest generation of Czech conductors. Since January 2016 he has been a permanent conductor of the Janaček Opera House of the National Theatre Brno as well as of the Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava (2016-2019), and a permanent guest conductor of the Brno Philharmonic starting in the season 2018/2019. In April 2020, he accepted the offer of the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic and since the 2021/2022 season he has been its Chief Conductor. He is a laureate of the Jiři Bělohlavek Award.
In addition to opera stages, Kružik works with several orchestras such as the Czech Philharmonic, Slovak Philharmonic, MDRSinfonieorchester, Brno Philharmonic, PKF - Prague Philharmonia, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Janaček Philharmonic Ostrava, Slovak State Philharmonic Košice, etc. As a conductor he made his appearance at Smetana’s Litomyšl Festival, the St. Wenceslas Music Festival in Ostrava and in major concert halls in the Czech Republic. In May 2020, he made his debut at the Prague Spring Festival with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Born in Brno, he started as a cellist and later graduated from Brno Conservatory where besides playing cello (as a pupil of Miroslav Zicha) he engaged in conducti ng (as a pupil of Stanislav Kummer). He pursued his studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where he was taught conducting by Leoš Svarovsky, Charles Olivieri-Munroe and Lubomir Matl as well as the subject of cello by Miroslav Petraš. In the 2012/2013 academic year, he obtained a study-related placement in Zurcher Hochschule der Kunste in Switzerland where he focused on both subjects. He performed, with success, at several cello competitions, among others the Prague Spring, the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Interpretation Competition, and the Leoš Janaček International Competition. He broadened his experience and skills participating in master courses in cello performance under the guidance of Jiři Barta, Michaela Fukačova and Raphael Wallfisch and conducting under Norbert Baxa, Johannes Schlaefli and David Zinman.

As a composer and conductor, he has worked with Krzysztof Pełech, Łukasz Kuropaczewski, Tomasz Strahl, Jan Stanienda, Kristin Naigus, Hans de Jong, Johan van der Linden and the “Amadeus” Polish Radio Chamber Orchestra, Ningbo Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Wilanów Quartet and Atom String Quartet. He has won prizes in many competitions in Poland and abroad; he has also been a scholarship holder from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Society of Authors ZAiKS.



He is the artistic director of the Sound Factory Orchestra and co-organizer of such initiatives as the “International Sound Factory” series and the “Sine scientia ars nihil est” festival. He also cooperates with the Game Music Festival and participates in creating the artistic sphere of the festival.



Since 2018, he has been a member of the Council of the Lower Silesian Academic Incubator of Entrepreneurship of the Wrocław Technology Park; since 2019, he has been lecturing on innovative management methods as part of the Postgraduate Cultural Institutions Management Studies of the Wrocław University of Economics and Business.

Aleksandra Kurzak began her musical education at the age of seven, playing the violin and piano. She graduated from the Vocal Faculty of the Academy of Music in Wrocław and Hochschule fur Musik and Theater in Hamburg. She made her professional opera debut at the age of 22 in the Wrocław Opera as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. In 2001-2007 she was engaged at Hamburg’s Staatsoper. She was only 27 years old when she performed in the world’s two most prestigious opera houses: the Metropolitan Opera in New York and Royal Opera House in London.

Aleksandra Kurzak is Poland’s first opera singer to have signed an exclusive recording contract with Decca. At present she records for Sony Classical.

Felix Lajko

Felix Lajko was born in Bačka Topola a towin in the multi-cultural Voivodina region of present-day Serbia on 17 December 1974 (the same day as Beethoven just a little over 200 years before). Despire their love of music, no member of his ethnically Hungarian family had ever chosen music as a profession before. Having started out with playing the zither, Lajkó quit the Music High School in Subotica at the sophomore grade to go to Budapest with a borrowed violin and become a member of the Dresch Quartet. He has been commuting between Budapest, Hungary, Subotica, Serbia, ever since, representing and culturally connecting Hungary and his native Voivodina region.

Gunar Letzbor studied composition, conducting and violin at Linz, Salzburg and Cologne. His encounters with Nicolaus Harnoncourt and Reinhard Goebel ignited a deep passion for period instruments and performance practice, leading him to perform extensively with Musica Antiqua Koln, the Clemencic Consort, La Folia Salzburg, Armonico Tributo Basel and the Wiener Akademie.

Gunar Letzbor founded his own ensemble, Ars Antiqua Austria, an instrumental ensemble of varying size dedicated in particular to the exploration of the rich, but neglected, baroque repertoire of his native country and its neighbours. Corollaries of this voyage of re-discovery have been not only the unexpected finds of musical masterpieces otherwise destined to languish in obscurity, but also the articulation of a uniquely central-European instrumental sound and its often deeply spiritual inspiration.

As a soloist and with Ars Antiqua Austria, Letzbor has made numerous recordings (including several world premieres), featuring works by Mozart, Bach, Biber, Muffat, Aufschnaiter, Viviani, Schmelzer, Weichlein, Vejvanovsky, Vilsmayr and Conti . Many of these CDs have received major record awards, including the Cannes Classical Award and Amadeus’ Disco dell’Anno. Particularly remarkable was his world’s premiere recording of Sonatas for violin solo by J. J. Vilsmayr and J. P. Westhoff and J. S. Bach.

Letzbor has performed at every major baroque music Festival in Europe, including Festival de la Musique Baroque in Ribeauville, Festwochen der Alten Musik in Berlin, Festival Printemps des Arts in Nantes, Mozartfest in Wurzburg, Tagen alter Musik in Herne, Folles Journees de Nantes and Tokyo, Musee d’Unterlinden Colmar, the Flanders Festival, Festival Bach de Lausanne, the Bologna Festival, Resonanzen Wien, Klangbogen Wien, the Monteverdi Festival in Cremona, Mavesti vall in Brugge, Vlandern Festival, at the Munich Staatsoper, the Salzburg Festival...

Gunar Letzbor has taught at the Musikhochschule in Lubeck (Germany) and Vienna (Austria); he is a widely respected teacher, offering summer courses across Europe.

Letzbor’s recording of Viviani’s “Capricci Armonici” received a Cannes Classical Award.

Jan Lisiecki’s interpretations and technique speak to a maturity beyond his age. At 27, the Canadian performs over a hundred yearly concerts worldwide, and has worked closely with conductors such as Antonio Pappano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Daniel Harding, Manfred Honeck, and Claudio Abbado (†).

In 2021/2022, Lisiecki presents a new recital programme featuring Chopins Nocturnes and Études in more than 30 cities all around the globe. Recent return invitations include Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for performances at Carnegie Hall and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Lisiecki recently performed a Beethoven Lieder cycle with baritone Matthias Goerne, among others at the Salzburg Festival, and has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony and London Symphony Orchestra.

At the age of fifteen, Lisiecki signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. The label launched its celebrations of the Beethoven Year 2020 with the release of a live recording of all five Beethoven concertos from Konzerthaus Berlin, with Lisiecki leading the Academy of St Martin in the Fields from the piano. His Beethoven Lieder cycle with Matthias Goerne, released shortly after, was awarded the Diapason d’Or. Lisiecki’s eighth recording for the prestigious label, a double album of Frédéric Chopin's Complete Nocturnes which he also showcases in his current recital programme, appeared in August 2021 and in February 2022 on vinyl, immediately topping the classical charts in North America and Europe. Most recently, his previous solo programme Night Music, featuring works by Mozart, Ravel, Schumann and Paderewski, was released as a digital album. His recordings have been awarded with the JUNO and ECHO Klassik. At eighteen, Lisiecki became both the youngest ever recipient of Gramophone’s Young Artist Award and received the Leonard Bernstein Award. He was named UNICEF Ambassador to Canada in 2012

Born in Warsaw. She began her music education by learning to play the flute and piano. In 2014, she began vocal studies at the Grażyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łodź. In 2020, she obtained a master’s degree at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. She has a BA from the Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw.



She has performed on the stages of, among others, the Wrocław Opera, the Warsaw Chamber Opera, the Grand Theatre in Łodź as well as in Toyota and Hachiōji in Japan. The artist has sung in operas by Mozart – The Marriage of Figaro (Barbarina, Susanna), Cosi fan tutte (Fiordiligi), Handel – Semele (Iris) and Nicolai – The Merry Wives of Windsor (Frau Fluth). The album Chopin University Modern Ensemble – Debut featuring her performance of Folk Songs by Luciano Berio was nominated for the Fryderyk 2021 award. In 2022, she was invited to perform the solo part in the piece Madonna for soprano, choir and orchestra by Bassem Akiki at the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio in Warsaw, with the participation of the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir under the direction of the composer himself.

Małe Instrumenty (Small Instruments) are a band exploring new sounds using a wide array of small instruments. The instruments used in their sonic experiments feature an ever expanding array of professional instruments, sound toys made for children or naïve in nature, strange musical inventions as well as a whole array of small items that aren’t really instruments but do make a sound. The music created in this way reveals unique colours of sound – sometimes beautiful and fine, sometimes surprising and insightful, sometimes exposing the incomplete nature of the sound created and allowing ears to feast on this restriction. All this means that the band is constantly faced with the need to look for new creative solutions.
The group was started by Pawel Romanczuk in 2006, other members: Marcin Ożóg, Tomasz Orszulak, Jędrzej Kuziela and Maciej Bączyk. In July 2007 the band made its debut at Era New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw/Poland and has since worked on many music projects under the name of Male Instrumenty. Male Instrumenty also record the music for films, broadcasts, audiobooks. The group has collaborated with many prominent art organizations and artists in Poland and Europe

The Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra has existed for more than two centuries and is associated with such famous names as Józef Elsner, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, Karol Lipiński. In the early 20th century, such great conductors as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and Ruggero Leoncavallo stayed in Lviv and gave performances with the Orchestra. From 1933 the ensemble performed as the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra and in 2018 was granted the status of the Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.

Baritone; graduate of the Juilliard School, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Academy of Music in Łodź. In the 2022/2023 season, he made his debut as Gerard in the opera Andrea Chenier by Umberto Giordano (in St. Gallen, Switzerland), as Sprecher in Mozart’s The Magic Flute (in Zurich) and as Vodnik in Dvořak’s Rusalka (in Hanover). He is also going to perform as Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca at the Toulon Opera. In the 2021/2022 season, he made his debut as Iago in Otello by Verdi in Hanover and as Scarpia on the stage in Nancy.



He has performed as Don Giovanni (Santiago de Chile; Wrocław), Mephistopheles in Faust (Santiago de Chile; Wrocław), Escamillo (Hanover; Dusseldorf), Figaro (Florence; Warsaw), Don Magnifico (Florence), Don Basilio (Hanover) and Dulcamara (Hanover). He has also sung the bass solo in Handel’s oratorio Messiah (Carnegie Hall; Lisbon) and the bass solo in Mozart’s Requiem (Frankfurt). His future roles include the title character in the opera William Tell by Rossini, the Dutchman in Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and Jochanaan in Salome by Strauss.

monodia is a Polish vocal ensemble, practicing old Polish religious and secular songs in the melodic variants collected by Adam Strug in the Lomza District and Kurpie Zielone region of Poland. In the Polish language ‘monodia’ means singing in unison a capella or with an accompaniment of traditional instruments such as a hurdy-gurdy.

The ensemble rejects major-minor scales, which since the 18th century has dominated keyboard and operatic conventions. They reconstructed ancient chants and early music by using ancient musical scales, the original ways of performing, and vocal manners, that were saved by the oral tradition of folk artists.

The oral tradition continued by “Monodia” includes the songs of Polish chivalry, baroque and eighteenth century prayers, romantic devotional songs, and various folk songs that express reverence and devotion to God.

The Kurpian songs that inspired ‘Monodia’ are an expression of musical and poetic genius of the people from the Polish countryside. Their mastery is on one hand reminiscent of the vocal art of the Middle East, and on the other, an integral part of Polish culture that inspired great works of Polish composers Karol Szymanowski and Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki.

This is a unique, award-winning ensemble of professional singers that offers its audiences an extraordinarily varied repertoire ranging from early music to the most sophisticated scores of contemporary compositions. The choir has recorded the Grammywinning album Adam’s Lament (ECM) composed by Arvo Pärt and conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste. It is a repeat winner of the Great Music Award of Latvia (the highest national award for professional achievement in music) and has received the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers Award. The choir’s recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil was praised by Gramophone as the best recording of February 2013, and ranked among the 25 Best Albums of the Year by the American radio station NPR.

The Latvian Radio Choir has performed at many of the world’s most renowned concert halls: Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw (the Netherlands), Elbphilharmonie (Germany), Duke University Chapel (USA), Théâtre des ChampsElysées and Cité de la MusiquePhilharmonie de Paris (France), Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (USA), Konzerthaus Berlin (Germany), the Library of Congress (USA), Queen Elizabeth Hall (UK), and the Dresden Frauenkirche (Germany). In 2019, the Latvian Radio Choir toured in Japan and China – two special programmes were performed in Shanghai in October, while in November, the choir’s opera NEOARCTIC premiered in Hong Kong. For its album of Tchaikovsky’s sacred music, released by the recording label Ondine, the Latvian Radio Choir was awarded the 2020 International Classical Music Award (ICMA) in the Choral Works category

Recognised as a truly exciting and versatile violinist, Leticia Moreno “captivates audiences and critics alike with her natural charisma, virtuosity and deep interpretative force”.

She has appeared with the most renowned conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Paavo Jarvi, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Christoph Eschenbach, Yuri Temirkanov, Krzysztof Penderecki, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Josep Pons, Juanjo Mena, Gustavo Gimeno, Peter Eötvös, and Andrey Boreyko amongst others.

She has also performed with leading orchestras such as Wiener Symphoniker, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Washington’s National Symphony, The Mariinsky Orchestra, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, and is a regular guest with most of the major Spanish orchestras.

Leticia recently premiered Jimmy Lopez’ new violin concerto “Aurora”, with Houston Symphony Orchestra and Andres Orozco Estrada to critical acclaim. Last season she had her debut with NCPA Orchestra in Beijing conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy, Philharmonia Orchestra with Paavo Jarvi, Prague Spring Festival and Rostropovich Festival and returned to Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Gulbenkian Orchestra.

Leticia’s 2019/2020 season will see her debut with the Helsinki Philharmonic and Peter Eötvös as well as with NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo with Paavo Jarvi. Leticia will also perform with Mozarteum Orchestra and Andrey Boreyko, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie with Josep Pons, Musica Viva Chamber Orchestra in Moscow and San Carlo Theatre Orchestra as well.

As a keen recitalist and chamber musician, Leticia has collaborated alongside Sol Gabetta, Bertrand Chamayou, Kirill Gerstein, Alexander Ghindin, Lauma Skride, Mario Brunello, Leonard Elschenbroich, Ksenija Sidorova and Maxim Rysanov.

Leticia released her latest album Piazzolla on Deutsche Grammophon, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London and Emil Berliner Studio, Berlin with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Andrés Orozco-Estrada. Leticia has also recently recorded two CDs for Universal/Deutsche Grammophon: Spanish Landscapes - a study of Spanish Music (Sarasate, Lorca, Granados, Falla etc) and Shostakovich Violin Concerto No.1 with St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yuri Temirkanov.

Leticia studied with Zakhar Bron, Maxim Vengerov and Mtislav Rostropovich at Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne and Guildhall School in London, and was the youngest member of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. Leticia Moreno has won international violin competitions such as Szeryng, Concertino Praga, Novosibirsk, Sarasate, Kreisler, as well as the being awarded with the Echo Rising Star.

Born in Spain of Peruvian descent, Leticia Moreno has developed strong ties with Latin America, especially with her country of origin where she returns every season to perform and which has as a corollary her recent World Premier of Jimmy Lopez’s new violin concerto “Aurora” in Houston and Lima. Leticia plays a 1762 Nicola Gagliano.

Conductor, outstanding Polish violinist and chamber musician; director of AUKSO – Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy since its inception, and artistic director of the AUKSO Summer Philharmonic festival. He was also a founder of the Silesian Quartet, one of Europe’s best string quartets.

Marek Moś studied with Kazimierz Dębicki and Andrzej Grabiec in Bytom and at Katowice’s Academy of Music, winning a prize in Cracow’s Contemporary Music Competition in 1979. His recordings won two recommendations at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris (in 1984 and 1988).

Anne-Sophie Mutter is a musical phenomenon: for 46 years the virtuoso has now been a fixture in all the world’s major concert halls, making her mark on the classical music scene as a soloist, mentor and visionary.
The four-time Grammy® Award winner is equally committed to the performance of traditional composers as to the future of music: so far she has given world premieres of 31 works – Thomas Adès, Unsuk Chin, Sebastian Currier, Henri Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina, Witold Lutoslawski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir André Previn, Wolfgang Rihm, Jörg Widmann and John Williams have all composed for Anne-Sophie Mutter. She dedicates herself to supporting tomorrow’s musical elite and numerous benefit projects. Furthermore, the board of trustees of the German cancer charity “Deutsche Krebshilfe” elected her the new president of the non-profit organization in 2021. Since January 2022 she joins the foundation board of the Lucerne Festival. In the autumn of 1997 she founded the Association of Friends of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation e.V., to which the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation was added in 2008. These two charitable institutions provide support for the scholarship recipients, support which is tailored to the fellows’ individual needs. Since 2011, Anne-Sophie Mutter has regularly shared the spotlight on stage with her ensemble of fellows, Mutter’s Virtuosi.

Given Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, which is in violation of international law, Anne-Sophie Mutter has been playing four benefit concerts for its victims in March and April 2022 – and more are to follow. “Everyone can and must help now,” says the artist. “Words alone are not enough. This is a humanitarian catastrophe – we must stand with the people in Ukraine and with the refugees as well.”

Anne-Sophie Mutter’s concert calendar for 2022 once again reflects the musical versatility of the violinist and her outstanding position in the classical music world: at the Lucerne Festival, she has given the world premiere of the Air for Violin and Orchestra by Thomas Adès, which she co-commissioned. Lucerne will also has seen the performance of the Violin Concerto No. 2 by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. She has performed the violin concerto Anne-Sophie, which André Previn dedicated to her, in several German cities – including at the Usedom Music Festival. Here, her appearance at the former turbine hall of the Peenemünde Power Station with the New York Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden set an impressive signal for international understanding, far beyond German-American relations. In 2022 Anne-Sophie Mutter performs the Brahms Double Concerto together with cellist Pablo Ferrández – both with the Czech Philharmonic and Manfred Honeck as well as the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Ed Gardner. The violinist performs Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in the USA, both with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Sir Andrew Davis and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Riccardo Muti, and in Germany with the Pittsburgh Orchestra under Manfred Honeck. Another musical focus in 2022 is on John Williams’ oeuvre: in Vienna and the USA, Mutter performs his Violin Concerto No. 2, of which she is the dedicatee, and a selection of the virtuoso adaptations of film scores Williams created especially for her. These performances are conducted by the composer. Chamber music programmes are also planned: violin sonatas and piano trios by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with Lambert Orkis and the cellists Maximilian Hornung and Lionel Martin. Further recitals with her long-standing piano partner will feature works by Beethoven, Franck and Mozart. During a chamber music tour with active and former fellows of her foundation, she will perform Beethoven’s String Quartet in G-major Op. 18 No 2, Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat-major Op. 20 No. 1 and Jörg Widmann’s Studie über Beethoven, which she gave the world premiere of in Tokyo on February 22, 2020.

Zsolt Nagy studied conducting with István Párkai at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. Further studies with Péter Eötvös led him to become Eötvös’s assistant at the Institute for New Music of the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, and to numerous other projects including appearances as Guest Professor at the International Eotvös Institute in Stuttgart (1995), Cologne (1997), Edenkoben (1998, 2005, 2009), and Budapest (2015). He has been active as an opera and orchestra conductor since 1987, and leader of various orchestra projects and masterclasses for conductors in European conservatories since 1992. In 1999, he was appointed Chief Conductor and Musical Advisor of the Israel Contemporary Players. Between 2002 and 2014, he was Professor of Conducting at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris (CNSMDP).

Zsolt Nagy has worked with many leading orchestras and ensembles, including the RAI orchestras in Milan and Turin, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, the National Hungarian Symphony Orchestra, RIAS Berlin, the Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Hilversum, the Tokyo Geidai Philharmonic Orchestra and the New Japan Philharmonic in Tokyo, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Orchestras in Baden-Baden, Cologne, Saarbrücken and Stuttgart, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva, Ensemble Recherche, Klangforum Wien, Musikfabrik NRW, etc.

He has more than 800 first performances to his name, as well as numerous radio recordings and CD releases. He received a special award for the promotion of new Israeli music, the Victor Tevah Award of the Symphony Orchestra of Chile and the RadioHead Award of 2017.

NOSPR is one of the most important Polish symphony orchestras and a cultural institution with a broad range of activities. Its history dates back to 1935 and is inextricably linked with Grzegorz Fitelberg, who was entrusted with the task of creating the first independent radio symphony orchestra in Poland. The orchestra debuted on air on 2 October 1935, and has been broadcast repeatedly on Polish Radio ever since. After the Second World War, the orchestra was reactivated in Katowice and its reconstruction was entrusted in 1945 to Witold Rowicki. In the decades that followed, the orchestra gradually strengthened its international reputation, performing in the world’s most important concert halls and collaborating with the greatest artists of our times, including Leonard Bernstein, Martha Argerich, Plácido Domingo and Artur Rubinstein. Some of the greatest composers, Witold Lutosławski, Wojciech Kilar, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki and Krzysztof Penderecki, entrusted the premieres of their works to the orchestra, and NOSPR records were released by renowned labels.

Over the years, the orchestra was led by outstanding conductors, including Jan Krenz, Kazimierz Kord, Tadeusz Strugała, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Antoni Wit, Gabriel Chmura, Jacek Kaspszyk and Alexander Liebreich. Currently, the rich musical traditions of the orchestra are cultivated under the artistic direction of Lawrence Foster, with Ewa Bogusz-Moore in the role of managing and programme director.

NOSPR’s relationship with technology has been a constant element of its identity at each stage of its history. At the end of the 1960s, thanks to the artistic director at the time, Bohdan Wodiczko, the orchestra started long-term cooperation with television, with the Internet now playing an increasingly important role in building relations with audiences. The seat of NOSPR is a modern building designed by the Konior Studio in Katowice, housing a 1800- seat concert hall, a chamber hall as well as numerous workshops and educational spaces. The concert hall, with acoustics designed by Nagata Acoustics, is renowned as one of the best concert halls in the world in terms of acoustics. In 2023, it will be enriched with a pipe organ, which will be among the largest in European concert halls. The extraordinary opportunities offered by the venue are widely appreciated by audiences, artists and the music community. This is evidenced by NOSPR being the only Polish institution, and one of only two in Central and Eastern Europe, that has been admitted admitted to the international ECHO network, which brings together 21 of the most prestigious concert halls in Europe

Founded in 2012 in Katowice by a group of passionate instrumentalist and early music enthusiasts centred around concert master Martyna Pastuszka and manager Artur Malke, the Orchestra cultivates historically informed performance practice, but also – close and good contact with the listeners. They work carefully on every element, emphasizing rhetorical meanings in the music, and in concert they focus on communication not just among the performers, but, first and foremost, between the musicians and the audience.

Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra
gave its first concert on 5 November
1901 in the Philharmonic’s newly
built concert hall. The Orchestra
was conducted by Emil Młynarski,
co-founder, first music director
and resident conductor of the
Philharmonic, while the solo part was
played by Ignacy Jan Paderewski.
Already before the First World War
and in the interwar period, the
Philharmonic became a key centre
of musical life in Poland and one of
Europe’s major musical institutions.
In the early years after the Second
World War, the orchestra’s concerts
were held in theatres and sport
halls. On 21 February 1955, the
Philharmonic moved to a new seat
(which replaced the one destroyed
by German air raids) and was
granted the status of the National
Philharmonic. Under its new director
Witold Rowicki, it regained the
reputation of Poland’s leading
symphony orchestra.
In 1955–1958, the position of
Artistic Director was held by Bohdan
Wodiczko, then again by Rowicki,
and from 1977 – by Kazimierz Kord.
Between January 2002 and August
2013, Antoni Wit was both the
Philharmonic’s Managing and Artistic
Director. Since the 2013/2014
season the position of Artistic
Director of the Warsaw Philharmonic
was held by Jacek Kaspszyk. In
the 2019/2020 season, the post
of Artistic Director was taken up
by Andrey Boreyko.
Nowadays, the Warsaw
Philharmonic Orchestra enjoys
worldwide popularity and acclaim.
It has made over 140 concert tours
on five continents, appearing in all
of the world’s major concert halls.
It also regularly performs during
the International Fryderyk Chopin
Piano Competitions in Warsaw and
the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International
Festival of Contemporary Music,
records for the Polish Radio and
state television (TVP) as well as
Polish and foreign record labels
and film companies. The Orchestra
has frequently been awarded
prestigious record prizes, including
the Grammy in 2013 (and six
Grammy nominations) for their
recordings of Penderecki’s and
Karol Szymanowski’s large-scale
vocal-instrumental works, Diapason
d’Or, ICMA, Gramophone Award,
Record Geijutsu, Classical Internet
Award, Cannes Classical Award,
and the Fryderyk Award of the
Polish Phonographic Academy.
In 2016, the Orchestra also
launched regular on
-line streaming
of selected concerts.

Founded in 1993 by conductor Tõnu Kaljuste, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra (TCO) has grown to become one of Estonia’s signature orchestras and a welcome guest performer on numerous stages across Europe and all over the world. The TCO has gained regard for its artistically integral programmes, style-sensitve play and mastery of interpretation. Its musicians are highly rated string players who also perform regularly as soloists and chamber musicians.

Pianist, chamber musician, teacher. Winner of the Fryderyk phonographic award and the Orpheus award, granted ‘for his outstanding performances of Polish music.’ Nominated for Polityka’s Passports’ for his sensitivity and intelligence with which he approaches the repertoire forgotten on our stages.’
He has recorded the complete piano works by Juliusz Zarębski, released on a four-disc album, as well as all piano works by Władysław Żeleński. He has made numerous first performances in the fi eld of contemporary music. The artist co-operates with, among others, the Apollon Musagete Quartet, the Royal String Quartet, Piotr Pławner, Agata Zubel, and the Silesian Quartet, with whom he recorded the Piano Quintet by Mieczysław Weinberg (Fryderyk 2018), which initiated his fascination with that composer. He is a co-founder of the Weinberg Trio. It is Karol Szymanowski who is at the centre of his interests; in 2018, he took up the position of vice chairperson of the Karol Szymanowski Music Society in Zakopane.

He leads an intense concert life (performances with the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Sinfonia Iuventus, AUKSO, Sinfonietta Cracovia; festivals in Poland and abroad: Warsaw Autumn, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Musica Polonica Nova, Budapest Spring Festival, Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, Musique & Neige, Usedomer Musikfestival). He has recorded for such labels as DUX, CD Accord, Hanssler, CPO, and Naxos, for which he has received awards in Poland and abroad (Maestro Pianiste, Pizzicato Supersonic, 5 de Diapason, four Fryderyk nominations). He has also recorded for PR2, Musiq3, Deutschlandradio, and HR2. Moreover, the pianist participates in a number of film and theatre projects. Together with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, he recorded excerpts from Andrzej Panufnik’s Piano Concerto for the soundtrack of Andrzej Wajda’s last film, Afterimage.
He teaches his piano class at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, of which he is a graduate in the piano class of Józef Stompel. He completed his studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg under the direction of Pavel Gililov. He is also a Sommerakademie Salzburg pianist.

The Orchestra consists of young artists associated with the „Pogranicze – Borderland of Arts, Cultures and Nations” Foundation and Centre in Sejny. Both these institutions draw in their educational and artistic work on the multicultural heritage of Central-Eastern Europe. The Orchestra was founded for Sejny Theatre’s production of S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk, premiered in 1996, and it was then that the young musicians’ fascinating adventure with klezmer music began. It is continued today by another generation of young people, initiated into the secrets of that style. More and more of them join the Orchestra, replacing their older colleagues as the latter enter adult life. The Orchestra’s complement of instruments changes, along with its sound.

Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra gave its first concert on 5 November 1901 in the Philharmonic’s newly built concert hall. The Orchestra was conducted by Emil Młynarski, co-founder, first music director and resident conductor of the Philharmonic, while the solo part was played by Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Already before the First World War and in the interwar period, the Philharmonic became a key centre of musical life in Poland and one of Europe’s major musical institutions. In the early years after the Second World War, the orchestra’s concerts were held in theatres and sport halls. On 21 February 1955, the Philharmonic moved to a new seat (which replaced the one destroyed by German air raids) and was granted the status of the National Philharmonic. Under its new director Witold Rowicki, it regained the reputation of Poland’s leading symphony orchestra. In 1955–1958, the position of Artistic Director was held by Bohdan Wodiczko, then again by Rowicki, and from 1977 – by Kazimierz Kord. Between January 2002 and August 2013, Antoni Wit was both the Philharmonic’s Managing and Artistic Director. Since the 2013/2014 season the position of Artistic Director of the Warsaw Philharmonic was held by Jacek Kaspszyk. In the 2019/2020 season, the post of Artistic Director was taken up by Andrey Boreyko. Nowadays, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra enjoys worldwide popularity and acclaim. It has made over 140 concert tours on five continents, appearing in all of the world’s major concert halls. It also regularly performs during the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competitions in Warsaw and the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music, records for the Polish Radio and state television (TVP) as well as Polish and foreign record labels and film companies. The Orchestra has frequently been awarded prestigious record prizes, including the Grammy in 2013 (and six Grammy nominations) for their recordings of Penderecki’s and Karol Szymanowski’s large-scale vocal-instrumental works, Diapason d’Or, ICMA, Gramophone Award, Record Geijutsu, Classical Internet Award, Cannes Classical Award, and the Fryderyk Award of the Polish Phonographic Academy. In 2016, the Orchestra also launched regular on -line streaming of selected concerts.

Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej (OMN) was founded in 1996 on the initiative of Aleksander Lasoń, professor at the Academy of Music in Katowice. For over two decades the OMN has explored modern music, looking for milestone compositions that engage the listener – innovative and sometimes forgotten works that deserve a public revival. This activity has produced over 150 premieres at Polish and international festivals, as well as a number of broadcasts and studio recordings that have been highly rated by critics.

Since 2006, the ensemble has been directed by Szymon Bywalec.

The ensemble was founded in April 1984 as a result of the enlargement of the Polish Chamber Orchestra. The catalyst for the expansion of the line-up was the arrival of the legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who came to Poland at the invitation of Waldemar Dąbrowski, director general of the St. I. Witkiewicz Art Centre Studio in Warsaw, and Franciszek Wybrańczyk, director of the previously active Polish Chamber Orchestra. The joint concerts quickly won the acclaim of audiences, and Menuhin became the first guest conductor.

Soon after, Sinfonia Varsovia began its world tour, performing in the world’s most prestigious concert halls. The orchestra’s wide repertoire, including works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Beethoven and Krzysztof Penderecki, has resulted in cooperation with a large number of soloists and conductors. The orchestra has made artistic friendships with the most outstanding conductors, including Valery Gergiev, Witold Lutosławski and Lorin Maazel, as well as soloists including Piotr Anderszewski, Martha Argerich and Anne-Sophie Mutter. So far, the orchestra has played over 4,000 concerts on five continents and has recorded over 300 albums.

In 1997, Krzysztof Penderecki, the most outstanding Polish composer, first became the musical director, and then in 2003–2020 artistic director. In 2004, Franciszek Wybrańczyk handed over the duties of the director of Sinfonia Varsovia to a long-time musician of the ensemble – Janusz Marynowski,

The meeting between the young but already highly recognized concert and studio violinist and multi-instrumentalist Stano Paluch and the internationally awarded Moldavian student and cimbalom player Marcel Comendant in the Academy of Arts in Banska Bystrica in 2004 was undoubtedly love at first sight. After their first rehearsal with experienced jazz double bass player Róbert Ragan, they immediately understood that they would form a stable constellation. A year later PaCoRa Trio published an eponymous CD, soon highly praised in the prestigious British BBC Music magazine.

The Pavel Haas Quartet are based in Prague and studied with the late Milan Skampa, the legendary violist of the Smetana Quartet. They take their name from the Czech composer Pavel Hass (1899-1944) who was imprisoned at Theresienstadt in 1941 and tragically died at Auschwitz three years later, His legacy includes three wonderful string quartets.

Choreographer and dancer. Her works are full of secerets. She can be a warrior of the spirit, a spectral gardener or a shaman in metamorphosis. She offers dance as a incantation and creates a meditative atmosphere with her original choreography. Her performances have met with great critical acclaim in 47 countries, including USA, Australia, Mexico, South Africa and Lebanon. She has also created works for several companies such as the Polish Dance Theatre, Vietnam National Opera and Ballet, and the Finish National Opera.



Born in Finland, she studied piano at the Conservatory in Helsinki and choreography at the University College of Dance in Stockholm in 1989-92.

Accordionist, chamber musician, teacher, Doctor of Musical Arts. Graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen (Master of Music Studies under Geir Draugsvoll), the Hochschule fur Musik Detmold (Konzertexamen studies with Grzegorz Stopa) and the Academy of Music in Cracow (BA and MA studies in Janusz Pater’s class). Since 2016, he has been employed at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, currently as an assistant professor. He is a prizewinner of numerous awards and honourable mentions won in national and international music competitions.



As a soloist and chamber musician, he gives numerous concerts in Poland and abroad (including Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Ukraine, the USA). On a number of occasions, he has performed with orchestras as a soloist. He runs numerous masterclasses and accordion workshops.



The artist has recorded several CDs featuring a cross-sectional repertoire. He participates in world premieres of contemporary compositions on a regular basis. He is also a juror in national and international accordion competitions.

She started her musical education at the age of three. She went on to learn at a special boarding school for musically gifted children in Lviv, and continued her musical education at Lviv Conservatory. She completed postgraduate studies at both the Chopin Academy (presently, University) of Music in Warsaw and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. She has performed throughout Europe, as well as in the USA, Japan, Argentina, in the most famous concert halls such as Santory Hall (Tokyo), Berwald Hall (Stockholm), Konserthuset (Stockholm), de Singel (Antwerp), Auditori Winterthur (Barcelona), Musikhalle (Hamburg), Teatro Colon (Buenos-Aires), and at prestigious festivals such as the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival, Mozart Festival, La Folle Journée and Gdańsk Piano Autumn (Poland), Schubertiada (Spain), and Palaces of St. Petersburg (Russia).

She has cooperated with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mozarteum (Germany), Orchestre d’Auvergne (France), and Norrlandsoperan (Sweden). Boasting a vast repertoire, she not only plays the contemporary grand piano but also performs in style on historical instruments. She is a prize-winner of the 5th Nordic Piano Competition in Nyborg (Denmark, 1998) and the World Piano Competition in Cincinatti (USA, 1999). In 2001, she was awarded a special prize at the International Piano Competition Umberto Micheli in Milan, Italy. She has taught at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. In 2000, she received the prestigious Anders Wall prize, and in 2017 – the city of Stockholm’s culture grant, based on her contribution to Stockholm’s cultural life. Natalya has made numerous recordings for the radio, television, and CD labels such as Naxos, Opus 111, Pro Musica Camerata, and Musicon (Bach and Messiaen; the CD received five stars in the Music of the 21th Century magazine. Her latest album Consolation – Forgotten Treasures of the Ukrainian Soul (BIS Records) has won the highest critical acclaim and was named a highlight of the year by the German newspaper Mittelbayerische Zeitung.

Natalya frequently serves on the juries of international piano competitions. She regularly teaches masterclasses. She is the founder of the Ostroh International Chamber Music Course, founder and artistic director of the music festival Rethinking Europe. She is currently affiliated to the Grieg Academy at University of Bergen in Norway.

Born in Ukraine, she first studied at the Kiev Conservatory and at the Warsaw Academy of Music (presently, the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music). While studying in Warsaw, she made her debut in 1992 at the Warsaw Chamber Opera, and in 1996 she performed for the first time at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris as Pamina in The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Pasichnyk has in her repertoire more than 50 parts in operas by Monteverdi, Gluck, Handel, Mozart, Weber, Bizet, Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, Debussy, Tchaikovsky, and contemporary composers, which she has performed on the world’s most prestigious stages as well as on the radio and television, and released on CDs. She has appeared, among others, at the Opéra National de Paris – Opéra Bastille, Palais Garnier, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Théâtre Châtelet, Salle Pleyel (all in Paris), Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Berlin’s Komische Oper, Konzerthaus, and Philharmonic, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Madrid’s Teatro Real and Auditorio Nacional de Música, Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper and Philharmonic, Palais des Beaux-Arts and Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Theater an der Wien, the Bregenzer Festspiele, Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Finnish National Opera, the Flemish Opera, Tokyo Suntory Hall, as well as Warsaw’s Grand Theatre – the Polish National Opera. She has also taken part in performances of symphonic and large-scale vocal-instrumental works in major concert halls throughout Europe, in the United States, Canada, Israel, China, Japan, and Australia, with the greatest orchestras under such masters as Ivor Bolton, Andrey Boreyko, Frans Brüggen, JeanClaude Casadesus, Marcus Creed, René Jacobs, Dmitri Jurowski, Roy Goodman, Christopher Hogwood, Heinz Holliger, Philippe Herreweghe, Jacek Kaspszyk, Kazimierz Kord, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Marc Minkowski, Kazushi Ono, Andrew Parrott, Krzysztof Penderecki, Trevor Pinnock, Marcello Viotti, Antoni Wit, and Massimo Zanetti. The singer also performs a broad range of chamber music and sings recitals with her sister and pianist Natalya Pasichnyk. She has recorded more than 60 CDs and DVDs.

Raised in a musical family in Upper Silesia, se received a traditional education, graduating in violin from Katowice’s Academy of Music in 2004 and obtaining her doctorate in 2017. She is now a lecturer at her alma mater.

Her early interest in historical performance practice led to a more than 15-year-long collaboration with Arte dei Suonatori, a leading Polish early music ensemble. In the same period she performed as concert master with Le Parliament de Musique (Strasbourg) and Capella Cracoviensis. For more than a decade she has appeared as a chamber musician, soloist and guest concert master with such ensembles as Le Concert de la Loge (Paris), Collegium Marianum (Prague).

In 2012 she founded (with manager Artur Malke) {oh!} orkiestra Historyczna. The orchestra’s work with Pastuszka has been critically acclaimed as “our greatest discovery in the recent years” (A. Rozlach, Polish Radio).

Born in Žilina, he started to devote himself to cooperation with vocal artists and piano coaching in 1990, at the time of his studies at the Conservatory. He has actively participated in masterclasses in piano accompaniment under the guidance of Brigitte Fassbaender and Wolfram Rieger in Bern, Switzerland. In 2004, 2005 and 2015, he was awarded the Special Prize for the best piano accompanist at the Antonin Dvořak International Singing Competition in Carlsbad (Czech Republic); in 2008 and 2021, he received the same award at the Mikulaš Schneider- Trnavsky International Singing Competition.



His concert activities include performances in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, among others. In 2000–2004, Robert Pechanec worked as a piano accompanist and music director of several productions at the Wexford Opera Festival in Ireland. As part of that Festival, he also gave recital performances with distinguished soloists (e.g. Ekaterina Gubanova, Tati ana Monogarova, Markus Werba, Brandon Jovanovich). He has been in high demand as a partner of singers of international renown both from Slovakia and abroad. He regularly cooperates with topmost Slovak soprano Adriana Kučerova – they have given a number of performances in Slovakia and abroad (Paris, Monte Carlo, Brussels, Salzburg, Malta, at the Festival Toulouse d’ete in Toulouse, etc.). He also works with tenor Pavol Breslik, with whom he successfully appeared at the Berlin State Opera and the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie in Brussels in 2007. In the following year, he performed with both of them at a concert at the National Opera of Bordeaux as well as in a recital at the Strasbourg Opera House. In addition, he maintains a permanent artistic partnership with distinguished

Slovak bass Štefan Kocan, with whom he has performed, e.g. in Vienna and Paris. In 2007, they played at the prestigious Prague Spring International Music Festival.



In May 2014, together with Pavol Breslik, he released a CD featuring songs by Mikulaš Schneider-Trnavsky,

in April 2017 – the CD Dvořak Songs, and in February 2020 – the CD Janaček: The Diary of One Who Disappeared.

He began his musical journey as a treble soloist, recording seven albums and performing solo soprano parts in a number of oratorios and operas at numerous international Festivals, on such renowned stages as Terme di Caracalla in Rome, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Berlin Philharmonic.



After having studied International Relations, he returned to singing as a tenor, continuing his vocal journey at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw in the class of Robert Gierlach. Already during his studies, he sang the leading tenor roles in Haydn’s opera Orlando Paladino and in concert performances of excerpts from Moniuszko’s The Raftsman and Mozart’s Idomeneo, re di Creta. In the 2017/2018 season, he played the part of Lensky in Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky at the Świętokrzyska Philharmonic, the Subcarpathian Philharmonic and in the Młynarski Hall of the Polish National Opera in Warsaw.



He created the role of Isaac in the contemporary opera The Sacrifice of Isaac; a role written especially for him by German composer Alois Spath. Natalia Korczakowska included that work in her theatre play entitled Wyznawca, which was staged at the Studio Theatre. In 2018, he sang Les Noces by Stravinsky with the orchestra of the Lviv Philharmonic at the Centre for the Meeting of Cultures in Lublin. On stage, one could see him at Polsat TV’s New Year’s Eve Gala – in front of over 130,000 spectators at Spodek in Katowice and over 3 million TV viewers. In 2018, he received the award for “The Most Beautifully Singing Tenor” at the 20th Great Tenors’ Tournament organized by the Castle Opera in Szczecin. In June 2018, he performed at the Tenors’ Gala at the Pomeranian Philharmonic as well as a recital in the Lubrański Hall of the Poznań Philharmonic, receiving the Young Positi vist Medal from the Hipolit Cegielski Society. In the same year, for HBO Europe, he recorded Cavaradossi’s Aria for the soundtrack to the series Blinded by the Lights directed by Krzysztof Skonieczny. In 2019, he made his debut on the stage of the Baltic Opera with the leading tenor part of Kazimierz in The Countess by Moniuszko directed by Krystyna Janda; moreover, he fulfilled his great artistic dream by appearing alongside Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak. He continued his cooperation with the Baltic Opera, among others, in the production of the opera Olga by Jorge Antunes under the direction of Jose Maria Florencio. Last season, he made his debut as Prince Tamino at the Warsaw Chamber Opera.



In January 2021, he won the first prize – the platinum rose – in the “Battle of the Tenors for Roses”, a TVP Kultura competition, organized for many years, presenting operatic voices (it was the first edition featuring an international

jury composed of outstanding figures of the opera world: Marco Balderi, Simone Kermes and Ryszard Karczykowski). In 2022, he performed the solo tenor part in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Zamość Philharmonic, and participated in the performances of Franciszek Mirecki’s Mass at the Poznań Philharmonic and Alfred Schnittke’s Requiem at the National Forum of Music; he also took part in the opera gala on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of Jan Kiepura in Sosnowiec. He inaugurated the current season with a concert of the Beksiński Foundati on at Spodek in Katowice; in the near future, he is going to perform recitals in Utrecht and Kielce.

Markus Popp aka Oval continues to be one of the most prolific, influential creative forces in contemporary electronic music. With an undeniable instinct for the pleasantly irritating, the drastic and the dreamy, Oval continues to inspire and provoke generations of producers to this day. Popp’s glitch-centric tracks and remixes, with their distinctive, organic appeal, are widely considered watershed moments for the entire genre: Timeless, haunting classics, earning Oval critical acclaim as well as several media and art awards. No one out there plays the computer quite like him. Popp has continuously refined his instantly recognisable signature style in numerous projects, most notably with the long-running projects Microstoria (a duo with Jan St. Werner / Mouse On Mars) and SO (with Japanese songwriter Eriko Toyoda). Popp has also worked for/with: Björk, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Apparat, Tortoise, Mouse on Mars, Warren Suicide, Squarepusher, Jim O’Rourke, Pizzicato 5, Gastr Del Sol, and more. Beyond his album releases and remixes, Markus did music for films, installation art, dance pieces and interactive media, designed his own music software (Ovalprocess, an interactive sound installation platform that won the Prix Ars Electronica), contributed a secret bonus stage to Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s visionary video games Rez and Rez Infinite, and did original soundtrack work for fashion brands, contemporary dance pieces, arthouse movies and TV commercials. He has also written the libretto for Jan St. Werner’s (Mouse On Mars) Opera Miscontinuum and has authored two hour-long radio features for German NPR (script, original score, narration). Finally, in the course of many lectures, workshops and presentations all over the globe, Markus Popp has shared his creative vision, with topics ranging from digital audio workflow to interactive design, video games and vintage perfumes. Awards and achievements (a selection): Prix Ars Electronica 2001, BBC ‘2010s Best’ 2010, Prix Ars Electronica Honorable Mention 2011, 2012 Pitchfork ‘Best New Reissue’, 2012 QWARTZ Award ‘Best Experimental Music’, 2015 QWARTZ Award ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’, 2016 FACT ‘The Best PostRock Album Of All Time’, and 2016 Pitchfork ‘No. 7 best Ambient album of all time’.

One’s of today’s leading international chamber music ensembles. Established in 1972, when its members were still students at the Prague Conservatory. Since then, the Quartet has gained attention as an ensemble rooted in the unique Czech quartet tradition, recognised for its musical virtuosity.

Dancer and choreographer; graduate of the Warsaw State Ballet School and the Fryderyk Chopin Academy (now – University) of Music (majoring in ballet pedagogy).

In 1987-91 he was a dance rat Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki (Polish National Ballet). In the same period he made his debut as a choreographer (Negotiations to music by Alessandro Marcello). Having emigrated from Poland in 1991, he was for many years associated with one of the best contemporary dance ensembles Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company (Israel).

Most of his current productions are staged aborad, among others in Spain, the Czech Republic, China and Germany. In 2012 he was decorated with the Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis, and in 2016 – with the Annual Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.

With diverse musical elements derived from classical, jazz, rock and world music traditions, Mathew Rosenblum’s compositions offer „an ear-buzzing flood of sound, rich in unusual overtones” (The Boston Globe). The wide array of groups that have commissioned, performer and recorded his music includes the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, FLUX Quartet, as well as manuy others. Using a variety of tuning systems, his perfomances go beyond traditional boundaries, creating a compellingly fresh landscape.

Royal String Quartet is one of Europe’s leading quartets with over two decades of joint playing, concerts on all continents, seventeen critically acclaimed albums, two Fryderyk awards and six nominations, and eighteen years of Kwartesencja [Quartessence], their own Festival, as part of which musicians remind the great classics of chamber music, premiere compositions written with them in mind and show that music is not a routine dressed in a tailcoat, but a surprising, often disturbing art of sounds that perfectly describes the modern world. In their ambitious endeavours, they know no genre boundaries. This is how the Kayah & Royal Quartet and Nowa Warszawa albums (featuring Stanisława Celińska and Bartek Wąsik) were born.



The ensemble, established in 1998 at the Academy of Music in Warsaw in the class of Ryszard Duź, completed postgraduate studies in Cologne under the direction of the Alban Berg Quartett ; they also studied under the supervision of the Amadeus and Camerata Quartets. The artists have won awards in numerous competitions, including in Banff, Casale Monferrato, Kuhmo and Cracow; they have also received a Borletti-Buitoni Foundation scholarship and a nomination for the prestigious British Royal Philharmonic Society Award. In 2004–2006, the ensemble was part of the elite BBC New Generation Artist programme. Since 2008, their cooperation with the British label



Hyperion has resulted in five albums, which were appreciated by critics of e.g. Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, Diapason and The Strad.



The Quartet’s concerts can be regularly heard, among others, on Programme 2 of Polish Radio and on BBC 3, while the ensemble’s recitals have been broadcast by Mezzo TV and TVP Kultura.



The Quartet has performed five times at the BBC Proms and played as many as fifteen times at the famous Wigmore Hall in London. It regularly performs at the Witold Lutosławski Studio, the headquarters of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice and the Warsaw Philharmonic. They have also performed at such Festivals as City of London, Aldeburgh, Schleswig Holstein and Rheingau, Sacrum Profanum, “Wratislavia Cantans” and in the Australian Perth. The RSQ has been invited to many excellent concert venues, including Cadogan Hall in London, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Konzerthaus in Vienna and Berlin, Sejong Center in Seoul and the Beijing Concert Hall. Among the artists with whom they have cooperated are: Angela Hewitt , Mark Padmore, Urszula Kryger, Janusz Olejniczak, Marti n Frost, Ingolf Wunder, Andrzej Bauer, Wojciech Świtała as well as the Škampa Quartet, Silesian String Quartet and Kwadrofonik.

Mezzo-soprano. She graduated with a honours degree from Jerzy Artysz’s voice class at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy (now University) of Music in Warsaw; she has been on the faculty of her alma mater since 1999. Prize winner in numerous national and international competitions; soloist of Warsaw’s Polish Royal Opera. Her accolades include the Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis (2010) and the Silver Cross of Merit (2012).

Graduate of the prestigious Swiss Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with a specialization in Historical Performance, of the Monteverdi Apprenticeship programme under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner in the United Kingdom, of the Chopin University of Music and of the University of Warsaw.



She performs in operas, oratorio and cantata concerts and recitals, cooperating with such conductors as John Eliot Gardiner, Andrea Marcon, Andrea De Carlo, Bart Naessens and Rene Jacobs. She has performed at Carnegie Hall and Harris Theater in the USA and in most European countries, including the Royal Albert Hall (at BBC Proms), Musikverein Vienna, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, on opera stages in Antwerp, Ghent, Basel, Zurich and Vienna and at the Paris, Munich, Essen, Luxembourg and Budapest Philharmonics. Her recordings have been released by Universal, Soli Deo, wocomoMUSIC and Denovali (under the Nanook of the North project).

An unquestionable pioneer and a major figure in Poland’s electronic music scene in the last two decades, Sienkiewicz started with acid and rave sound, and has tended towards advanced sonic experiments in recent years. Author of several albums and more than 50 vinyl singles, ranging from minimal techno to abstract ambient impressions. Sienkiewicz always follows his own path, developing unique and characteristic sound outside the mainstream. Since 1999 he has run his own Recognition label, which discovers and promotes unconventional Polish artists. He has produced many records and remixes released under other European labels, and has recorded and performed with such highly regarded artists as Ricardo Villalobos, Max Loderbauer, Atom TM, and others. In recent years he has presented interdisciplinary projects and improvised concerts, as well as experimental pieces drawing on contemporary classical music, including reinterpretations of works by composers associated with the famous Experimental Studio of Polish Radio.

Can frantic fun be reconciled with virtuosity? Sokół Orchestra offers the best proof that this is possible! Winning the hearts of Polish and foreign audiences since 2011, the Orchestra did what no other Polish ensemble playing Balkan music had managed to achieve before: they won the 2nd prize (in the international category) at the legendary brass band festival in Guca, Serbia (2014).

Recording with Renata Przemyk, Alosha Avdeev and Maja Sikorowska, among others, the Orchestra prides itself on the extraordinary ease with which it combines seriousness with satire and tradition with modernity. Their trademarks are the energetic brass sound and the powerful rhythm section.

Based in Oslo, Norway, composer Helge Sten has been crafting his music since the early 1990s, offering a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. The Deathprod concept arose in 1991, when Sten realized that his complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects, collectively known as “Audio Virus”, could add a musical dimension above and beyond the merely technical one.

One of Europe’s most prolific drummers, sampling percussionists and composers. Known for being artistically uncompromising, he has booked his own concerts and taken full control of his career from early on. It led to the artist being signed to ECM Records. He is one of the first drummers to release albums under his own name, but he also records with his band Parish, featuring Bobo Stenson on piano.

Singer, instrumentalist, songwriter, theatre and film music composer; ethnomusicologist, producer, music event curator, radio journalist, and author of documentary film scripts. Recipient of the Annual Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2019) for traditional music. Initiator of Monodia vocal ensemble, which performs Polish songs found in oral tradition. He focused on vocal art, but also creates instrumental music. He has released four albums of his own original compositions and three of traditional music. His songs are also performed by other artists such as Stanisław Soyka, Wojciech Waglewski, Marek Dyjak and Warsaw Sentimental Orchestra.

Praised by The Times for her ‘noble playing, with its rhythmic life, taut and rigorous’, Japanese violinist Akiko Suwanai was the youngest ever winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1990. SInce then she has enjoyed a flourishing international career and appears regularly with celebrated maestros and foremost orchestras across the globe.



Akiko Suwanai performs on the Stradivarius ‘Dolphin’ violin from 1714, one of the most famous violins known today and previously owned by Jascha Heifetz, which has been kndly loaned to her by the Nippon Music Foundation.

Directed by conductor Karolis Variakojis and pianist Marta Finkelstein, Contemporary Music Ensamble Synaesthesis enjoys a growing reputation in the contemporary music world. This team of young and ambitious musicians has taken up the mission of introducing works by experimental Lithuanian and foreign composers to the performance venues. The ensemble’s vision goes beyond sound – into space, light, movement and narrative – anything that allow for professionally performed music to become a multidimensional creation, blurring the boundaries between genres.

Volodymyr Syvohip is a Ukrainian musicologist and conductor, doctor of philosophy, graduate of the Department of Music History and Theory at the Lviv Conservatory (present: Mykola Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy).

Conductor, educator, habilitated doctor of arts in the field of conducting. A graduate of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Silesia and professor at the same university. She has founded and led several vocal ensembles, with which she won awards at Polish and foreign festivals. She gained the greatest recognition as the director and conductor of the Katowice City Singers’ Ensemble Camerata Silesia, which she founded in 1990. The ensemble, consisting of vocal soloists, performs under her direction both a cappella, vocal and instrumental works; the ensemble has received prestigious awards for its concerts and recordings, and enjoys critical acclaim in Poland and abroad. It is valued primarily for its precise performances of contemporary music, it is also excellent at interpreting pre-classical music.

Anna Szostak has conducted over 300 premieres of works by composers who have often dedicated their pieces to her and her ensemble, including K. Baculewski, R. Campo, R. Gabryś, A. Gabryś, H.M. Górecki, K. Knittel, A. Koszewski, Z. Krauze, A. Krzanowski, St. Krupowicz, P. Łukaszewski, Z. Preisner, S. Procaccioli, B. Schaeffer, W. Szalonek, P. Szymański, R. Twardowski, J. Wnuk-Nazarowa, and A. Zubel. Anna Szostak has collaborated on 50 albums, with the albums recorded by her winning several dozen nominations for the prestigious Fryderyk Music Award, of which four have received the award – most recently in 2020, Camerata Silesia Sings Silesian Composers in the Choral Music Album of the Year category, and in 2021, the album entitled Przez łzy in the Choral Music Album of the Year category. Her collaboration has also been sought after by organisers of renowned festivals. In 2015, she received the Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis for special merits in the field of artistic creativity, cultural activity, and the protection of culture and national heritage

Conductor. Described by the Herald Tribune as ‘charismatic, brilliant, energetic’, Anu Tali is one of the most captivating conductors on the international scene today, belonging to a new generation of artists who are constantly striving for fresh and ingenious creativity on the classical stage. Music Director of the Sarasota Orchestra in Florida between 2013 and 2019, the past season saw her conduct a new production of Bizet’s Carmen at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Sevilla, and highlights of the 2021/22 season include a return to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as engagements with Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, National Philharmonic of Russia and Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie, to name a few. Anu Tali appears regularly with orchestras worldwide, including the New Japan and Tokyo Philharmonic orchestras, Orchestre National de France, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestras. In Germany, she worked with the Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. Following major success with the production of Carmen at Magdeburg State Opera, she was invited to conduct the Freiburger Barockorchester in a production of Gluck’s Telemaco at the Schwetzingen Festival and Theater Basel. Another notable highlight includes acclaimed performances of Goebbels’ Songs of Wars I Have Seen with ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta at New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Southbank Centre, and in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Seattle and Barcelona. Anu Tali has been the subject of numerous documentaries by international broadcasters such as ARTE, NHK Japan, YLE Finland and Deutsche Welle. She studied conducting at the Estonian Academy of Music with Kuno Areng, Toomas Kapten and Roman Matsow, with further studies at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory with llya Musin, and later with Leonid Kortchmar and Jorma Panula.

‘As a composer, Ivan Taranenko is one of the artists who feel completely at ease in various musical spheres: intellectually serious music, jazz, pop music. His creative style is characterized by an amazing openness, willingness to share secrets,’ wrote about the composer Maya Rzhevska.



Ivan Taranenko – composer, pianist, teacher and public figure, graduate of the Kyiv State Conservatory in the class of Professor G. Lyashenko (1991). In 1994, he became a member of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine. Winner of the M. Lysenko Prize (2011), the L. Revutsky Prize (1999), the Grand Prix of the 5th Charitable Festival “Regina-Vladimir Horowitz in Memoriam” (Kyiv, 1998) and many others. Since 1999, he has been a lecturer at the Department of Composition of the National Music Academy of Ukraine. Participant of the Festivals Kyiv Music Fest, Autumn Jazz Marathon, 21st International Ankara Music Festival (Turkey, 2004), International Festival of Electroacoustic Music “Musica Electronica Nova” (Wrocław 2005) and many others. The composer’s works have been performed in Poland, Turkey, Hungary, Great Britain, Germany, France, Israel, the USA and Canada, and are constantly present in Ukraine. As a performer, he gives recitals composed of his own works as well as piano improvisation concerts. In 1996, he established the jazz-fusion band Ivan Taranenko MUSCLUB, in which he acts as a composer and pianist.

Ivan Taranenko MusClub was established in December 1996 in Kaniv, Ukraine. It was founded by composer and pianist Ivan Taranenko. A characteristic feature of all projects carried out by the ensemble is the combination of folk, jazz, rock and classical music using contemporary compositional techniques, including electroacoustic music. The number of the ensemble’s members is flexible and depends on the implemented project, which largely determines the stylistic and tone colour diversity of the presented music.



The ensemble has performed in prestigious concert halls in Kyiv and has taken part in important music Festivals, among which it is worth mentioning the Autumn Jazz Marathon (Kyiv), Kyiv. May. Jazz, Farbotony (Kaniv), Kyiv Music Fest and Bouquet Kyiv Stage. Other important projects of the group include “Music of the Ukrainian Land”, fusion fairy tale “Master of Dreams” to text by Valentyna Davydenko, “In the Dreams of the Christmas Nights”, and “@Experience&”.

Since winning the 2016 International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition at the age of 20, Veriko Tchumburidze has built a reputation as a captivating soloist, chamber musician and recording artist. ‘She is a breath of the future,’ said Andrzej Wituski, the competition’s director, ‘She brings us closer to the world of her own imagination’. In 2013, Turkey’s leading classical music magazine, Andante, named her the country’s Best Emerging Musician. Born into a Georgian family in Adana, southern Turkey, in 1996, Veriko Tchumburidze initially trained at Mersin University State Conservatory with Selahattin Yunkus and Lili Tchumburidze. In 2010, she moved to Vienna to study with Dora Schwarzberg at the Hochschule für Musik as a scholar of the Young Musicians on World Stages (YMWS) project. Since 2015, she has been mentored by Ana Chumachenco at Musikhochschule in Munich. She also participated in the masterclasses of Albert Markov, Shlomo Mintz and Igor Ozim, in the Seiji Ozawa Academy Masterclass, and also at the Verbier Festival Academy in Switzerland.

Veriko Tchumburidze has appeared with the Borusan İstanbul Filarmoni Orkestrası (opening the Istanbul Music Festival), the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt, Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony, Lahti Symphony, the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia, Sinfonieorchester Liechtenstein as well as the Münchener Kammerorchester and Zürcher Kammerorchester. Her festival engagements have included the Beethoven Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy, the Olympus Musical Festival, the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. Highlights of the 2021/22 season include appearances with the Staatsorchester Stuttgart under the direction of Marek Janowski (opening the 2021/2022 season), the İstanbul Devlet Senfoni Orkestrası, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (ERSO), the Filarmonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna and recitals in Warsaw und Zurich. Looking ahead, she is to undertake a recital tour in Italy. Since 2016, Veriko Tchumburidze has played a Giambattista Guadagnini violin made in Milan in 1756 and generously loaned by Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

The computer trio Tonus Finalis Ensemble is a reincarnation of the Laptop Ensemble, established in 2009, which debuted at the International Festival of Contemporary Music “Warsaw Autumn” 2009. For the ensemble’s composers/performers, the main idea is to use computers not only as interactive instruments, but also as machines that are able to simulate intelligent human behaviour. The trio consists of the following composers/performers: Marcin Bortnowski, Stanisław Krupowicz and Marcin Rupociński.



Marcin Bortnowski – born in 1972 in Żary, Poland. In 1997, he graduated from the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław in the composition class of Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawrati l (honours degree). In 1996, he participated in the 2nd International Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, organized by the Gaudeamus Foundation. In 1997, he took part in experimental and computer music workshops at Ghent University. Prizewinner of several composers’ competitions. In 2020, he received the title of Professor of Arts in the fi eld of composition from the President of the Republic of Poland. In addition to his compositional activities, he is also a lecturer, giving classes in Composition and Computer Music at the Academy of Music in Wrocław. Scholarship holder from the Minister of Culture and Art, the Society of Authors ZAiKS, the Friends of the “Warsaw Autumn” Foundati on, Ernst von Siemens Musiksti ftung and Deutschlandfunk.



Stanisław Krupowicz – born in 1952 in Grodno, Poland. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw (1976) and of the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw (1981, honours degree). In 1989, he received the title of Doctor of Musical Arts from Stanford University. Author of numerous chamber, orchestral and electroacoustic work that have been performed in a number of countries in Europe, Asia and both Americas. Winner of composers’ awards, including the Polish Composers’ Union Award for promoting computer music in Poland. Among other things, on his initiative, the Festival “Musica Electronica Nova” was created in 2005, of which he was the first artistic director. Currently, he is a Professor of Musical Arts and lectures in Composition and Computer Music at the Academy of Music in Wrocław.



Marcin Rupociński – composer and photographer, born in 1971 in Wałbrzych, Poland. He is a graduate of the Academy of Music in Wrocław, where he studied composition in the classes of Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawrati l and Stanisław Krupowicz. He studied photography at the PHO-BOS study (honours degree) and at the European Academy of Photography in Warsaw. In 1997, together with Cezary Duchnowski, he founded the Morphai group, whose aim is to implement audio-visual projects. His works have been presented at the most important Festivals in Poland and abroad. He has worked with numerous theatres, including the Variety Theatre in Warsaw, the Old Theatre in Cracow and the Drama Laboratory in Warsaw. Currently, he works as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Graphics and Media Art of the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław and at the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław. His interests include cross-sectional artistic activities combining the fields of media, electroacoustic music and computer-aided composition.

Founded in 1955 by maestro Antonin Ciolan, the“Transylvania” State Philharmonic Orchestra enjoys a leading position among Romanian orchestras. Numerous tour engagements have led the orchestra to prestigious concert halls and festivals, including the Musikverein Vienna, the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, the Lucerne Festival, the “George Enescu” Festival Bucharest, the La Folle Journee Festival in Tokyo, and the Torino, Warsaw, Istanbul, Santander, Strasbourg, Bratislava, Berlin and Interlaken festivals.

Throughout its history, the orchestra has collaborated with some of the world’s most distinguished conductors and soloists: Kurt Masur, Witold Lutosławski, Carlo Zecchi, Yannis Xenakis, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir John Pritchard, Lawrence Foster, John Axelrod, Jorg Widmann, Dennis Russell Davis, Sviatoslav Richter, Radu Lupu, Ruggiero Ricci, Valenti n Gheorghiu, Silvia Marcovici, Jose Carreras, Angela Gheorghiu, Ruxandra Donose, Roberto Alagna, Philippe Entremont, David Grimal, Sayaka Shoji and Simon Trpčeski, just to name a few.

With over 120 recordings, the “Transylvania” State Philharmonic Orchestra boasts the largest discography among Romanian orchestras. These recordings reflect the entire range of the orchestra’s wide repertoire, from baroque to contemporary music, including impressive series such as the complete Brahms and Bruckner symphonies, as well as works by Vivaldi, Wagner, Debussy, Ravel and Enescu.

In 2021, a studio recording of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, conducted by Lawrence Foster, was released by Pentatone. Two studio recordings (one with works by Bartók and Kodaly, the other a tribute to Renata Tebaldi) will be released under the same label.

Though it is mainly focused on symphonic and vocal-symphonic programmes, the orchestra also pays special attention to the operatic repertoire. Remarkable in this respect are the performances of George Enescu’s opera Oedipe at the Lucerne Festival, Verdi’s Simone Boccanegra (conducted by Antonello Allemandi) and Mozart’s Don Giovanni (conducted by Marco Armiliato) at the Santander Festival.

Among the major recent accomplishments are the concert versions of Wagner’s The Rhinegold and The Valkyire, conducted by Gabriel Bebeşelea, the orchestra’s principal conductor since 2016, as well as the concert version of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West with Lawrence Foster, conductor emeritus of the orchestra as of the 2021/2022 season.

“Music is music.” This is what Alban Berg said in the spring of 1928 in Paris to George Gershwin concerning the distinction between what we consider “educated” and “popular” music. Francesco Tristano has endorsed Berg’s view in his workds composed over the last decade, which combine the piano and synthesizer, and the scores of Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as Frescobaldi, Berio, Buxtenhude, Stravinsky, Gershwin, and others – with the latest production and sequencing tools.

Francesco Tristano is an artist of many talents: pianist, composer, techno and jazz musician. He fuses different eras, genres and styles in his music. He has become a key figure in a new movement which explores the creative intersection between classical and electronic music, merging the two in a natural manner, and thus bringing audiences from different worlds together in a new universe of his own. Tristano frequently collaborates with important names in different music genres, such as Derrick May, Carl Craig, Michel Portal, to name but a few.

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Conductor and Singer (b. 1980); he graduated from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theare in Talinn as conductor (BMus) in 2004. Additionally, he studied trumpet and French horn. In 2011 he obtained an MMus degree in conducting.

Endrik Üksvärav has conducted many chamber choirs and orchestras. In 2010 he created the Collegium Musicale chamber choir. The year 2011 proved a breakthrough; the choir was named as „Choir of the Year 2011” in Estonia, and Endrik Üksvärav won the prize for „Young Conductor of the Year”.

Also in 2011, he started to Focus more on solo singing (tenor). In Autumn 2012 he took up studies in early music vocal performance at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague (Bmus and MMusc, teachers: Peter Kooy, Michael Chance, Jill Feldmann and Maria Acda-Maas). In the years that followed, he has taken part in various vocal projects in both Estonia and the Netherlands. He has sung in several modern operas, made his debut with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, and performer at the La Folle Journee festiwal in Tokyo (2017).

Vakula is a singular artist and musical story teller. Few others are capable of the sort of dance floor shamanism that he manages to cook up. Each time he plays, listeners are glooded with visceral textures, mesmerising ups and downs, pervasive basses and spirit-infused percussion. His sets are a mix of pure techno, dub techno, deep house, jazz, funk, disco, psychodelic rock or whatever comes into his vivid imagination. It means you can’t help but follow his dynamic, three-dimensional story, both with your body and mind; his sets are ritual.

A project of Kiev-ased producer Dimitriy Avksentiev, also known as Koloah. It orignated out of Avksentiev’s love for cinemathography and the exploration of mystical moods. Inspired by his own post-apocalyptic story, the producer decided that he needed a soundtrack and visuals. In this way, Voin Oruwu was born, fusing together technology, science and art.

VOŁOSI are one of the most prominent ensembles in the Polish scene of world music. Their debut at the New Tradition Festival in 2010 yielded all possible awards. Their music reach far beyond the category of folk music. The essence of their play is based on the energy of remote musical worlds colliding and on crossing boundaries. This is where traditional musicians meet classical instrumentalists. Together they embark on a journey to explore areas unheard of before. Rather than drawing on tradition, they are immersed in it and thus deliver a totally new quality. Just like when jazz was born. Even though their music sounds familiar, it really is entirely original and inimitable.

Piano. Following recent debuts with the Chicago, Pittsburgh and London symphony orchestras, Lukáš Vondráček has a season packed with highlights ahead of him. In 2021/2022, he will debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, and will return to renowned orchestras such as the Baltimore and Chicago symphony orchestras, both under the baton of Marin Alsop. Elsewhere, Lukáš Vondráček will appear with the Orchestre National de Lille conducted by Lionel Bringuier, the Warsaw Philharmonic, as well as the Turku and Malmö symphony orchestras. Recital projects will take him to the Rudolf Firkusny Piano Festival at Prague’s Rudolfinum and the Kissinger Summer Festival. He will take his residency with the Janáček Philharmonic into the next season and continue his recording cycle of all Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos with the Prague Symphony Orchestra.

Over the last decade, Lukáš Vondráček has travelled the world working with orchestras such as the Philadelphia, Tasmanian and Sydney Symphony orchestras, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Frankfurt Symphony Radio Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Netherlands Philharmonic orchestra. Recitals have led him to Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Flagey in Brussels, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Wiener Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and to renowned festivals such as the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, PianoEspoo in Finland, the Prague Spring Festival and Lille Piano Festival. Lukaš Vondraček made his first public appearance at the age of four. He has achieved worldwide recognition by receiving many international awards, first and foremost the Grand Prix at the 2016 Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels, alongside first prizes at the Hilton Head and San Marino International Piano Competitions and the Unisa International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa, as well as the Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award at the 2009 International Van Cliburn Piano Competition.

Janusz Wawrowski is considered the leading Polish violinist in the world. Twice winner of the Fryderyk Award, he has been decorated by the Polish Ministry of Culture and is one of the youngest tenured professors in Europe at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. As a tribute to his global efforts to promote Polish culture, he has been loaned indefinitely the Antonio Stradivari ‘Polonia’ violin (1685) (courtesy of Roman Ziemian). Recent highlights include a major US tour under Giancarlo Guerrero, debuts at the Wigmore Hall and the Elbphilharmonie with Hamburger Symphoniker under Patrick Hahn, a return to the Seoul Arts Center in South Korea, and a continued collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Grzegorz Nowak. This 2021/2022 season, Janusz makes his debut with the Orquesta Clásica Santa Cecilia in Madrid under Grzegorz Nowak, plays with Sinfonia Varsovia at the ‘Eufonie’ Festival and returns amongst others to the Cracow and Opole philharmonic orchestras. His latest Warner Classics album Phoenix (March 2021), nominated for the Opus Klassik Awards, includes a Tchaikovsky concerto and the Op. 70 Violin Concerto by Ludomir Różycki, a work never performed during the composer’s lifetime and buried for safety during the Warsaw Uprising only to be later rediscovered and completed by Janusz himself, who proudly presents this historical and authentically modern Polish piece around the world.

Omer Meir Wellber has established himself as one of today’s leading conductors of operatic and orchestral repertoire alike. He has been Music Director of the Teatro Massimo Palermo since January 2020 and Artistic Director of the Toscanini Festival since June 2022. For years, he was also Music
Director of the Raanana Symphonette in Israel. As of September 2022, Wellber is the new Music Director of the Volksoper Wien. He has worked with some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Gewandhausorchesterzu Leipzig, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Staatskapelle Dresden, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and Tonhalle- Orchester Zurich and maintains close ties with other ensembles in his native country of Israel.
His close ties to Israel are evident in his collaboration with the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, where Wellber is particularly involved in music education projects. The conductor is also a Goodwill Ambassador for Save a Child’s Heart (SACH), an Israelibased non-profit organisation that provides critical cardiac medical support. In addition, Omer Meir Wellber collaborates with various institutions through outreach programs and fosters the next generation of conducting students through lectures.
Omer Meir Wellber made his literary debut with his first novel Die vier Ohnmachten des Chaim
Birkner published by Berlin Verlag in Autumn 2019. The book tells the story of Chaim Birkner, a tired and broken man who is forced by his daughter to face life one last time. In January 2021, the novel was published in Italian by Sellerio Editore and will also be published in French by Editions du sous-sol.

Pianist, composer and arranger.



He completed his music education in piano and organ in Gdańsk while being active in Tricity jazz ensembles. It was also in Gdańsk that he took part in a project aimed at popularizing early instrumental art, as part of which he would give recitals on the municipal carillons. After having moved to Cracow, he fully devoted himself to creating his own music.



He has worked, among others, with the Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw, the Słowacki Theatre and the Old Theatre in Cracow, the Musical Theatre in Gdynia, the Witkacy Theatre in Zakopane, the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and Wrocław and the National Academy of Theatre Arts in Cracow. He has created music for theatrical performances, films and commercials. The artist has performed at jazz, entertainment music and stage song Festivals.



He has participated in numerous projects with such artists as Krzysztof Ścierański, Janusz Muniak, Anna Maria Jopek, Grzegorz Turnau and Krzysztof Śmietana. For thirteen years, he has been mainly working in recording studios, cooperating, among others, with his brother Stefan Wesołowski.

Born in Gdańsk, the composer and violinist is a graduate of the French Academie musicale de Villecroze; he is associated with the British publisher Mute Song (representing, e.g. Nick Cave, Ben Frost, Max Richter and many others), the American publishing house Important Records (featuring such artists as Pauline Oliveros, Coil, Jozef Van Wissem) and the French Ici d’ailleurs (Chapelier Fou, Yann Tiersen). He is the author of three critically acclaimed solo albums as well as co-author of the CD Nanook of the North (2018) recorded with Piotr Kaliński.



His album Rite of the End was selected as the best album of 2017 in a poll of Gazeta Wyborcza and of the international website beehy.pe. ‘Had Wesołowski lived in the 19th century, he would be in the pages of music history textbooks today,’ Jacek Hawryluk from PR2 wrote about him at that time. The album also brought the composer a nomination for Polityka’s Passports.



An important branch of Wesołowski’s oeuvre is film music. He is the author of music for a documentary on Marlon Brando, produced by Universal and nominated for a BAFTA – Listen to me Marlon, dir. Stevan Riley; for an HBO production entitled Love Express. The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk, dir. Kuba Mikurda; and for the award-winning Escape to the Silver Globe by the same director.



The latest production featuring Wesołowski’s music is the Irish film Wolf directed by Nathalie Biancheri, starring Lily-Rose Depp and George MacKay (prod. Universal/Focus Features)

Graduate of the Academy of Music in Gdańsk, where in 2004 he graduated with honours in the class of Wojciech Orawiec. Holder of scholarships from the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk and Fondazione Marco Fodella. In 2004–2008, he studied period bassoon at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague under the direction of Donna Agrell and Wouter Verschuren, as well as at the Accademia Internazionale della Musica in Milan, where his teacher was Alberto Grazzi.



He works with leading period performance orchestras, including Les Musiciens du Louvre (Marc Minkowski), Capella Cracoviensis, {oh!} orkiestra historyczna, B’rock (Rene Jacobs), Freiburger Barockorchester, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Ton Koopman), Les Musiciens du Prince (Cecilia Bartoli), Anima Eterna, Les Talens Lyriques (Christophe Rousset), Bach Collegium Japan (Masaaki Suzuki), Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, Netherlands Bach Society and Arte Dei Suonatori. He has recorded for Mezzo, Arte, Erato, Polskie Radio, Channel Classics, naive, Alpha, BIS, ORF, claves, Brilliant Classics, DUX, Netflix and HBO.



He is also active as a lecturer in courses and higher education, e.g. the Academy of Music in Poznań, the Academy of Music in Gdańsk, the Hochschule fur Musik in Frankfurt am Main, the Varmia Musica Academia in Lidzbark Warmiński and at the Oficina de Musica de Curitiba Festival in Brazil.

As Vienna’s cultural ambassador and premier concert orchestra, the Wiener Symphoniker handles the lion’s share of symphonic activity that makes up the musical life of the city. The preservation of the traditional, Viennese orchestral sound occupies a central role in the orchestra’s many artistic pursuits. The Wiener Symphoniker is one of Europe’s most prestigious ensembles and boasts 128 members. For this reason, the orchestra is precisely the right vehicle for the great Romantic works of Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss that constitute its core repertoire.

The Vienna Musikverein and nearby Konzerthaus are the principal performing venues of the Wiener Symphoniker. The orchestra has also been in residence at the Bregenzer Festspiele since 1946 and continues to maintain close ties to the festival. Beginning in 2006, the orchestra added another feather to its cap: The Wiener Symphoniker now serves as resident opera orchestra for a whole host of stylistically diverse productions taking place at the Theater an der Wien. Periodic international tours to the most important music centers round out the extensive portfolio of this traditional, Viennese orchestra.

After Monika Wolińska’s concert at Carnegie Hall, David Dubal highlighted her ‘great sensitivity and incredible sense of the sound of the instruments in the orchestra.’ That performance was a great success, culminating in a standing ovation. It was also the first concert in the history of this hall when a Polish woman stood at the conductor’s stand. Monika Wolińska began her artistic education at the age of six. She graduated in three fields of study: violin, conducting vocal and instrumental ensembles (Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz), as well as symphonic and opera conducting (class of Ryszard Dudek, Academy of Music in Warsaw – currently the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music). She participated in master classes conducted, among others, by Kurt Masur, Pierre Boulez, Antoni Wit and Gabriel Chmura. In 2015 she completed Postgraduate General Management Studies at the Faculty of Management at the University of Warsaw. She made her debut as a conductor in 2004 at the Lucerne Music Festival, working under the watchful eye of Pierre Boulez. For many years she worked as an assistant with Jerzy Semkow. She also assisted Krzysztof Penderecki and Jerzy Maksymiuk.

She is a great promoter of contemporary music. She performed at the Warsaw Autumn festival and at concerts in the Generations organised by the Polish Composers’ Union. In 2013–2017 she was the Artistic Director of the Wojciech Kilar Contemporary Music Festival. She was awarded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage with the Decoration of Honour ‘Meritorious for Polish Culture’ (2011) and the Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis (2020). In June 2017 she was among the six female conductors selected in a global competition from among 161 candidates, and she received an invitation to the 2017 Hart Institute for Women Conductors programme at the Dallas Opera. In 2012, her debut album recorded with Sinfonia Varsovia was released, containing a complete set of symphonic poems by Eugeniusz Morawski. It was with excellent reviews and a nomination for the Fryderyk Award. As a professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, she teaches opera conducting and serves as Head of the Chair of Symphony and Opera Conducting (since 2020).

cooperation between remarkable artists and composers of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, spotlighting the music of the past and present at renowned Festivals of the region and throughout Europe. The Quartet’s goal is to create cultural enrichment in the V4 countries and to showcase their musicians and composers to other European countries during the V4 anniversary year of 2021, and in 2022. While incorporating the cultural traditions of each V4 country’s music, the V4 String Quartet is establishing new ways to use music to create a compassionate society and to make high culture accessible to everyone.



Members:

Miranda Liu (USA/Hungary) – I violin

Daniel Rumler (Slovakia) – II violin

Tomaš Krejbich (the Czech Republic) – viola

Bartosz Koziak (Poland) – cello

Javier Zafra was born in Alicante (Spain) in 1975. After graduating in modern bassoon, theory of harmony and counterpoint in his hometown, he moved to The Netherlands in 1996 interested in early music. He attended the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag, where he studied baroque bassoon and chamber music under Donna Agrell and Ku Ebbinge, as well as music theory and history of music under Peter van Heyghen. Javier Zafra obtained his diploma with distinction in baroque bassoon in June 2000.



He was selected as a member of the European Union Baroque Orchestra (EUBO) in 1997, then under the baton of Ton Koopman. He has since played bassoon solo with the best European ensembles like Anima Aeterna, Orchestre des Champs-Elysees, Concerto Vocale, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, Le Concert d’Astree, Al Ayre Espanol, Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla, Capella Cracoviensis (Jan Tomasz Adamus, with whom he played and recorded Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto in 2016), Concert de La Loge (Julien Chauvin, with whom he often plays as a soloist) and Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, among others. He has worked with conductors such as Thomas Helgenbrock, Jos Van Immerseel, Philippe Herreweghe, Trevor Pinnock, Gustav Leonhardt, Rene Jacobs, Pablo Heras-Casado, Jeremie Rohrer, Ivor Bolton, Emmanuelle Haim and Sir Simon Rattle.

His primary interest is in chamber music: he played for many years with Nachtmusique (Eric Hoeprich). He often plays together with Lorenzo Coppola (Ensemble Dialoghi, with whom he has recorded Mozart’s and Beethoven’s quintets for piano and winds; Harmonia Mundi France, 2017), Kristian Bezuidenhout, Alexander Melnikov and Isabelle Faust, with whom he has recorded Schubert’s Octet and Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat on period instruments (Harmonia Mundi France; 2018 and 2020).



As soloist he has performed in important venues like the Schubertiade Festival Schwarzenberg, in the prestigious KKL Luzern, Wigmore Hall (London) and in the Lincoln Center of New York where his Mozart’s Bassoon

Concerto was acclaimed by The New York Times in the Mostly Mozart Festival 2010. Javier Zafra has been playing bassoon solo with the Freiburger Barokorchester since 1999. Since 2016 he has played bassoon solo at Ensemble Pygmalion conducted by Raphael Pichon in Paris, the city where he lives with his family.

Founded in 1953 as a Radio Zagreb ensemble under the artistic leadership of the renowned cellist Antonio Janigro, the Zagreb Soloists have gained reputation as one of the world’s greatest chamber orchestras. Besides their work with maestro Antonio Janigro, the Zagreb Soloists have collaborated with concert masters Dragutin Hrdoljak, Tonko Ninić, Anđelko Krpan, and Borivoj Martinic-Jercic.

Since 2012 the ensemble has performed under the leadership of Sreten Krstič who is also the leader of the Munich Philharmonic. Since their inception, the Zagreb Soloists have given over 4,000 concerts on all continents and in many prestigious venues such as the Musikverein (Vienna), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Royal Festival Hall (London), Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Tchaikovski Hall (Moscow), Santa Cecilia (Rome), Carnegie Hall (New York), Opera House (Sydney), Victoria Hall (Geneva), Teatro Real (Madrid), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), etc. They have regularly performed at major music festivals such as those in Salzburg, Prague, Edinburgh, Berlin, Bergen, Barcelona, Istanbul, Prades Ossiach, Dubrovnik and elsewhere, playing with numerous distinguished soloists, for example Henryk Szeryng, Alfred Brendel, Christian Ferras, Pierre Fournier, Leonard Rose, James Galway, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Aldo Ciccolini, Katia Ricciarelli, Lily Laskine, Zuzana Růžičkova, Mario Brunello, Isabelle Moretti, Guy Touvron and many others.

The Zagreb Soloists’ performing repertoire embraces baroque, classicist, romantic and contemporary music, with particularattenti on given to Croatian composers – both those who represent the national musical heritage and
those of the younger generation.

They have recorded more than seventy albums for companies like Vanguard House, EMI, ASV, Eurodisc, Melodia, HISP-vox, Pickwick audite, cpo and Croati a Records. In June 2014, the ensemble also released a compact disc with works by Boris Papandopulo, performing with pianist Oliver Triendl – the project which united both local and international music criticism – giving the CD the highest ratings and numerous commendations. One of the most notable recent recordings is an album with works by Ernesto Cordero, featuring prominent soloists such as Ernesto Cordero and the guitarist Pepe Romero (Naxos 2010), which was subsequently nominated for the Latin Grammy Award.

Artystka dźwiękowa i wizualna, kompozytorka, instrumentalistka, współtwórczyni wydawnictwa i festiwalu Musica Genera. Porusza się w szerokim spektrum od akustycznej muzyki improwizowanej, o minimalistycznym, współczesnym idiomie, do formy złożonej strukturalnie i kompozycyjnie, całkowicie elektronicznej, eksperymentalnej. Prace o charakterze wizualnym Zaradny tworzy głównie w formie instalacji, obiektu, fotografii i wideo. Posługuje się środkami abstrakcji, mikroobiektami dźwiękowymi i architektonicznymi, światłem i przestrzenią. Jej dzieła cechuje wieloznaczność koncepcji i relacji pomiędzy ideami a medium formy.

Swoje prace prezentowała m.in. w Galerii Kasia Michalski w Warszawie; Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, Bunkrze Sztuki w Krakowie, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski w Warszawie; Zachęcie w Warszawie, Shedhalle Zürich, Silberkuppe i Kunst-Werke w Berlinie oraz na koncertach w ramach festiwali: 5th Biennale de Lubumbashi (DR Konga), Sonic Protest (Paryż), Borderline (Ateny), El Nicho Aural Festival (Meksyk), Unsound Festiwal (Nowy Jork), Exploratory Music From Poland (Tokyo), What is music? (Sydney – Melbourne), All Ears (Oslo).

Była autorką muzyki do spektakli teatralnych i projektów multimedialnych w teatrach warszawskich: Narodowym, Nowym, Studio i Dramatycznym i Narodowym Starym Teatrze w Krakowie, a także realizacji performatywnych, w tym zrealizowanego w roku 2012 wspólnie z Pauliną Ołowską na zamówienie WIELS w Brukseli Le group panique with the flesh of the world – koncertu audiowizualnego homage to Alina Szapocznikow. W roku 2018 była konsultantką w projekcie Alexandry Bachzetsis Escape Act.

Była stypendystką MuseumsQuartier Wien (2005), zdobywczynią nagrody publiczności 5. edycji konkursu „Spojrzenia – Nagroda Fundacji Deutsche Bank” (2011), laureatką SHAPE – Platform for Innovative Music and Audiovisual Art from Europe (2017) oraz rezydentką La Muse en Circuit – Centre National de Création Musicale we Francji (2016, wspólnie z Kasperem Toeplitzem), EMS Elektronmusikstudion (2016) i KSYME – Contemporary Music Research Centre w Atenach (2018/2019).

Jej dyskografia obejmuje nagrania solowe i projekty wspólne z twórcami takimi jak Burkhard Stangl, Christian Fennesz, Robert Piotrowicz, Jérôme Noetinger, Tony Buck, Kasper Toeplitz.

Zavoloka is a stage name of Kateryna Zavoloka – a Berlin-based Ukrainian sound artist, composer, live performer, sound and graphic designer. Zavloka’s main focus is to explore digital and analogue synthesis and instruments.

Since its founding in 1994, the Zemlinsky Quartet has become a much lauded example of the Czech string quartet tradition. The quartet has toured extensively across many countries of four continents. It offers an elaborate repertoire of over 200 works by leading composers, including contemporary music.

The ensamble is a leading Polish chamber singing group, founded in 1990 by the charismatic and highly respected conductor Anna Szostak, who remains its director to this day. The group is valued for its precise performances of contemporary music and excellent interpretations of pre-classical music. Over the 30 years of its activity, Camerata Silesia has gained international recognition, promoting Poland and the city of Katowice during performances in the most prestigious concert halls in Europe and Asia. The ensemble is a regular guest at international festivals, including the Warsaw Autumn, the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival, Chopin and His Europa Festival or Wratislavia Cantans.

The quality of the group’s work on the international arena was appreciated by Krzysztof Penderecki, whose St. Luke’s Passion, Polish Requiem and Seven Gates of Jerusalem were co-performed by Camerata Silesia many times under the direction of the composer himself, while during the Warsaw Autumn the ensemble took part in the performance of his Canticum Canticorum. In 2012, the extended ensemble was invited to participate in the performance and DVD recordings of the stage version of Krzysztof Penderecki’s St. Luke’s Passion directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna. Through its close relations with many preeminent contemporary music composers, Camerata Silesia has premiered over 300 of the latest works, often composed especially for the ensemble. Camerata Silesia has captured the attention of international music critics not only with its concert activity, but also through its recordings.

The ensemble has published several dozen albums, four of which received the Fryderyk Music Award, with more than ten being nominated. Since 2014, Camerata Silesia has been organising its own series of concerts at the seat of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, presenting a diverse repertoire, including both classical music and works that combine jazz and pop

Jazz pianist and composer. In 2016, he graduated from the Jazz Institute of the Karol Szymanowski Music Academy in Katowice. In 2018–2020, he was a lecturer at this school. Member of RGG, one of the most important and most recognisable Polish jazz groups, and in 2016– 2018, also of the Tomasz Stańko Band. He has been playing in Adam Bałdych’s group since 2021. Holder of scholarships of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage under the ‘Young Poland’ programme and of the Minister of Science and Higher Education, and a recipient of the Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. He has received two nominations for the Fryderyk Award – in the Jazz Album of the Year and Jazz Debut of the Year categories. He has performed in Poland, Germany, Island, the Netherlands, Turkey, Russia, Hungary, South Korea, Kazakhstan, the UK, Switzerland, and Czechia. He has collaborated with Tomasz Stańko, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Evan Parker, Samuel Blaser, Verneri Pohjola, Trevor Watts, and many others

Graduated with honours from the University of Music in Vienna in David Lutz’s class of accompaniment for vocalists (specialisation in song). Earlier, he had graduated from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, where he studied under professors Krzysztof Jabłoński, Andrzej Stefański and Barbara Halska. He has performed in many prestigious concert halls, Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, the national philharmonics in Warsaw, Berlin, Sofia, Ljubljana and Bucharest, the seat of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, the Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio in Warsaw, Wiener Staatsoper, Grand Theatre – Polish National Opera in Warsaw, the National Opera in Ljubljana and many others. He has performed in Europe, Asia and the United States. He specialises in the performance of songs, and is also a valued chamber musician – on stage he has partnered artists such as Tomasz Konieczny, Olga Pasichnyk, Małgorzata Walewska, Monika Bohinec, Aida Garifullina, Cigdem Soyarslan, Dorottya Lang, Paul Schweinester, Krzysztof Chorzelski, Gerard Wyss, Maciej Pikulski and many others.

Lech Napierała is a professor at the Academy of Music in Cracow, where he teaches chamber music and accompaniment. He is also a guest lecturer at the Opera Academy of Grand Theatre – Polish National Opera in Warsaw, where he regularly conducts song courses for singers and pianists. His phonographic output includes records published by Universal, Signum, DUX, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute and Anaklasis. His latest albums are: a recording of Franz Schubert’s Winter Journey with Polish texts by Stanisław Barańczak, a collection of songs and sonnets by Romuald Twardowski, and the album Between Death & Love – containing songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff and the Songs and Dances of Death series by Modest Mussorgsky, which is a recording of a recital at the Warsaw Philharmonic. On all three albums, Lech Napierała partners bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny.

Szymon Krzeszowiec – 1st violin
Arkadiusz Kubica – 2nd violin
Łukasz Syrnicki – viola
Piotr Janosik – cello

The Silesian String Quartet, one of Poland’s leading chamber ensembles, has existed uninterruptedly since 1978. In its early years the musicians developed their abilities with members of the most famous string quartets, such as LaSalle, Amadeus, Juilliard, Bedřich Smetana, and Alban Berg Quartets. Internationally famous, the Quartet gives performances throughout Europe, as well as in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, and South Korea. It has appeared in the most prestigious concert halls: Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Antwerp’s deSingel, Berlin’s Schauspielhaus, Copenhagen’s Tivoli, the Parisian Salle Pleyel, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Seoul’s Hoam Art Hall, as well as Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

The Quartet’s repertoire comprises nearly 500 chamber music pieces, including more than 300 works written in the 20th and 21st centuries, The ensemble has premiered nearly 150 string quartets by Polish and international composers, many of which have been specially dedicated to the Quartet. The Silesian String Quartet’s discography comprises nearly 60 albums released under such labels as Chandos, ECM, EMI Poland, Olympia, CD Accord, DUX, and Polish Radio Katowice. Many of them have received Fryderyk nominations. The Quartet has won seven Fryderyk Awards, as well as the prestigious Gramophone Classical Music Award for the album Grażyna Bacewicz. Complete String Quartets (Chandos, 2017). From 1993 the Quartet organised its own International Chamber Music Festival ‘The Silesian String Quartet and Its Guests’, which was held 25 times.

In the last seven seasons, the ensemble has run its own concert series at the new seat of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR). This year the cycle is titled ‘Generation ‘51 on Their 70th Birthday’ and consists of more than 50 concerts, each featuring a different programme. Among the nearly forty accolades received by the Quartet, there have been: the Gold Cross of Merit (1999), the Orpheus Award for the best performance of a work by a Polish composer during the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ (2002), the Decoration of Honour in Gold for Merit to the Silesian Province (2005), as well as the Silver (2008) and Gold (2019) Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis.

Luka Okros was born in 1991 in Tbilisi, Georgia. He made his national debut at the age of five, before studying at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and later at the Royal College of Music in London. Upon graduating, he won the Jaques Samuel Intercollegiate Piano Competition in 2014. His competition successes include the Hong Kong International Piano Competition, the Valencia Iturbi Prize International Competition, the Hannover Chopin International Piano Competition, the Morocco Philharmonic International Piano Competition, and the FAZ Audience Award 2019 at the International German Piano Award competition. He made his USA debut at Carnegie Hall at the age of 18, and by the age of 25, he had performed in over 40 countries. In the last concert season, he has given solo recitals in Oslo, Vienna, Brussels, Helsinki, Budapest, Reykjavík, Tbilisi, Kyiv, Berlin, Paris, Berlin, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and Montevideo, culminating in a sell-out concert on London’s Southbank in July 2019. His performance has been praised by The Guardian’s Observer as ‘an impressive display of virtuosic pianism’. The Spanish newspaper Levante described him as ‘Artist of the Sound’. Highlights of the 2020/2021 season include performances in Finland, France, Iceland, Georgia, Germany, Hong-Kong, Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom. In addition to his career as a pianist, Luka works on creating an album of his compositions. One of the pieces was filmed and premiered at Het Concertgebouw Sessions. Scores of his works are published by UK-based Master Music Publications.

The orchestra was established in 1960 at the Slovak Philharmonic by Bohdan Warchal (1930–2000), an outstanding violinist of Silesian origin. Since the beginning of its existence it has been one of the most popular ensembles of classical music in Slovakia. Under the leadership of Maestro Warchal, SCO became one of the most prominent ambassadors of Slovak performing arts abroad. In 2001, leadership of the orchestra was taken over by Ewald Danel.

Apart from regular concerts at the Slovak Philharmonic and participation in festivals and concert tours abroad, the orchestra presents many interesting projects. They performed, for the first time in Slovakia during one concert, J.S. Bach’s complete Orchestral Suites and Brandenburg Concertos. SCO presented George Frideric Handel’s and Arcangelo Corelli’s complete Concerti Grossi, as well as the rarely heard set of string symphonies composed by the young Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and gave many performances of Handel’s oratorio The Messiah. They have also appeared in the Slovak premiere of the Eight Seasons (Vivaldi & Piazzolla). Importantly, the orchestra upholds Bratislava’s nearly two-hundred-year-old tradition of performing Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross at St. Martin’s Cathedral on Palm Sunday, and continues the cycle of Concerts without Barriers for the disabled. As part of its church music cycle, the Slovak Chamber Orchestra supports the work of non-professional choirs. This cooperation has recently been expanded to include amateur chamber orchestras on the nationwide scale. The orchestra plays a significant role in promoting the works of Slovak composers, and has premiered more than sixty works since 2001. SCO has also discovered many previously unperformed works by famous international composers for the Slovak public. Recently the Slovak Chamber Orchestra has performed both at home and abroad: in Japan, South Korea, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. In February 2021, during the gala concert marking the 60th anniversary of the SCO’s foundation, they will play the same programme that was performed at their first concert in February 1961, with former orchestra members.