Antoni Wit

Born in Kraków on February 7, 1944, Antoni Wit earned recognition as a conductor devoted to Polish modern works while maintaining an extensive international repertoire. He held the post of music director with the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice before serving for an extended period as head of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.

After completing studies at the Kraków Academy of Music—where his teachers included Henryk Czyż for conducting and Krzysztof Penderecki for composition—Wit graduated in 1967. He subsequently worked as assistant to Witold Rowicki at the Warsaw Philharmonic and received a law degree from Jagiellonian University in 1969. Taking advantage of permissive Polish travel rules at the time, he pursued further training in Paris, studying conducting under Pierre Dervaux at the Ecole Normale de Musique and composition privately with Nadia Boulanger. In 1973 he participated in conducting sessions at the Tanglewood Music Center led by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and Seiji Ozawa.

Between 1974 and 1977 he served as conductor and artistic director of the Pomeranian Philharmonic Orchestra, then moved to the Polish Radio and Television Orchestra and Chorus, a position he retained until 1983. During those years he conducted the premiere of Penderecki’s Lacrimosa in 1980. From 1983 until 2000 he led the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice; his first recording with the ensemble appeared in 1988 on Titanic Records, featuring violinist Roman Totenberg in concertos by Brahms and Karol Lipiński. In 1993 he directed the same orchestra in a cycle of Tchaikovsky symphonies for Naxos, the label with which he maintained his longest association.

Wit assumed leadership of the Warsaw Philharmonic in 2002 and remained until 2013. From 2010 to 2017 he also acted as principal guest conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra, while appearing as guest with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and several leading British ensembles. He continued to record with many of the orchestras he had directed, releasing a 2022 album of Zygmunt Stojowski works on Capriccio with the Rheinland-Pfalz Staatsphilharmonie and following it in 2023 with an album devoted to Zygmunt Noskowski. His discography eventually reached approximately 300 entries, seven of them nominated for Grammy Awards. For many years he also taught conducting at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw.