JANINA FIALKOWSKA Piano Recital / Singapore International Piano Festival 2011 / Review

JANINA FIALKOWSKA Piano Recital
Singapore International Piano Festival
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory 

Thursday (16 June 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 June 2011 with the title "Pole position on keyboard".

The theme of this year’s piano festival is Transformation, manifested on the keyboard by a play on transcriptions, variations and the metamorphoses of themes. The opening recital was given by the Canadian-Polish pianist Janina Fialkowska, whose miraculous recovery from a debilitating form of cancer to a full concert schedule held a certain resonance.

Her wonderfully varied programme however began unsteadily, with a performance of Schubert’s little Sonata in A major (Op.120) dogged by wrong notes and a memory lapse. However the way she shaped its sunny themes, filled with songlike radiance and suppleness, left little doubt of her artistry.

In the music of her fellow Poles, a sure-footed authority held sway. In Karol Szymanowski’s Étude in B flat minor (Op.4 No.3), once his singularly most popular hit, quietly brooding chords built up to a crashing climax. This gave way to the impressionistic flights of fancy in The Isle of Sirens (from Metopes), where her delicate and always imaginative touch were a premium.

Fialkowska’s view of Chopin (left) was no less satisfying. The Waltz in A flat major (Op.34 No.1) had lightness and scintillation, the trills of the Nocturne in B major (Op.62 No.1) lingered ever so deliciously, while sheer vehemence and violence of Scherzo No.1 in B minor (Op.20) was given loving respite by a tender Polish lullaby.

The second half’s offering of Franz Liszt (below) – original works and transcriptions – was performed without a break. Love or loathe him, Fialkowska presented his two diametrically opposing sides. There can be no more subtle or sublime work than Liszt’s Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude (The Blessing of God in Solitude), which received the dream performance. The right hand’s gentle filigree, in communion with the baritone song by the left hand, created the spiritual high of the evening.

Three of Chopin’s Polish Songs in transcription brought the listener back to more earthy reaches. Fialkowska played a less familiar version of the Schubert-Liszt Soirees de Vienne No.6, but the rhythmic pulse of the waltz was ever pervasive. The ante was upped for the vulgar Waltz from Gounod’s Faust, where she went for the jugular of the Devil. Missed notes notwithstanding, it was a thrilling ride from the first to last note.

With two delightful little encores by Chopin and Mendelssohn, the transformation from Mephistopheles to Saint Janina was complete.

The Singapore International Piano Festival was presented by Singapore Symphonia Co. Ltd.

A Few Words with LIONEL CHOI, Artistic Director, Singapore International Piano Festival 2011

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

PIANO FESTIVAL, 16-19 June 2011

JANINA FIALKOWSKA, 16 June

SHAI WOSNER, 17 June

NAREH ARGHAMANYAN, 18 June

ARNALDO COHEN, 19 June

All concerts begin at 8 pm 

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Just a pitch for Singapore's annual international piano festival, one of the must-attends of Singapore's cultural calendar. As a former artistic director, it was a privilege to have a few words with my successor LIONEL CHOI (below), whose taste in pianists and piano literature is never less than impeccable. This year's festival is held at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, a different venue but the keyboard fireworks never ceases!

The Singapore International Piano Festival was founded in 1994, and this is your second year as Festival Director. What have been your inspirations in the planning and running of this annual event?

I have returned to the fundamentals, having always been thrilled and inspired by great piano music given fine, well-thought performances by outstanding pianists. That provides an opportunity for our audiences to not just hear great music, but to revel in high level of musical understanding. It is the sheer joy of piano music and experiencing it being performed live in a meaningful, hopefully inspiring way which I hope audiences will take away with them after every recital, every year.

Is there an underlying theme in this year’s festival?

This year's Festival is entitled "Transformation". There is the obvious reference to the art and technique of metamorphosis in musical and piano writing: taking a theme and transforming it through multiple, creative variations; re-creating non-piano works through inventive transcriptions; taking a basic musical concept such as a ‘ballade’ or a 'scherzo' and expanding it into an entirely independent, personal form, and so on. There is at least a set of variations and/or transcriptions in every recital.

There is also the inextricable link between life-changing life experiences and what shows up in the performance of the artist. In this specific respect, I was particularly moved by the story of Janina Fialkowska (Canada, left) who opens this year's Festival. A protege of Arthur Rubinstein, she was diagnosed in 2002 with a rare, cancerous tumour in her left shoulder muscle which threatened to end her career. Determined not to give up, she first set about learning the concertos and works originally written for the left hand only and transcribed them for her right hand. 

Following experimental treatment, surgeons completed a rare muscle transfer procedure, which eventually allowed her to regain control of the movement in her left arm. This allowed her to make a gradual return to the concert platform. What is particularly inspiring is how hard she worked at going back to the top of her craft. She still sounds completely unfazed even by the most fiendishly difficult of repertoire, which she despatches with such electrifying directness, poetic power of narration, inner emotional freedom and pulsating agility!

Who are this year’s recitalists, and what will your audience expect to take home?

Fialkowska will present a programme of contrasts, with Schubert alongside Szymanowski and Chopin. From deeply meditative to wildly virtuosic, Liszt’s works and transcriptions rounds off the thrilling Festival curtain-raiser. Arnaldo Cohen (Brazil, left) began his illustrious career in the 1970s. His graceful and unaffected stage manner belies playing of white-hot intensity, intellectual probity, and glittering bravura technique bordering on sheer wizardry. He will perform the Bach-Busoni Chaconne, Chopin’s Four Scherzi and a dazzling array of pieces from his native Brazil.

Nareh Arghamanyan (Armenia, left), in her early 20s, won the Montreal Competition in 2008. She will play works by Rameau, Clementi, Schumann, Liszt's Ballade No. 2 and Rachmaninov's Études-Tableaux Op.33. Shai Wosner (Israel, below) brings a beautifully constructed programme of themes and variations, by Brahms, Beethoven and Oliver Knussen, and ends with the mighty and dramatic Appassionata Sonata by Beethoven.

Are there any particular performances which you think are going to be special or different?

I have been very judicious and discerning in our choice of pianists, each and every one selected for his artistic maturity and overall excellence in musicianship, over and above technical skill. I have also left the pianists to play whatever repertoire they are most comfortable with and I expect every performance to be, in its own way, special!