Chopin Recital

Frederic Chopin (Composer), Janina Fialkowska (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Janina Fialkowska
• Composer: Frederic Chopin
• Audio CD (October 27, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Atma Classique
• ASIN: B002N5KEII
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #250,533 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The New Yorker, December 1Russell Platt, December 14, 2009

As part of my duties as Classical Editor in the Goings On About Town department, I write a "Classical Notes" column several times a year, usually a concentrated piece about two or three distinctive new recordings. Due to the columns' limited size and frequency, sometimes worthy discs have to be left out that would otherwise suit--the recording was released too late for inclusion, or just didn't quite fit into the tightly organized piece I was writing. Here are some notable additions.

Back in April I wrote "Chopin List", a piece that examined the composer's music in vivid interpretations by Vassily Primakov, Marc-André Hamelin, and Nadia Reisenberg (as well as a rather less-than-vivid Lang Lang). A few weeks ago another Chopin album floated into the office: a "Chopin Recital" from the distinguished Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska. (The label is ATMA Classique, a fine Canadian imprint; they look after their own.) While there are more dazzling pianists on the scene, Fialkowska plays Chopin with a warmth, poetry, and detail of phrasing that is disappointingly rare today; she places her gifts at the composer's feet. She moves through a selection of waltzes, preludes, and mazurkas with aplomb, which is hardly surprising since she began her career as a protégée of Arthur Rubinstein.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Technique to Spare and the Soul of a Poet, October 31, 2009

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chopin Recital (Audio CD)

Janina Fialkowska is a Canadian-American pianist who was born in Montréal in 1951. She studied in Montréal with Yvonne Hubert (who also taught Marc-André Hamelin and Louis Lortie) before going to Paris to work with Yvonne Lefébure and then to New York with Sasha Gorodnitzki. In the early 1970s she won first prize in the first International Arthur Rubinstein Competition whereupon she became a protégée of Rubinstein. Although she is highly regarded in the rather hermetic world of devoted piano fanciers, she has never had the widest possible exposure in her career, which is a shame because she is a marvelously equipped pianist who also has very clear and poetic ideas about how the music she plays should sound. This recital disc of Chopin works certainly supports that assessment. Unfortunately Amazon has not yet listed the CD's contents, but if you go to the picture of the CD's reverse side, click on it, and then on ZOOM, you will be able to make out the disc's list of contents, albeit in French.

As to technique, just listen to the frantic whirlwind in the Grande Valse Brillante in F Major, Op. 34, No. 3. It is clean as a whistle and exciting as can be. As for poetry, one could not do better than hear her performance of the Barcarolle in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 60; both delicacy and drama with tonal finesse and visceral excitement. Yet her playing always has the last measure of grace and at times is more reticent than one is used to hearing. For me this almost always sounds right. She also has an infallible sense of each work's architecture, marshaling the climaxes with precision and inevitability.

One remarkable thing about Fialkowska is that in the early 2000s she developed a tumor on her left arm which ultimately was removed and the resulting muscular defect repaired by a delicate muscle transplant. After a period where she could only play with her right hand (and during which she transcribed and performed some left-hand pieces for right hand alone) she was finally able, with diligent rehabilitation, to resume her two-handed career and this disc is a result of that. Hurray for her!

Scott Morrison