January 15, 2026
elected President of the Ludwig van Beethoven Association.
At an extraordinary general meeting of members of the Ludwig van Beethoven Association, held in Kraków on 26 November 2025, Andrzej Giza was elected President of the Association’s Management Board and Director-General of the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival. He succeeds Elżbieta Penderecka, who died on 31 October 2025.
The Management Board also comprises:
has been involved with the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival since 1997. In 2003 he co-founded the Ludwig van Beethoven Association and has served as its director since 2008.
He created the Festival’s advertising campaigns, which have twice received awards from the International Festivals & Events Association (IFEA) in the United States. He is also the founder and publisher of the quarterly Beethoven Magazine.
He holds a doctorate in the humanities and is a historian and art historian. He completed postgraduate studies at the Institute of Culture and the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Jagiellonian University, as well as at the Heritage Academy run by the Kraków University of Economics and the International Cultural Centre.
From 1997 to 2003 he coordinated the international promotion of the Kraków 2000 European City of Culture programme. He also helped develop promotional campaigns for festivals dedicated to the work of Wisława Szymborska, Czesław Miłosz, Krzysztof Penderecki and Andrzej Wajda.
He produced the European premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Credo in Kraków in 1998 and organised presentations of “Kraków 2000” at EXPO 2000 and at the Europalia Festival in Brussels in 2001.
In the years that followed, he co-developed Kraków’s promotion strategy (2005–2015), served as President of the Conspero Foundation (2004–2016) and acted as an adviser to the programme office of EXPO 2005. He also produced the Krzysztof Penderecki Festivals in Warsaw (2008, 2013, 2018 and 2023).
He conceived the Chopinomania project promoting the music of Fryderyk Chopin, co-created the Festival of Polish Culture in China (from 2011), and delivered projects promoting Polish culture during the Olympic Games between 2012 and 2022 in cooperation with the Polish Olympic Committee. Since 2019 he has also been involved in the Festival of Romantic Compositions.
On 1 April 2025, at his initiative, the Ludwig van Beethoven Association organised a concert in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome marking the anniversaries of the deaths of Krzysztof Penderecki and St John Paul II.
For his work on behalf of the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival he has been awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, the honorary badge Meritorious for Polish Culture, and the Mayor of Kraków’s Honoris Gratia award.