Symphonic Concert Filharmonia Narodowa

Go to content
Symphonic Concert
Jacek Brzoznowski, photo: Piotr Rybakiewicz

Due to reasons beyond the Warsaw Philharmonic, there has been a change of conductor for the subscription concerts on 4 and 5 April 2025.
Instead of Antonello Manacorda, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra will be conducted by Jacek Brzoznowski, who is acting as Assistant Conductor for the current season.
The programme of the concerts remains unchanged.

 

Beethoven seems to have ‘commissioned’ his Symphony No. 1 in C major from himself. The ambition to tackle a form that the Romantic aesthetic revolution would soon be treating as a laboratory for absolute music would have suited the Viennese Classic’s character. The increasingly prominent 30-year-old composer dedicated the completed work, on which he worked meticulously for many years, to Gottfried van Swieten, the protector of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was the achievements of those composers, kindly disposed towards the young Beethoven, with whose output he would hardly have dared to vie at the time, that served as the starting point for his supremely successful debut symphony.

The Symphony No. 1 by the twentieth-century classic Dmitry Shostakovich was his diploma piece in the composition class of the Leningrad Conservatory, from which he graduated at the age of 19. Characterised by the composer’s typical play of edgy motifs, march-like rhythms and clear textures, this work soon ventured beyond the university walls, bringing its young composer international acclaim. Subsequent anniversaries of the symphony’s first performance at the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1926 were later celebrated by Shostakovich for the rest of his life, while that famous institution, remembering the premieres of his other works, later repaid the favour by adopting Shostakovich as its patron.

Close

Jacek Brzoznowski

Jacek Brzoznowski graduated with honours in symphonic and opera conducting from the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk, where he studied in the class of Wojciech Rajski and Rafał Jacek Delekta, before obtaining his doctorate (2023) from the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Krakow. In the 2024/2025 artistic season, he is Assistant Conductor of the Warsaw Philharmonic.

He has won first prize in the 1st International Orchestra Conducting Academy and Competition in Estoril (Portugal, 2020) and third prize in the 2nd Adam Kopyciński National Competition for Student Conductors in Wrocław (2017), where he also received two special prizes. He is a finalist of the Lányi International Conducting Competition in Subotica (Serbia, 2021) and a semi-finalist of the 1st European Union Conducting Competition in Pazardzhik (Bulgaria, 2018). In 2024, he was a finalist in the competition for the position of assistant conductor with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Together with Cappella Gedanensis, he has twice made CD recordings and also participated in a recording made by TVP. The year 2024 saw the release of the album Gdańsk dla muzyki polskiej [Gdańsk for Polish music], with compositions by Jerzy Maksymiuk, Zbigniew Kozub, Adam Sławinski and Władyslaw Słowinski, featuring solo parts by Łukasz Długosz and Agata Kielar-Długosz. In 2021, he conducted the premiere of Marcello di Capua’s opera La forza del merito at the Podkarpacka Philharmonic in Rzeszów, as part of the 60th Łańcut Music Festival. In 2022, he collaborated on the premiere of the ballet Alice in Wonderland (Przemysław Zych, Robert Bondara) at Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz.

Thanks to a programme run by the  Institute of Music and Dance (IMiT), in the 2017/2018 season he was Conductor-in-Residence at the Cappella Gedanensis, with which he has continued to perform. From 2018 to 2021, he worked with the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk, where he conducted performances and served as assistant conductor. He has attended many masterclasses, by conductors such as Marin Alsop, José Maria Florêncio, Alim Shakh, George Tchitchinadze, Nikolay Lalov, Roberto Gianola, Paweł Kotla, Jerzy Salwarowski and Rafał Jacek Delekta. He has also performed with the Orquestra de Câmara de Cascais e Oeiras (Portugal), Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra Olomouc (Czechia), Witold Lutosławski Płock Symphony Orchestra, Polish Chamber Philharmonic in Sopot, Elbląg Chamber Orchestra and Gorzów Philharmonic Orchestra.
 

[2025]