Exire 2024

Veteran conductor Antoni Wit has been a major champion of Polish contemporary music but also has a wide repertory of music from many countries. He was conductor of the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Katowice, and then the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra for many years.

Founded in 1901 by a group of Polish business leaders and musicians, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra has survived through the tumultuous changes that have beset its city and its homeland, emerging changed but with its essential values intact. The soloist in the first concert was Paderewski, Poland's future prime minister, and the orchestra was installed in a splendid hall influenced by the design of the Paris Opéra. Until 1939 that hall was one of Poland's cultural centers, and the orchestra, under first conductor Emil Mlynarski and his successors, played host to soloists like Pablo Casals and Jascha Heifetz. The orchestra performed at the first Chopin International Piano Competition, in 1927, and has continued to be closely associated with that event.