Pianist | Chamber Musician | Teacher
Przemysław Witek is a pianist, chamber musician and teacher, holding a doctorate in musical arts. He was born in 1985 in Wałbrzych. In 2009 he graduated with distinction from the piano class of Prof. Alicja Kledzik at the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań. He continued his studies at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne. Since 2009 he has worked at his alma mater, and since obtaining his doctorate in 2015 he has taught his own piano class. From 2015 to 2017 he completed an artistic residency under Prof. Krzysztof Jabłoński at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.
At the very outset of his career he won a number of international piano competitions. In 2004 he took First Prize at the International Piano Competition in Rome and two Special Prizes at the “Artur Rubinstein in memoriam” International Piano Competition in Bydgoszcz. In the following years he won piano competitions in Val Tidone (2005) and Racconigi (2006) in Italy, and in 2007 received a Special Prize at the N. Rubinstein International Chamber Music Competition in Moscow. The year 2008 holds a special place in his competition record: he won First Prize and the Prize for the Best Virtuoso at the Adilia Alieva Competition in Gaillard, France, as well as First Prize and the Prize for the Best Polish Pianist at the “Halina Czerny-Stefańska in memoriam” International Piano Competition in Poznań. These successes opened the way to his debut recording and to an intensive concert career in Poland and abroad.
As a soloist he has performed with numerous symphony and chamber orchestras, including the Polish Radio Chamber Orchestra Amadeus, the Beethoven Academy Orchestra, the Mozart Virtuoso Orchestra in Japan, the Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra, the CoOperate Orchestra, the Polish Philharmonic Sinfonia Baltica, the Płock Symphony Orchestra, and the orchestras of the Lower Silesian, Kraków, Koszalin, Lublin, Opole, Sudeten, Szczecin and Świętokrzyska Philharmonics. He has worked with many distinguished conductors, among them Agnieszka Duczmal, Marek Pijarowski, Paweł Przytocki, Jacek Rogala, Ruben Silva, Bohdan Jarmołowicz, Jan Miłosz Zarzycki, Jakub Chrenowicz, Przemysław Fiugajski, Paweł Kapuła, Szymon Makowski, Marko Ivanović, Grigorij Krasko and Mitsuyoshi Oikawa.
Performances at prestigious music events and season-opening concerts occupy an important place in his work. He opened the concert season of the Sudeten Philharmonic in Wałbrzych (2010), the National Philharmonic of Montenegro in Podgorica (2013) and the Mozart Virtuoso Orchestra in Tokyo (2017). In 2009 he performed at the final of the Festival of Polish Piano Music in Słupsk. He has toured China several times. He has given recitals and concerts in the major musical centres of Poland, as well as in the United States, Japan, China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Montenegro, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. He has also taken part in cultural events organised by Polish diplomatic missions, including in Tokyo, Singapore, Bishkek and Guangzhou.
Chamber music is an essential part of Przemysław Witek’s artistic activity. He has performed in a variety of instrumental line-ups, from duos to quintets, with artists such as Benedict Klöckner, Jiří Kabát, Anna Maria Staśkiewicz, Katarzyna Budnik, Zofia Kulisiewicz, Janusz Wawrowski, Marcin Markowicz and Bartosz Woroch. He is a co-founder of the Wieniawski Piano Trio, an ensemble devoted both to the great chamber repertoire and to bringing back to the concert stage works that are heard less often.
He also undertakes interdisciplinary projects combining music with literature and poetry. In words-and-music concerts he has appeared alongside outstanding Polish actors, including Daniel Olbrychski, Aleksander Machalica, Zbigniew Zamachowski and Jerzy Zelnik, creating events in which piano music and the spoken word complement each other as means of artistic expression.
Long-term, wide-ranging repertoire projects devoted to the most important cycles of piano literature are a major strand of his work. In the “Beethoven 32” project he set out to perform all thirty-two piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most monumental and demanding undertakings in the pianist’s repertoire. He has also performed the complete Études and all the Ballades of Fryderyk Chopin. Chopin’s music remains one of his central artistic interests, and in the coming seasons he plans further projects devoted to the composer.
Polish music of the 20th and 21st centuries holds a special place in his work, as does the discovery and promotion of pieces rarely heard in concert. In 2014 he gave the world premiere of Andrzej Nikodemowicz’s Piano Sonata No. 3 (1958), subsequently recorded for Polish Radio Lublin. In the same year he gave the Polish premiere of piano works by Mieczysław Weinberg as part of the project “Mieczysław Weinberg – an unknown genius”, funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The project included concerts at the Prokofiev Museum in Moscow, the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań. His recordings of Weinberg’s works formed part of his doctoral dissertation and were later released on the album “Mieczysław Weinberg – Piano & Chamber Works” in 2017.
In 2016 Przemysław Witek gave the premiere of Mikołaj Hertel’s Concerto alla polacca, commissioned for the 50th Jubilee Festival of Polish Piano Music in Słupsk. His collaboration with the composer led to another premiere: in 2019, with the Lublin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra under Przemysław Fiugajski, he gave the first performance of the Piano Concerto “Rzecz o Jasnowidzącym z Lublina” (“On the Seer of Lublin”). In 2020, together with musicians of the Academy of Music in Poznań, he took part in the premiere of Artur Kroschel’s “Bezlistne” (“Leafless”) for three pianos and three percussionists.
Przemysław Witek has made archival recordings for Polish Radio Lublin and for Vatican Radio, for which he recorded works by Karol Szymanowski. His discography comprises five albums documenting his solo and chamber work as well as his collaboration with symphony orchestras:
He has received numerous scholarships and distinctions for his artistic achievements. He held scholarships from the Prime Minister (2003) and the Polish Children’s Fund (2004), was a three-time scholar of the Mayor of Wałbrzych (2005–2007) and a four-time scholar of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2005–2008). He also received a DAAD scholarship (2009), the Marshal of the Wielkopolska Region Scholarship in the Field of Culture (2009) and the City of Poznań Artistic Scholarship (2012). In 2011 he received the Wałbrzych County Governor’s Award for artistic achievement. For his services to Polish culture he was awarded the honorary badge “Meritorious for Polish Culture” (2017) and the Bronze Cross of Merit (2019). Since 2022 he has been an Ambassador of the Municipality of Dopiewo, where he lives.
Przemysław Witek’s artistic work combines the interpretation of the great piano repertoire with a consistent search for works that have undeservedly remained outside the mainstream of concert life. Alongside the monumental cycles of Beethoven and Chopin, Polish music, chamber music, premieres and projects that go beyond the traditional piano recital hold a special place in it.