For immediate release: MonthX, 2016
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
603.646.3991
A Valentine’s Day treat: Pianist Piotr Anderszewski, February 14
Photo:Piotr Anderszewski, by Ari Rossner.
HANOVER, NH—Known for an absolute devotion to his art that results in enthralling performances—and unusual career moves—pianist Piotr Anderszewski gives a solo concert in the Hop’s Spaulding Auditorium on Tuesday, February 14, 7 pm.
It’s the third Hop appearance by this singular artist, regarded as one of the outstanding musicians of his generation, performing and recording only those composers he feels a strong urge to play, and offering interpretations second to none in their emotional and intellectual clarity and intensity.
Wrote The Guardian, “All his playing…has the wonderful knack of sounding utterly fresh and spontaneous, while at the same time conveying the sense that every detail in it is there for a specific musical reason.” TheFinancial Times called him the “most confiding of today’s leading pianists…every phrase seemed on the edge of its seat with a fresh rush of emotion.” The New York Times praised his “unabashedly personal interpretations…delivered with persuasive intensity.”
At the Hop, he’ll play Mozart’s Fantasia (K. 475) and Sonata (K. 457), linked works in the dark-hued key of C minor; Chopin’s heroic/melancholy Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat Major, Op. 61, and exuberant Mazurkas, Op. 59; and Bach’s English Suite No. 6 in D minor, BMV 811, composed of contrasting Baroque dance forms, from the stately allemande to the vivacious gavotte.
In a 2015 interview with Limelight Magazine, Anderszewski commented on his long association with Bach’s music. “I think ultimately what does attract me, and keeps bringing me back to Bach, is this feeling of no end. It's like even when you've worked and found a solution for a Bach Suite that seems convincing and has integrity, there’s still this feeling that there are hundreds of others. There’s always this feeling that this is just one way of playing, that this music is so complex and there’s so much freedom for the interpreter that it could be done differently—not necessarily better, but there’s always room to move. With other composers I have the feeling that once I’ve found a way to manage the piece from beginning to end in a convincing way, basically that’s it… .With Bach there’s always this feeling that there are openings everywhere. This is what keeps me coming back to this composer, and I guess as long as I play the piano I will play Bach.”
Anderszewski made his first international splash in 1990 in the prestigious Leeds Piano Competition in the UK. He had just performed Beethoven's massive Diabelli Variations "with a mastery of long-range structural tension that far senior pianists would envy, and relentless, searching concentration" (The Financial Times) and returned to play a smaller piece by Webern. Unhappy with his playing, he left the stage, forfeiting the competition. However, he was soon offered a contract to record the Beethoven, which went on to receive a number of prizes including an ECHO Klassik award. He has also recorded a Grammy-nominated CD of Bach's Partitas 1, 3 and 6; a critically acclaimed disc of works by Chopin; a highly-praised recording of fellow Pole Karol Szymanowski’s (1882-1937) solo piano works, which received the Classic FM Gramophone Award in 2006 for best instrumental disc; solo works by Robert Schumann that received an ECHO Klassik award and two BBC Music Magazine awards, including Recording of the Year; and Bach's English Suites nos. 1, 3 and 5, which won both a Gramophone award and an ECHO Klassik award.
He also has been singled out for several high profile awards over his career, including the prestigious Gilmore award, given every four years to a pianist of exceptional talent; and he has been the subject of three award-winning documentaries by the filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon: Piotr Anderszewski plays the Diabelli Variations (2001), which explores Anderszewski's particular relationship with Beethoven's opus 120; and Piotr Anderszewski, Unquiet Traveller (2008), an unusual artist portrait that captures his reflections on music, performance and his Polish-Hungarian roots. A third film by Monsaingeon, Anderszewski Plays Schumann, was made for Polish Television and first broadcast in 2010.
Last March, days before what would be a rapturously received Carnegie Hall concert, he announced a career decision through an unlikely channel: a chance encounter with the photography website Humans of New York.
“I’m a pianist,” he is quoted, underneath a candid portrait in the Lincoln Center plaza. “I’m playing my last concert Thursday night. Then I’m taking a sabbatical. Some of my friends think I’m crazy to step away now, but I don’t want to become a two-hundred-concert-per-year performing machine. It requires too much efficiency. And the efficiency burns you out… If you’re piloting a Boeing 777 with four hundred people on board, you aren’t going to try new maneuvers. You aren’t going to have fun or experiment. You don’t have time to stay in your dreams or ideas. You need to step back from the public eye so you have space to grow. I won’t say that taking time off makes you a ‘better’ musician, because I don’t like the word ‘better.’ It sounds competitive. But it does make you less of an automaton and more human. It’s like exploring a new continent. Time off is a space where you allow things to happen other than the known.”
This past November, in a concert in Wroclaw in his native Poland, he returned to the concert stage. This season’s engagements include performances with the Munich Phiharmonic, the Berlin Staatskapelle under Daniel Barenboim, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and recitals at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, the Tonhalle in Zürich, and, three days after the Hop, New York's Carnegie Hall.
Critics are happy his short sabbatical is done. Wrote the Birmingham Post of a November concert in which Anderszewski played two Mozart concertos and directed the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from the keyboard, “Nothing seemed forced, especially not the tone. Anderszewski's playing had a clarity and expressive grace that sounded completely spontaneous (and often daringly quiet) while the CBSO's strings displayed an elegance far removed from the workmanlike utterances heard in the symphony.”
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CALENDAR LISTING
Piotr Anderszewski, piano
Noted since his 1990 debut for his expressive musical imagination and sublime technique, Anderszewski now stands at a rare level of musical mastery. His deep, original understanding of the composers he performs has been explored in several award-winning documentary films. In his third Hop recital, the Polish-born artist plays Baroque, Classical and Romantic works by Bach, Chopin and Mozart, whose music he has recently recorded to high praise.
Tuesday, February 14, 7 pm
Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center, Hanover NH
$25/40/50, $10 for Dartmouth students, $17/19 for 18 and under
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
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Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, igniting passions, and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with outreach and arts education programs. After a celebratory 50th-anniversary season in 2012-13, the Hop enters its second half-century with renewed passion for mentoring young artists, supporting the development of new work, and providing a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.