The formidable pianist Janina Fialkowska makes a most welcome return to the Coast Recital Society on Sunday afternoon, March 8 at the Raven’s Cry Theatre.
For more than 40 years, Fialkowska has enchanted audiences and critics around the world. She has been praised for her musical integrity, her refreshing natural approach and her unique piano sound, thus becoming “one of the Grandes Dames of piano playing” (Frankfurter Allgemeine).
Fialkowska’s career was launched in 1974, when the legendary pianist Arthur Rubinstein became her mentor after her prize-winning performance at his inaugural Master Piano Competition, calling her a “born Chopin interpreter,” laying the foundation for her lifelong identification with this composer.
Since then she has performed with the foremost orchestras worldwide under the baton of such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Bernard Haitink, Lorin Maazel, Sir Georg Solti, Sir Roger Norrington and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Fialkowska’s discography includes many award-winning discs, including the BBC Music Magazine’s 2013 “Instrumental CD of the Year” award as well as the Canadian Juno Award in 2018.
An Officer of the Order of Canada, she was a recipient of the Governor General’s 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award in Classical Music. She passes on her wide musical experience in master classes around the world, and at her annual International Piano Academy in Germany, where she now resides. She also makes frequent appearances as a juror of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions.
Her recital will feature works by Maurice Ravel, Germaine Tailleferre, Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc and Frédéric Chopin.
In a recent review of Les Sons et les Parfums, her latest CD on the ATMA label, the music critic of Gramophone magazine wrote: “The highest accolade I can think of for Fialkowska’s music-making is that her conception of Debussy’s shimmering moonlight is so strikingly original, yet stylistically aware and profoundly felt, that it’s as if you’ve never heard it before. There’s simply no one quite like her.”
The concert begins at 2:30 p.m. Ticket information: 604-885-099 or [email protected] Information at www.coastrecitalsociety.ca
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