KONSTANTY ANDRZEJ KULKA

Born in 1947 in Gdańsk; in both the Secondary School of Music and Music Academy in Gdańsk from which he graduated with honours at the highest grade in 1971, he worked under the direction of Professor Stefan Herman. In 1964, while still at secondary school, he participated in the Niccolò Paganini International Competition in Genoa where he received a diploma with a special distinction. In September 1966, Kulka took first place in the ARD International Music Competition in Munich and this started his world-wide career.

Since 1967 he has appeared in over 1500 concerts and recitals throughout the world. He has collaborated with such orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Minneapolis, London Symphony Orchestra, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the English Chamber Orchestra, and many others. He has performed at such prominent music festivals as those in Lucerne, Bordeaux, Berlin, Brighton, Prague, Barcelona, Flanders or Warsaw. In 1970 he took part in a great festival to honour Ludwig van Beethoven in 200th anniversary of his birth. He has made many recordings for radio, television and record companies. His recordings include, among others, concertos by Vivaldi, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Glazunov, Lalo, Bartók, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Brahms, Karłowicz, Penderecki, Hindemith and Szymanowski. He has also recorded numerous sonatas and virtuoso pieces as well as chamber music works and has participated in recordings of Polish contemporary music by composers such as Penderecki, Lutosławski, Knapik, Bloch or Jabłoński. For his recordings of the complete collection of Karol Szymanowski’s works, Konstanty Kulka received a Polish Radio Special Award and in 1981 in Paris he received the Grand Prix du Disque for his recording of Szymanowski’s two violin concertos. While abroad, Konstanty Kulka often plays the works of Polish composers. He was the first, after Isaac Stern, to perform Krzysztof Penderecki’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and has performed it many times in Europe and North America, mainly under the direction of the composer himself. He takes part in many foreign tours with Polish orchestras and is directly connected with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra. It is with this orchestra, mainly conducted by Witold Rowicki and later by Kazimierz Kord, that he has toured the whole world many times. Since 1994 Konstanty Kulka has been the Professor at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw.

Konstanty Kulka has received many honours, among others awards from the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, the award of the Polish Foreign Office for services to the popularisation of Polish culture abroad, the Commander's Cross Polonia Restituta, many honorary titles and other distinctions.