Live Pictures at an Exhibition Fri 11 – Sat 12 December

Born in Kraków, Anna Sułkowska-Migoń won first prize at the La Maestra conducting competition in Paris in March 2022. Since then she has appeared regularly with all the major Polish orchestras, and will make further debuts in North America and Europe in the coming seasons. In 2023, she was awarded the Neeme Järvi Prize at the Gstaad Conducting Academy.

In January 2024 she made her debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in their subscription series at the invitation of Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Since this critically acclaimed success, she has made important debuts with the National Arts Centre, Ottawa and the Québec Symphony, and in Spring 2026 will conduct a series of high profile main series concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, working with major soloists including Leila Josefowicz, Inon Barnatan and Ingrid Fliter. Sułkowska-Migoń is also a champion of Polish composers, and conducted the 25th anniversary Penderecki’s “Credo” at the Oregon Bach Festival in July 2023, as well as a special concert of Weinberg and Sikora to mark the 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 2023.

Sułkowska-Migoń is a regular with all the top Polish orchestras, including the NFM Wrocław and NOSPR in Katowice who she returns to in their respective 25/26 subscription series, and the Warsaw Philharmonic, who she will lead on their major tour to Japan this September with concerts in Nagoya, Osaka, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. Other highlights of the 25/26 include her debuts with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France with Alan Gilbert, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and the Orchestre National de Lille. She will also return to the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, and return to the Ulster Orchestra to open their season.

In January 2025, she made her full operatic debut at the Bern Opera House, conducting 12 performances of a new production of Eugene Onegin to excellent reviews. Other recent highlights include debuts with the DSO Berlin, Dresden Philharmonic, Bern Symphony Orchestra, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. She appeared twice at the prestigious Palau de la Música Catalana in 2023, firstly with the Orquesta Sinfónica del Vallés, and as part of a tour with the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana that also included performances in Valencia and Castellón. Sułkowska-Migoń regularly works with renowned soloists including James Ehnes, Pacho Flores, Isata Kanneh-Mason, André Schuen, Verity Wingate and Josef Špaček.

She is the recipient of the 2022-2024 Taki Alsop Conducting Award, and attended Ravinia Festival in August 2022 as part of the Taki Alsop masterclasses with the Chicago Symphony. She was also selected as one of four conductors to participate in the Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors Program in the 22/23 season. She has previously collaborated with conductors such as Marin Alsop, François Xavier[1]Roth, Klaus Mäkelä, Stéphane Denève, Kirill Karabits, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Piotr Sułkowski and Antoni Wit. As an instrumentalist, she completed her MA studies, specializing in viola, at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music. She then completed her masters at The Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków specializing in symphonic and choral conducting. She attended the 2023 Gstaad Conducting Academy in August, and was awarded the Neeme Järvi Prize by a jury including Jaap van Zweden, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, and Johannes Schlaefli.

See Anna Sułkowska-Migoń conduct Pictures at an Exhibition with the RSNO on 9, 11 and 12 December 2026.

Polish pianist Rafał Blechacz’s artistry is recognised as rare by any measure – his many plaudits include being dubbed “a musician in service to the music, searching its depths, exploring its meaning and probing its possibilities” (Washington Post) – and arises from his total command of the keyboard and ability to unlock his instrument’s full expressive range. Those qualities have supported his artistic and professional development in the years since he took first prize at the 2005 International Chopin Piano Competition. He stands today among the world’s finest pianists, in high demand for the honesty and vision he brings to performances of everything from Bach and Beethoven to Chopin and Szymanowski.

The eloquence and intensity of Blechacz’s Chopin Competition performances, delivered within months of his twentieth birthday, were rewarded not only with the winner’s medal but also with a clean sweep of the event’s four special prizes and the Audience Award. He signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon in May 2006, following Krystian Zimerman to become the second Polish pianist to join the yellow label’s international roster of artists. The new relationship was launched in October 2007 with Blechacz’s debut solo album, a coupling of Chopin’s completePreludes and theTwoNocturnes op. 62. His second release – a recital of piano sonatas by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven – was issued in 2008, after which he returned to Chopin, recording the two piano concertos with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Jerzy Semkow for an album released in 2009 to herald the upcoming bicentenary of Chopin’s birth.

2012 saw the release of an album of solo works by Debussy and Szymanowski. This was followed in 2013 by another acclaimed Chopin recording, this one featuring the composer’s mature Polonaises. Blechacz’s sixth DG album, released in 2017, was devoted to works by Bach, the Partitas Nos.1 & 3 andItalian Concerto among them. He then joined forces with Korean violinist Bomsori Kim to record a selection of works by Fauré, Debussy, Szymanowski and Chopin. Released in 2019, this was his debut chamber music album for DG

Devoted entirely to Chopin, Blechacz’s latest release presents his insightful interpretations of the Second and Third Piano Sonatas, Nocturne Op. 48 No. 2 and Barcarolle Op. 60. “I’ve had many experiences with this programme, playing it all over the world, in different concert halls and on different pianos,” says the artist. “I really wanted to share the beauty of these compositions with the audience.”Chopin was released, digitally, on CD and on vinyl (2 LPs) in March 2023.

Rafał Blechacz was born in the small town of Nakło nad Notecią in northern Poland in June 1985. He showed early signs of musical talent and began piano lessons at the age of five. Having first enrolled at the Arthur Rubinstein State Music School in Bydgoszcz, he progressed to study at the city’s Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music, graduating in May 2007 from Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń’s piano class. Blechacz’s outstanding technical and artistic attributes secured a sequence of competition successes, beginning in 2002 with second prize at the Arthur Rubinstein International Competition for Young Pianists in Bydgoszcz, continuing the following year with joint first prize at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, and culminating in outright victory at the 2005 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, where he became the first Polish musician to receive the top prize since Krystian Zimerman thirty years earlier.

He went on to win the 2010 Premio Internazionale Accademia Chigiana, awarded annually by the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena to an outstanding pianist or violinist. In 2014 Blechacz received the Gilmore Artist Award, a prestigious prize conferred every four years in recognition of “extraordinary piano artistry”. In addition to formal prizes and awards, he has also garnered ringing endorsements from senior colleagues, with Martha Argerich, winner of the Chopin Competition in 1965, describing him as “a very honest, extraordinary and sensitive artist” and the Irish pianist and pedagogue John O’Conor as “one of the greatest artists I have ever heard in my life”.

See Rafał Blechacz perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto No1 with the RSNO on 9, 11 and 12 December 2026. On 13 December 2026 he will perform Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No14 Op27 No2 Moonlight and Chopin’s Four Mazurkas Op33, Scherzo No1 Op20 and Piano Sonata No2 Op35.