Welcome to my website! As a pianist, music has always been the inner-core of my life. I am deeply gratified to have a virtual home in which I can share my music, thoughts and memories but the real praise must go to the composers who have left behind their great music. I am solely the medium which allows the composer’s intentions to blossom and spring to life.
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
- Victor Hugo
Definitions of the word ‘pianist’:
*FYI: This website deals strictly with the first definition!
I would like to cordially thank the warm public of Ancona, Italy for helping me to create a most memorable evening, the Orchestra Filharmonica Marchigiana together with its conductor Romolo Gessi for their dedication and artistry, as well as the Amici della Musica & Istituto Polacco for their organizational efforts and hard work in taking care of every minutest detail.
It was an honor for me to inaugurate the concert season in your charmingly beautiful city. The concert was extra special for me as it was my last Chopin concert scheduled for the 2010 year.
Alla Prossima!
Pianist “Gilels, Emil” was a great, full-blooded Russian pianist whose performance embodied a heightened sense of dynamics and expression. One could sometimes feel a nervous tension or anxiety in his playing, almost evident too in the twitch of his facial expressions.
Perhaps the frustration of being brought up, bah, imprisoned in the Soviet communist system left its toll into Gilel’s psyche. Perhaps the sheer madness of being stranded in a conformist unforgiving establishment is what enabled him to experience a catharsis of sorts on the concert platform.
Whether it be destiny, some rare astrophysical occurrence, serendipity or a just another random convergence of events…you have stumbled upon my piano music blog!
I realize there are hundreds of other things you could be doing right now and so I wish that the time you spend here be as mutually stimulating, engaging and inspiring as it has been for me.
On this page you’ll find a few words about me. Pianists’ biographies can sometimes look so formal and forbidding, so instead I’ll walk you through the most important events of my life as they occurred and leave you to find the profound ‘existential’ meaning into how they shaped me into the person I am today.
As satisfied as I have been with the Chopin year this year, a celebration of 200 years of one of my favorite composer’s life, I now think back to a time when I had contemplated quitting piano entirely.
A concert pianist is a rare specimen, bred out of a panoply of nerves, dedication, auspicious encounters and fatigue. There are so many mood swings born out of hundreds of thousands of moods themselves, it is impossible to predict what one will feel like 2 minutes before showtime. Concert pianists could ideally just live off of pills and then leave the music-making to some higher power. How can one avenge the sanitized marketplace needs of a perfect recording, note-perfect performances and not be allowed to satisfy an ephemeral whim of spontaneous outrage and fantasy?
So, how can we just leave music alone? A fast-paced culture together with beeping gadgets and state-of-the-art computers have created a phenomenen known as ‘music in a bottle syndrome’ which is basically ubiquitous music that you can access quickly and easily sometimes even with the push of a button. Sometimes, going to a piano recital today is like going to a butcher’s shop and asking for 2 kilograms of Rachman’ lard and 100 ml of Prokof’ vinegar. OK, I agree that Rachaminoff’s second sonata is a great piece of piano literature, but how many times do we have to hear it butchered in the same dull fashion, until it becomes so nautious that even a tired, old grub found in the corner of one’s basement seems more interesting?
Can you remember the days when you were still in school and everyone was awaiting that last day of school? Everyone was getting frustrated and edgy about the mountainous pile of homework assisgnments, exams to study for, having to see the teacher’s face for the xxx’th time this year. But you knew that after that last day, everything would be over with.
A concert review following a piano recital given by Daniel Wnukowski in Tokyo, Japan which commemorated the unveiling of a new Chopin monument.
The Internationally Acclaimed & Gifted Daniel Wnukowski
From Windsor Life Magazine, Feb/March 2008 Edition
STORY BY LORI NEWTON
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAMZA SARUNA
Every now and again throughout history, a child is discovered to possess such extraordinary talent at such an incredibly young age that it seems almost too unbelievable to be true. Whether they are in science, languages, the arts, athletics, or some other human endeavour, we call them child prodigies and we watch them in awe. Among musical prodigies we can point to Beethoven, Liszt, Mozart, Chopin, Paganini, Yehudi Menuhin and Yo-Yo Ma — all who displayed exceptional musical gifts at a very young age. The restof us mere mortals can only wonder what it might be like to possess so much awe inspiring talent.
