Antoni Wit

Antoni Wit (born February 7, 1944 in Kraków) is a Polish conductor. Since year 2002 he has been music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. He has been collaborating also with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra since the od 2010-2011 season, and he played with them as the first guest conductor. In May 2013 he has been nominated Artistic Director of the Spanish Pampeluna-based ensemble. Wit graduated from the Kraków's Academy of Music (then called Państwowa Wyższa Szkola Muzyczna) in 1967. He studied conducting under Henryk Czyż, and composition under Krzysztof Penderecki. He went on to study in Paris under Nadia Boulanger (1967–68). Wit has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Dresden, the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and in London the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra. He has recorded over 90 albums, most of them for the Naxos label, and many of them with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, whose managing and artistic director he was from 1983 to 2000. He specializes in the works of Polish composers such as Henryk Gorecki, Wojciech Kilar, Krzysztof Meyer, Witold Lutosławski and Krzysztof Penderecki whose Polish Requiem he recorded in 2004. Wit received a Cannes Classical Award for his album of Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony; his recording of Bedřich Smetana's Má vlast cycle was also very well received. Wit currently teaches at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw.