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Friday, February 4 at 8 PM
Glenn Gould Studio
250 Front Street West (at John)
Tickets:
Adults, $35 / Seniors, $25 / Students, $15
416 872 4255
Glenn Gould Studio concert tickets purchased at
www.roythomson.com
In person: box office at 60 Simcoe (at King)
TORONTO, ONTARIO – Polish Canadian pianist
Daniel Wnukowski (vnoo-KOV-skee) is performing a
homecoming recital on Friday, February 4 at Glenn Gould Studio,
8 PM. A highly gifted artist who left Ontario at age 15 to
pursue studies in Europe and the US, Mr. Wnukowski will perform
a concert entitled “Heaven and Hell: A Year of Liszt”. The
repertoire features demonic and blissful works of Franz Liszt as
well as the lyrical and dramatic works of Polish composers
Chopin and Szymanowski.
In this return visit to Toronto, Mr. Wnukowski will perform Chopin
Ballade No. 2 in F major, Op. 38;
3 Waltzes Op. 34; Szymanowski’s Masks, Op. 34;
Liszt:
Petrarcan Sonnet No. 2 in E major;
Sancta Dorothea;
In Festo Transfigurationis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi;
Unstern! Sinistre, disastro; and
Après une lecture de Dante (Fantasia quasi Sonata).
Szymanowski is a lesser known Polish composer whose influences
include Chopin, Wagner, Strauss, Scriabin, as well as Debussy
and Ravel. Future plans for Daniel include a recording of all
Szymanowski to be released at the end of 2011.
Fluent in English, Polish, and a French/Italian speaker, Daniel
enjoys a busy touring schedule that takes him throughout Europe,
South America, and Asia, including exotic countries as far away
as India and Mauritius. Despite his Canadian upbringing, concert
promoters abroad identified him an unofficial ambassador of
Polish music. Fully immersed in the culture from an early age,
he studied music, Polish dance (giving him a serious
understanding of foot patterns for Polish dances), and he
continues to regularly program the works of many Polish
composers other than Chopin, including Szymanowski, Bacewicz,
Lutoslawski, and Stachowski. Daniel pays homage to Chopin in the
concert’s first half, as the composer’s bicentennial closes in
2010; the concert’s second half looks ahead to the 200th
anniversary of Liszt’s birth. “What fascinates me most about
Liszt's music is the gamut of emotions it can portray ranging
from heavenly bliss to tormenting anguish. I believe he wore
many masks throughout his life,” Daniel explains. “Sometimes he
became the virtuoso Paganini performing daring feats on the
piano never before thought possible, while other times he bore
the masks of sublime poets such as Petrarca or Dante. Then there
is the Liszt who resembles the devil, Mephisto, and lures his
audiences into an intoxicating trance.
Making his Toronto debut at 16 in 1997 to a packed house at the
then Ford Centre for the Performing Arts, Daniel Wnukowski has
performed with many orchestras, including the Polish Radio
Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Windsor Symphony and Southfield
Symphony with conductors such as Jerzy Maksymiuk, Alain Trudel
and David Amos. International Festivals include Chopin and His
Europe in Warsaw;
the Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy; Chopiniana in Buenos Aires; and the
Pre-LSO Concert Series in London, UK. In 2010, he inaugurated
the Chopin year in Pozna, Poland, with Metropolitan Opera
Soprano Aleksandra Kurzak. In May of that same year, he
performed a recital in Tokyo to unveil a new Chopin monument.
This led to a debut at the venue of the Singapore Chinese
Orchestra. Daniel Wnukowski trained at the Lake Como
International Piano Academy in Italy where he worked with
distinguished artists such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Menahem
Pressler, Claude Frank, William Grant Naboré, and Andreas
Staier; the Peabody Institute of Baltimore with Leon Fleisher;
and at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with Graham
Johnson and Ronan O'Hora.
Mr. Wnukowski gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the
Arts for its support in promoting the works of Polish composer
Karol Szymanowski.
For more information, please visit
www.wnukowski.com
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Pianist DANIEL WNUKOWSKI
