Founded in 2002, it is composed of Polish musicians who are members of the Deutsche Oper Berlin orchestra. It is comprised of the concertmaster, the outstanding Polish violinist Tomasz Tomaszewski (first violin), and the following musicians Piotr Prysiażnik (second violin), Sebastian Sokół (viola) and Maryjka Pstrokońska-Nawratil (cello). After an excellent debut at the Musiktage festival in Koblenz they started touring elsewhere in Germany, Poland, Norway and Italy, earning the reputation of outstanding performers of contemporary Polish music. The quartet have taken part in a famous series of concerts organized by the Universität der Künste in Berlin, presenting works of the Polish pupils of Franz Schreker, which in turn has aroused interest in the works of such composers as Jerzy Fitelberg, Joachim Mendelssohn and Karol Rathaus.

The European Forum of Polish Music, whose honorary president is Krzysztof Penderecki, was established in Berlin in 2012 thanks to the initiative of the quartet. As part of this, the quartet is realising the long-standing project “Poland Abroad” devoted to the following Polish composers who have lived or are living abroad – Alexandre Tansmann, Szymon Laks, Andrzej Panufnik, Andrzej Czajkowski, Piotr Moss and Witold Szalonek.

A conductor who has, since September 2013, been the Artistic Director of the Karol Szymanowski Philharmonic in Krakow. Many critics have praised him as one of the most interesting young conductors in Europe. His international career was launched by winning the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in London in 2006, owing to which he received a two-year position as the assistant conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, where he worked, among others, with Valery Gergiev and Sir Colin Davis. He also won second prize at the II International Conducting Competition Prix Credit Suisse in Grenchen (Switzerland, 2002) and won competitions in Zagreb (Lovro von Matačić 2003) and Suwon (South Korea) in 2005.

He graduated with honours from his conducting studies at the Warsaw Academy of Music (now the Fryderyk Chopin Music University) under the direction of Antoni Wit and the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik in Berlin in the class of Christian Ehwald. In March 2015 he received a doctorate from the Fryderyk Chopin Music University in Warsaw for his thesis devoted to the selected symphonic poems of Richard Strauss. He was a fellow of the Japanese-Polish Music Foundation JESC (2004) and has received scholarships from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. He has performed with leading orchestras in Europe, Australia, South Africa, the United States and Japan.