Kociuban, Wiktor

Conductor and cellist, artistic and general director of the international organization Delirium-Edition. He made his international debut in 2014 at the prestigious Lucerne Festival conducting the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra (Zimmermann’s Sinfonie in einem Satz).He has cooperated with leading composers such as Georg Friedrich Haas (who described him as a “phenomenal musician”), Heinz Holliger (opera Schneewittchen, directed by Achim Freyer, Basel Theatre 2014), Krzysztof Penderecki (Seven Gates of Jerusalem, Symphony no. 7, A Sea of Dreams Did Breathe On Me and other works), Sofia Gubaidulina (Fata-Morgana, Am Rande des Abgrunds, Preludes), Paweł Mykietyn, Peter Ablinger, Rudolf Kelterborn, Johannes Walter, and Roland Moser. He has performed with soloists such as Misha Maisky, Ivan Monighetti, Stephan Schmidt, Marcus Weiss, Jürg Henneberger, and Mike Svoboda. 

He has appeared notably at the Lucerne Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Schwetzingen Festival, Davos Festival, and Ludwig van Beethoven Festival. As a concert and opera conductor he has performed in Poland presenting repertoire ranging from works by Viennese classics to premiere performances of new compositions. He has collaborated with the Rzeszów Philharmonic, Sinfonia Iuventus, Białystok Opera and Philharmonic, Cracow Philharmonic, Beethoven Academy Orchestra, and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. 

In 2016 he founded Delirium-Edition, an organisation for the art of tomorrow, an international platform aimed at connecting artists of various disciplines in order to promote contemporary art to the wider, younger audiences. 

Wiktor Kociuban is the author of the cycle dark matter(s), which presents the most important twentieth and twentyrst-century operas and symphony works. Its first concert, the nature of sound, was held in June 2016 with the participation of Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra, presenting works by Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, Giacinto Scelsi, and Georg Friedrich Haas (Polish premiere of Natures mortes). In 2017 the programme featured music by Polish composers Paweł Mykietyn and Piotr Peszat. 

He cooperates with Georgian composer and pianist Demetre Gamsachurdia. The interactive opera Vikarë (2015–17), dedicated to Kociuban, was staged in 2018 in Poland (Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Lusławice) and Switzerland (Neues eater Dornach) and performed by Delirium Ensemble under the direction of Kociuban. 

The 2015 recording of Oracle’s Blast, coproduced by Demetre Gamsachurdia and released by DUX in cooperation with the Swiss Radio SRF 2 Kultur, presented five new works written by composers from different parts of the world. It has been described as the album of “global significance” by international music critics. In 2013 Kociuban made the first recording of Krzysztof Penderecki’s and Iannis Xenakis’s complete works for solo cello. As a conductor and cellist, Wiktor Kociuban has premiered nearly 100 new works, many of which were dedicated to him. 

© Wiktor Kociuban