He was born on 5 March 1947 in Gdańsk. From his time at the High School of Music until the end of his studies at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk, he worked under the direction of Professor Stefan Herman. 
In 1964, while still a student at the High School of Music, he took part in the International Niccolò Paganini Competition in Genoa. There he received a diploma with special distinction. In 1966, he took first place at the International German Radio Music Competition in Munich and this event marked the beginning of his international career. From 1967 to the present, he has taken part in more than two thousand symphony concerts and recitals around the world. He has played with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Minneapolis, London Symphony, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, English Chamber Orchestra. He has performed at music festivals in Lucerne, Bordeaux, Berlin, Brighton, Prague, Barcelona, Warsaw and others. In 1970 he took part in the great music festival Beethovenfest in Bonn, dedicated to Beethoven on the bicentenary of his birth. From 1968 he performed in duo with pianist Jerzy Marchwinski. He is a valued chamber musician; together with Stefan Kamasa, Roman Jabłoński and Jerzy Marchwiński, he co-founded the Quartet of the Polish Radio and Television.

He has recorded widely for CD, radio and television. His recording credits include concertos by Vivaldi, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Glazunov, Lalo, Bartók, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Brahms, Karłowicz, Penderecki, Hindemith, Szymanowski, numerous sonatas and virtuoso works. He has taken part in recordings of Polish contemporary music (Penderecki, Lutosławski, Knapik, Bloch, Jabłoński and others). For his recording of the complete works of Karol Szymanowski, he received a special Polish Radio award, and for his recording of Szymanowski's two concertos in 1981, he was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque in Paris. He frequently performs works by Polish composers abroad. He was the first performer of Krzysztof Penderecki's Concerto No. 1 after Stern, and has played the work many times in Europe and North America, mainly under the composer's baton. He has taken part in many foreign tours with Polish orchestras. He is closely associated with the National Philharmonic Orchestra, where he held the position of soloist from 1984 to 2022, i.e. until the abolition of this post. With this orchestra, mainly under the baton of Witold Rowicki and Kazimierz Kord, he toured almost all over the world many times.

Since 1994 he has been a professor at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music (now the University of Music) in Warsaw. He has received numerous distinctions, including awards from the Minister of Culture and the Arts, an award from the Minister of Foreign Affairs for his outstanding contribution to the promotion of Polish culture abroad and the Commander's Cross of the Order of Rebirth of Poland. In 2014, he was awarded the Golden Fryderyk for lifetime achievement in music and contribution to the development of Polish music (previously three Fryderyks in different categories). He holds honorary doctorates from the Academy of Music in Gdańsk and the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.