Karol Szymanowski
Piotr Anderszewski enthrals the listener by the sheer beauty of the sounds that he conjures from the piano. Although each phrase seems to be carefully nuanced, Anderszewski captures to perfection the music's almost schizophrenic changes of mood, from the dreamy and hypnotic to the ironic and capricious. The Third Sonata is no less impressive, particularly the dynamic ecstatic account of the fugal finale. Although alternative versions of these works... have many undeniable virtues, Anderszewski outclasses his rivals in the extra degree of imagination he brings to the music.
(Five stars)
Anderszewski's playing reveals the glories of Szymanowski's piano music like no other. He has never been one to rush into things, and these interpretations speak of lengthy deliberation about the composer's musical language and the ways of assimilating and conveying it.
Pianistic colour is paramount in these pieces, but, as Anderszewski so dynamically shows, atmosphere goes hand in hand with animated texture and a volatility of temperament that give the music a flavour - sometimes pungent, sometimes delicate and elusive - that is all its own.
Geoffrey Norris
Such music calls for a pianist of unlimited, superfine virtuosity and a complete temperamental affinity... and in Anderszewski it has surely found its ideal champion... Anderszewski's razor-sharp clarity and stylistic assurance make you hang on every one of the composer's teeming notes... Every aspect of the music's refined and energetic life is held in a blazing light from which it is impossible to escape...
All these performances have been superbly recorded.
Source: The Gramophone
New discs from Piotr Anderszewski are precious commodities... This collection of Karol Szymanowski's most substantial works for solo piano is only the Polish-born Anderszewski's sixth solo-piano disc, but like several of its predecessors... it is a revelation, clearly the work of a master pianist who has emerged as one of the greatest of the present day, and one with the rare ability to transform whatever he plays, making it seem as if it is being heard for the first time... Great performers really can turn the everyday into something very special indeed.
(Five stars)
The most influential champion of the underappreciated Polish composer Karol Szymanowski was his devoted friend and countryman Arthur Rubinstein. For decades after Szymanowski's death in 1937 at 54, Rubinstein kept his idiosyncratic piano works before the public. Now Szymanowski has a new champion in the young Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski, whose riveting Virgin Classics recording of three major piano pieces should help the cause...
Mr Anderszewski plays these works with breathtaking pianistic command, keen intensity and utter involvement. It's hard to imagine that any doubts about Szymanowski's piano music will withstand the sheer impact of the performances captured here.
Source: New York Times
The set of character pieces entitled Métopes is riveting, especially the piece called Calypso, in which Anderszewski exactly captures the contrast between Calypso's threateningly erotic music and Ulysses's dreamily nostalgic melody. The most impressive thing about Anderszewski's playing is the way he gives a sense of shape and purpose to Szymanowski's often wayward and over-rich textures. He has a wonderful way of making the climaxes seem massively impressive and yet evanescent. And how well he controls those dying-away endings, with their endless trills fading to stillness, like ripples stretching out across the surface of a pond.
(Five Stars)
Source: BBC Music Magazine
Source: Daily Telegraph
Source: The Guardian
Source: The Times
Mazurka, Op. 50 no. 13
Matthew Bengston, Piano
Born in 1882 Karol Szymanowski was one of the truly outstanding composers of the first half of the 20th Century. He was very certainly the greatest and most influential Polish composer of that period.
His works included four symphonies, two violin concertos, the operas “Hagith” and “King Roger”, the ballet-pantomime “Harnasie”, the oratorio “Stabat Mater”, as well as numerous piano, violin, vocal and choral compositions.
His career as a composer can most easily be envisaged as being in three very distinct phases.
Szymanowski’s early works before the First World War display a strong affinity with the work of Fryderyk Chopin, Alexander Skriabin, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.
The subsequent period of his development was characterised by a fascination with the Orient and with Mediterranean cultures during which he was clearly influenced by the French impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. This period produced many of his best known and loved compositions.
From 1921 his music became increasingly distinctive as he drew upon Polish folk themes, especially from the Podhale mountain region around Zakopane, to define a specifically Polish music. This period produced much of his very greatest work.
Afflicted by disease and financial concerns, Szymanowski effectively ceased to compose from 1934.
He died in 1937 at the age of 57 leaving behind an outstanding collection of works that are today more loved, and more widely performed and recorded than ever before.