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For the most recent reviews, please check the newsletters
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World Premiere of Liszt's 3rd Piano concerto and "Totentanz"
Chicago Symphony, Kenneth Jean |
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Fialkowska is the kind of pianist you get when you combine the bravura style of
Ivo Pogorelich with some warmth and brains. The brilliance remains, but it now has
a human quality that makes a deeper level of communication possible.
Chicago Sun-Times, May 1990
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Miss Fialkowska is a superb Lisztian, and if the concerto required the more refined
colors on her palette, her second offering of the evening, Listz's "Totentanz",
let her display her more fiery side. This was bravura playing of the first order,
full of power and sheer technical ostentation.
The New York Times, May 1990
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Liszt "Malediction" and "Totentanz"
Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Hans Graf |
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Fialkowska wows audience with little-known Liszt (headline)
Janina Fialkowska , one of Canada's finest and splashiest pianists, performing the
music she plays best ... no surprise that she has the strength and speed to walk
shoulder to shoulder with the best in the business.
The Calgary Herald, Nov. 2001
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Performance: all-Chopin Recital
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The Canadian pianist is a poetic interpreter whose scale of dynamics was controlled
to meet an emotional range that moved from an inner whisper to an upper limit that
was powerful but not heaven-storming ... She invited listeners into a world of nuance
and shade, of distinctions and glowing moments.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 1998
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Performance: Mendelssohn, piano concerto No.1 in G-minor
CBC Vancouver Orchestra, conductor: Mario Bernardi |
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... a gem of performance ... she took such evident pleasure in it, smiling as her
fingers spilled demonic parallel runs in a liquid flow over the keyboard, or dispatched
double octaves as if she were playing chopsticks ... it was the playing of an aristocrat
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The Vancouver Sun, Oct. 97
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Performance: Recital (Haydn, Brahms, Grieg, Rosenthal)
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Fialkowska is formidable (headline)
She brings incredible relish to her playing. Endowed with phenomenal technical skills
and effortless musicality, Fialkowska performs with a clarity that sets her apart
from the ordinary superstars.
The Toronto Star, Jan.1997
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Performance: Recital (Liszt, Chopin, Szymanowski, Moszkowski)
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... technical and musical hurdles testing not only bravura and endurance, but imagination
and emotional projection as well. Fialkowska conquered all ... She lit the inner
fires of the "Dante" Sonata" as effortless as she dominated its mechanical intricacies,
reminding us that this is a work of delicacy and poetry as much as it is a potboiler
... Fialkowska made every bit of this familiar score (Chopin, b-minor Sonata) her
own, individual statement, in particular the wondrous soliloquy of the third movement,
the heart of the work.
Los Angeles Times, April 1994
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Performance: Mozart, Piano concerto K.415
National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa, Conductor: Hans Graf |
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... with her exquisite and seemingly effortless attention to detail, her playing
was a joy in every sense. By no means neglecting the musical line, she nevertheless
made a special impression with the melodic perfection of the score's trills and
little figures, fleeting instants of surpassing beauty in her hands.
The Ottawa Citizen, March 1996
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Performance: Chopin, Piano concerto No.1
Avery Fisher Hall New York, Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra, Conductor: Gilbert Levine |
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Miss Fialkowska, on the other hand, upheld the extreme sophistication of the solo
part. Her Chopin is both generous and refined. The bravura playing is absolutely
firm. The unadorned playing solo lines sing beautifully.
The New York Times
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Performance: Chopin, Piano concerto No.2
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Conductor: Stanislaw Skrowaczewski |
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Fialkowska's performance of the Chopin, which emerged as the highlight of the evening,
was one of the most daring I have heard. Daring, but not in the sense of flashy
bravura - although Fialkowska certainly lacks nothing in the technique department.
... dared to give the music all the time it needed to breathe, all the room its
phrases needed to blossom. Especially in her achingly beautiful interpretation of
the slow movement, where she filled Roy Thompson Hall with the sweetest pianissimos
I've ever heard in that venue, the piano became a bel canto singer ... Fialkowska
brought to the concerto a rare maturity, poetry and spaciousness, in a performance
that made sense every step of the way.
The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Sept. 1994
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Performance: Recital Bach, Mozart, Syzmanowski, Chopin
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The Canadian born pianist is a firebrand of the keyboard and the temperament to
handle just about anything a composer of virtuoso persuasion might place in front
of her.
The Pittsburgh Press, Feb. 1991
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