Krystian Zimerman
Beethoven Piano Sonata Op. 111
Brahms Piano Pieces Op. 119
Szymanowski Variations on a Polish Theme Op. 10
"An extraordinary artist… it is hard to imagine the music could be played any better."
The Guardian
We are delighted that the great Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman returns to The Anvil.
In the last years, he has made it his practice to work solely on solo repertoire, to allow himself to focus as intently as possible on the works in hand. Selecting the pieces to include in his solo programmes is a careful process of distillation, working first on a fairly wide range of works and gradually refining the selection down, trying them in different combinations earlier in the year until he reaches what he feels to be the optimum configuration. All the works under consideration will be ones he has lived with and grown into over a long period of time – he explains:
"I need years to study and memorise. It's a long cycle until a piece is ready to go on stage – a few years. For me, the best way to work is simultanously on a large repertoire, even if I don't play it all in concert. Some of them I've only just started and have a few years' more work to do, but other pieces I have played for years – slowly they are becoming ready for performance, and at a certain point, I feel OK, we're now ready to risk them in the concert hall. For pieces like the Liszt Sonata, Szymanowski Variations, the Brahms second concerto, I worked for ten years before performing them for the first time on stage..."
And the results of such a focused and fastidious approach are breathtaking – "no other pianist makes you listen so intently to every detail of the sound, to the way in which it is produced and how it dies away. Zimerman can light up a texture with a single chord and transform the most mundane transition into a thing of wonder...." (Andrew Clements, The Guardian)
Zimerman's appearances in the UK are rare so this is an opportunity not to be missed.
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