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The exceptional artistry and brilliant virtuosity of Janina Fialkowska have won
her enthusiastic accolades from audiences and critics worldwide. Celebrated for
her interpretations of the classical and romantic repertoire, she is particularly
distinguished as one of the great interpreters of the piano works of Chopin and
Mozart. She has also won acclaim as a champion of the music of twentieth-century
Polish composers, both in concert and on disc.
Born to a Canadian mother and a Polish father in Montreal, Janina Fialkowska started
to study the piano with her mother at the age of five. Eventually she entered the
Ecole de Musique Vincent d'Indy, studying under the tutelage of Mlle. Yvonne Hubert.
The University of Montreal awarded her both advanced degrees of “Baccalaureat” and
“Maitrise” by the time she was only 17. In 1969, her career was greatly advanced
by two events: winning the first prize in the Radio Canada National Talent Festival
and travelling to Paris to study with Yvonne Lefebure. One year later, she entered
the Juilliard School of Music in New York, where she first studied with Sascha Gorodnitzki
and later became his assistant for five years. In 1974 her career was launched by
Arthur Rubinstein after her prize-winning performance at his inaugural Master Piano
Competition in Israel.
She has performed with the foremost North American orchestras, among them the Chicago
Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia
Orchestra, the Houston Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony as well as with all
of the principal Canadian orchestras, including the Montreal Symphony Orchestra,
the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, the
Calgary Philharmonic and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
In touring Europe each year, Ms Fialkowska has appeared as guest artist with such
prestigious orchestras as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Halle
Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, London's Philharmonia Orchestra, the BBC Symphony,
the Royal Philharmonic, the Scottish National Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic
and the French and Belgium National Radio Orchestras. She has also performed with
the Israel Philharmonic, the Osaka Philharmonic and the Hong Kong Philharmonic and
has worked with such renowned conductors as Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Hans
Graf, Bernard Haitink, Kyril Kondrashin, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Sir Roger Norrington,
Sir Georg Solti, Leonard Slatkin, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and Klaus Tennstedt.
She has won special recognition for a series of important premieres, most notably
the world premiere performance of a newly discovered Piano Concerto by Franz Liszt
with the Chicago Symphony in 1990. She has also given the world premiere of a Piano
Concerto by Libby Larsen with the Minnesota Orchestra (October 1991) and the North
American premiere of the Piano Concerto by Sir Andrzej Panufnik with the Colorado
Symphony (February 1992) and the Piano concerto by Marjan Mozetich with the Kingston
Orchestra (March 2000).
Janina Fialkowska was the Founding Director of the hugely successful “Piano Six”
project and its successor “Piano Plus”. This latest project brings together some
of Canada’s greatest Classical pianists, instrumentalists and vocalists with Canadians
who, for either geographical or financial reasons, would otherwise be unable to
hear this calibre of “live” classical performance. In 2000 "Piano Six" won one of
Canada's top Arts’ awards, the Chalmers Award.
In 1992 the CBC produced a sixty-minute television documentary, "the World of Janina
Fialkowska" that aired to great acclaim throughout Canada. This program won a Special
Jury Prize at the 1992 San Francisco International Film Festival. In October 2002
Ms Fialkowska was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2006, Acadia University,
one of Canada’s oldest and finest educational institutions awarded her an honorary
doctorate.
In January, 2002 at the onset of a major European tour encompassing eight different
countries, Ms. Fialkowska’s career was brought to a dramatic halt by the discovery
of a tumour in her left arm. After successful surgery to remove the cancer, Ms Fialkowska
underwent further surgery in January 2003; a rare muscle-transfer procedure. After
18 months of performing the Ravel and Prokofiev "concertos for the left hand" which
she transcribed for her right hand she has resumed her two-handed career beginning
with a tremendously successful and highly emotional recital held in Germany in January
2004.
Ms Fialkowska's discography includes discs featuring the 24 Chopin Etudes, Op. 10
& Op. 25, the Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3 and the Impromptus, a solo album of Liszt piano
works and her astonishing version of the 12 Transcendental Etudes by Franz Liszt.
Also a solo Szymanowski album and the highly acclaimed CD, "La jongleuse - Salon
pieces and encores." She has also recorded her immensely popular CD of the Paderewski
piano concerto with the Polish National Radio Orchestra, the rarely heard piano
concerto by Moritz Moszkowski and more recently, to the highest critical acclaim,
the three Liszt piano concertos with Hans Graf conducting.
Ms Fialkowska’s latest recordings are performances of piano concertos by Chopin
and Mozart in authentic versions consisting of piano solo and string quintet accompaniment.
Both of which were released to highest critical acclaim.
The 2007/2008 season saw her touring three continents with engagements in Germany,
England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the US and Canada as well as Japan. The current
season started with a new recording of solo works by Chopin for the Atma Label followed
by a busy touring schedule on both sides of the Atlantic.
Fall 2008
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