Warsaw Philharmonic & Antoni Wit / Górecka / Wincenc
Biography Warsaw Philharmonic & Antoni Wit / Górecka / Wincenc
Anna Górecka - Pianist
In 1991 Anna Górecka graduated from the Academy of Music in Katowice, where she studied with Andrzej Jasiński, continuing for two further years at the Trossingen Staatliche Hochschule für Musik under Wiktor Merzhanow. She has to her credit success in various competitions, including in Senigallia, at the Brahms Competion in Hamburg and at the Polish Piano Festival. Her career has brought concert tours to Japan and the United States, and engagements throughout Europe. She has a wide repertoire and has taken part in the first performances of works by many contemporary composers, reserving a special place in her repertoire for the compositions by her father Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, including works written for her.
Carol Wincenc - Flutist
First Prize Winner of the Walter W. Naumburg Solo Flute Competition, GRAMMY® Award-winner, and 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the National Flute Association, Carol Wincenc celebrated her 2010 Ruby Anniversary with enthusiastic reviews from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, and Performance Today. She has given premières of concertos written for her by Lukas Foss, Henryk Górecki, Joan Tower, Paul Schoenfield, Jake Heggie, Peter Schickele, Roberto Sierra and Tobias Picker. She is a prolific recording artist. Her Telarc recording of Pulitzer Prize winner Christopher Rouse’s Flute Concerto with the Houston Symphony won the coveted Diapason d’Or award while her Naxos recording of Griffes’s Poem for flute and orchestra (8.559164), with her hometown orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic, conducted by JoAnn Falletta, received a Gramophone ‘Editor’s Choice’. Her début album on Music Masters, on which she is accompanied by András Schiff, was cited by Stereo Review as a ‘Recording of Special Merit’. She has appeared as concerto soloist with leading orchestras throughout the United States and performed at music festivals in Aldeburgh, Budapest, Frankfurt, Santa Fe, Spoleto, Banff, Sarasota and elsewhere. She continues teaching at both Stony Brook University and her alma mater, The Juilliard School.
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra – The National Orchestra of Poland
The first performance of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra took place on 5th November 1901 in the newly opened Philharmonic Hall under the artistic director and principal conductor, Emil Młynarski, with the world-renowned pianist, composer and future statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski as soloist in a programme that included Paderewski’s Piano Concerto in A minor and works of other Polish composers, Chopin, Moniuszko, Noskowski, Stojowski and Z· elen ́ ski. The orchestra achieved considerable success until the outbreak of war in 1939, with the destruction of the Philharmonic Hall and the loss of 39 of its 71 players. Resuming activity after the war, the orchestra was conducted by Straszyn ́ski and Panufnik, and in January 1950 Witold Rowicki was appointed director and principal conductor, organizing a new ensemble under difficult conditions. In 1955 the rebuilt Philharmonic Hall was re-opened, with a large hall of over a thousand seats and a hall for chamber music, recognised as the National Philharmonic of Poland. Subsequent conductors included Bohdan Wodiczko, Arnold Rezler and Stanisław Skrowaczewski, and in 1958 Witold Rowicki was again appointed artistic director and principal conductor, a post he held until 1977, when he was succeeded by Kazimierz Kord, serving until the end of the centenary celebrations in 2001. In 2002 Antoni Wit became general and artistic director of the Warsaw Philharmonic – The National Orchestra and Choir of Poland. The orchestra has toured widely abroad (Europe, both Americas, Japan), in addition to its busy schedule at home in symphony concerts, chamber concerts, educational work and other activities. It now has a complement of 110 players. Recordings include works by Polish composers, Paderewski, Wieniawski, Karłowicz, Szymanowski, Penderecki, Lutosławski, Górecki and Kilar, and by foreign composers, with acclaimed interpretations of works by Mahler and Richard Strauss. Their releases have won many prestigious awards, including six GRAMMY® nominations.
Antoni Wit - Conductor
Antoni Wit, one of the most highly regarded Polish conductors, studied conducting with Henryk Czyz at the Academy of Music in Kraków. He then continued his musical studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He also graduated in law at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Immediately after completing his studies he was engaged as an assistant at the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra by Witold Rowicki. After winning second prize in the International Herbert von Karajan Conducting Competition in Berlin (1971), he became an assistant conductor to the patron of that competition. Later he was appointed conductor of the Poznań Philharmonic, collaborated with the Warsaw Grand Theatre, and from 1974 to 1977 was artistic director of the Pomeranian Philharmonic, before his appointment as director of the Polish Radio and Television Orchestra and Chorus in Kraków, from 1977 to 1983. From 1983 to 2000 he was managing and artistic director of the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, and from 1987 to 1992 he was the chief conductor and then first guest conductor of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria. In 2002 he became managing and artistic director of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. Since the season 2010/11, he has been first guest conductor with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra in Pamplona. His international career has brought engagements with major orchestras throughout Europe, the Americas and the Near and Far East. He has made over 200 records, including an acclaimed release for Naxos of the piano concertos of Prokofiev, awarded the Diapason d’Or and Grand Prix du Disque de la Nouvelle Académie du Disque. In January 2002 his recording of the Turangalîla Symphony by Olivier Messiaen (8.554478-79) was awarded the Cannes Classical Award at MIDEM Classic 2002. In 2004 he received the Classical Internet Award. He has completed for Naxos a CD series of Szymanowski’s symphonic and large-scale vocal-instrumental works, each rated among ‘discs of the month’ by CD magazines (Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine). He also received the Record Academy Award 2005 of Japanese music magazine Record Geijutsu for Penderecki’s Polish Requiem (Naxos), and four Fryderyk Awards of the Polish Phonographic Academy. He has received six GRAMMY® nominations for Penderecki’s St Luke Passion in 2004 (8.557149), A Polish Requiem in 2005 (8.557386-87), Seven Gates of Jerusalem in 2007 (8.557766), Utrenja in 2009 (8.572031) and Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater in 2008 (8.570724) and Symphonies Nos. 1 and 4 in 2009 (8.570722). In 2010 Antoni Wit won the annual award of the Karol Szymanowski Foundation for his promotion of the music of Szymanowski in his Naxos recordings. Antoni Wit is professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.
