Antoni Wit is one of the most highly regarded Polish conductors and a champion of Polish music. A top prizewinner at the Herbert von Karajan International Conducting Competition in 1971 and an assistant to Karajan at the Easter Festival in Salzburg, he subsequently worked with all of the leading orchestras in Poland (including the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra) before taking up the position of general and artistic director of the Warsaw Philharmonic in 2001 for twelve years until the end of the 2012–13 season. He was music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra in Spain between 2013 and 2018, and he is currently conductor laureate of the Kraków Philharmonic in Poland. In 2015 he was awarded the French Légion d’honneur.
Antoni Wit has enjoyed an international career with major orchestras throughout Europe, America and the Far East. Past highlights have included the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Filarmonica della Scala, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome, the Royal Philharmonic, the Philharmonia and the BBC Symphony Orchestras as well as the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the China Philharmonic Orchestra and The Cleveland Orchestra among others.
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 series of Szymanowski’s symphonic and large-scale vocal-instrumental works, each rated among ‘discs of the month’ by Gramophone magazine and BBC Music Magazine. He also received the Record Academy Award 2005 of Japanese music magazine Record Geijutsu for Penderecki’s A Polish Requiem (8.557386-87), and four Fryderyk Awards of the Polish Phonographic Academy. In 2012 he received a GRAMMY Award for Penderecki’s Fonogrammi, Horn Concerto and Partita (8.572482), and six other nominations for Penderecki’s St Luke Passion in 2004 (8.557149), A Polish Requiem in 2005, The 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.
He has recorded for Naxos all the symphonic works of Szymanowski, Lutosławski, Penderecki, Karłowicz, and other Polish composers. Wit studied conducting with Henryk Czyz at the Academy of Music in Kraków, continuing his musical studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He also graduated in law from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Antoni Wit was formerly a professor at music academies in Poland and Korea, and is now an honorary professor at Keimyung University in Daegu.