Henryk Czyz |

Henryk Czyz

In the galaxy of Polish conductors who came to the fore after the Second World War, Henryk Czyz belongs to one of the first places. He has established himself as a highly cultured musician with a wide repertoire, leading both symphony concerts and opera performances with equal skill. But above all, Chizh is known as an interpreter and propagandist of Polish music, especially contemporary. Chizh is not only a great connoisseur of the work of his compatriots, but also a prominent composer, author of a number of symphonic works included in the repertoire of Polish orchestras.

Chizh began his artistic career as a clarinetist in the Vilna Radio Orchestra before the war. In the post-war years, he entered the Higher School of Music in Poznań and graduated in 1952 in the composition class of T. Sheligovsky and in the conducting class of V. Berdyaev. Already in his student years, he began to conduct the Bydgoszcz Radio Orchestra. And immediately after receiving his diploma, he became the conductor of the Moniuszka Opera House in Poznań, with whom he soon visited the USSR for the first time. Then Czyz worked as second conductor of the Polish Radio Grand Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (1953-1957), artistic director and chief conductor of the Lodz Philharmonic (1957-1960), and subsequently constantly conducted at the Grand Opera House in Warsaw. Since the mid-fifties, Chizh has toured a lot both in Poland and abroad – in France, Hungary, Czechoslovakia; he repeatedly performed in Moscow, Leningrad and other cities of the USSR, where he introduced listeners to a number of works by K. Shimanovsky, V. Lutoslawsky, T. Byrd, K. Penderetsky and other Polish composers.

L. Grigoriev, J. Platek, 1969