Opening Day Recordings

"A superb pianist with rare poetic feeling and lyrical elegance" -Chicago Tribune

"Fialkowska's warm, robust sound and her willingness to take risks are a rare treat...she is a pianist in the grand romantic tradition." -The Globe & Mail (Toronto)

"Janina Fialkowska is an absolute dream of a pianist, and in this repertoire, a consummate musician." -Piano and Keyboard Magazine (U.K.)

"Spectacular technique - the most demonic challenges were as child's play." -New York Times

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The exceptional artistry and brilliant virtuosity of Janina Fialkowska have won her an enthusiastic reception from audiences and critics worldwide. She appears regularly with the world's leading orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Minnesota and Philadelphia Orchestras, the symphony orchestras of Montreal and Toronto and most of England's major orchestras. She has also won special recognition for her premieres of concertos by Franz Liszt (op. posthumous), Libby Larsen and Sir Andrzej Panufnik. Born in Montreal to a Canadian mother and a Polish father, Janina Fialkowska graduated from the école de musique Vincent-d'lndy, Montreal, and then studied privately in Paris and at New York's Juilliard School of Music.

Her career was launched by Arthur Rubinstein himself, after hearing her prize winning performance at the Rubinstein Int. Competition in Israel 1974. Her discography includes recitals of Liszt (CBC), concerted works by Chopin, Moszkowski, and Koprowski (CBC), virtuoso showpieces (CBC), solo piano works by Szymanowski and Chopin (Opening Day), the Paderewski Piano Concerto (Polish National Radio Orchestra/Naxos) and lieder recitals with bass-baritone Daniel Lichti (Opening Day). She recently recorded the complete Liszt Concerti with Hans Graf and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (CBC).

Janina Fialkowska is the founder of "Piano Six", a group of internationally renowned Canadian pianists who are committed to a ten year program that will affordably bring important recitals to specific areas of Canada where classical music performances are a rarity.

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IN THE SUMMER OF 1839, Chopin wrote to his friend Julian Fontana: "I am currently composing a sonata in B fiat minor in which you will find the march you already know. This sonata is comprised of an allegro, a scherzo in E fiat minor, the march and a short finale; three pages, perhaps, in manuscript. After the march, the left hand babbles in unison with the right." Twenty-one years earlier, struggling to write an appropriately affectionate name's-day tribute to his much-loved father, he wrote: "It would be easier for me to reveal my feelings if they could be expressed in musical sounds..."

Indeed, although Chopin did extremely well at school and had received an excellent general education, he was never wholly at ease with words, as is amply demonstrated by his letter to Fontana. His bleak, almost indifferent description of the tumultuously dark vision he had created in four movements, which tears at the emotions with terrifying intensity, is stunningly inadequate and yet quite typical. For Chopin, the Polish artist in exile, lived within his music; it was his universe, his refuge, his confessional, his outlet, and nowhere are his inner passions and hallucinatory fears more on display than in this work.

Interestingly, it is probably to Beethoven, a composer for whom Chopin held decidedly mixed feelings, that we must look if we wish to uncover some sort of influence on this deeply original work. Chopin had composed the actual Funeral March in 1837 and whether he had the idea at that time of including it within the framework of a sonata is unsure. What we do know is that of all the Beethoven sonatas, the one he preferred was opus 26 which contains a Funeral March in the third movement. We also find in Beethoven Les Adieux sonata, opus 81A and Pastorale sonata opus 28 the idea of sonata movements sharing a common idea or emotional thread (something Chopin's friend Berlioz had also used in his S!trnphonie Fantastique in 1830).

However, in Chopin's sonata opus 35, we can see an even closer similarity to the later Beethoven sonatas which Chopin professed to dislike. This sonata strangely perplexed Liszt and so confused poor Schumann (possibly because of the impressionistic quasi-atonality of the last movement) that it caused him to remark how Chopin had "here yoked together four of his maddest children".

For, in the Funeral March sonata, however much we enjoy labelling each movement with wonderful programmatic titles such as Cortot's marvellous suggestions; "the first nqovement's rebellions and the supplications of a tragic struggle against a hopeless destiny, the menace of mysterious forces moving confusedly in the darkness of the scherzo, the Funeral March's stylized echo of all human sorrows and the freezing whirlwind descending on tombs in the Finale...", the ultimate fact is, we are actually hearing a progression of the innermost fears, morbid imaginings and defiant passions of dying genius, ending not in surrender or in any exalted serene state (as in Beethoven's extraordinary opus 111 sonata which also follows a progression of a tormented genius' inner struggle) but with bat's wings and ice-cold skeletal fingers, and thoughts too frightening to be described by mere words.

In 1848, just months before he died, Chopin wrote in a letter from England "A strange thing happened to me while I was playing my sonata in B fiat minor for some British friends. I had played the Allegro and Scherzo successfully and I was going to attack the March when suddenly I saw the cursed creatures that one lugubrious night appeared to me at the monastery [at Valldemosa in Mallorca, where he sketched the sonata] rising from the piano. I had to go out for a moment to collect myself, after which I resumed playing without saying a word to anyone."

If the B fiat minor sonata puts on display for us Chopin's dark inner passions, the Impromptus, on the other hand, with their simple forms and gentle insouciance, display the exquisite nature and sheer easy perfection of his improvisatory keyboard skills. Like the delicate little violets which he so loved, they each bear an aura of a subtle, distilled perfume. Schumann, never at a loss for words, wrote, after reading the first Impromptu (1837): "However little importance this has in the totality of his works, I would have difficulty comparing any other composition of Chopin's with it. It is so delicate in form, with a cantilena at the beginning and the end."

The second Impromptu (1838), more substantial in form, ahnost a Nocturne in fact, holds some extraordinary mood changes interwoven with some even more extraordinary harmonic modulations and pianistic effects.
The third Impromptu (1842) is quite simply absolute perfection. Hidden under its light-hearted, sophisticated veneer and simple ABA form we sense a tinge of that infamous "zal", a word that Liszt so associated with Chopin; "zal", that un-translatable Polish word which signifies all at once, nostalgia, a profound regret so intense as to verge on bitterness, the painful longing of an exile.

The Fantasy Impromptu, written much earlier in 1834 was published posthumously, and, if Chopin's wishes had been carried out, would never have been published at all, as he considered it an inferior work. Rather than being a mere dedication to the Baroness d'Este, it was a paid commission, which resulted in the autograph manuscript being kept from the general public for over a hundred years. The version that for so long was the only one available to pianists was put together by Julian Fontana from some early sketches he discovered after Chopin's death. The autograph version, which differs from Fontana's in numerous pianistic and harmonic refinements, came into the possession of Arthur Rubinstein in the 1960s. He subsequently released it for publication and is the version used on the present recording. It is ironic that this delightful work with its intricate polyrhythms, was so disliked by Chopin (some say because he felt it bore too close a resemblance to an Impromptu of Ignaz Moscheles) and yet has achieved "crossover" status and a dubious immortality with its central lovely melody having been turned into the popular song "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows."

Chopin's third sonata, written in 1844, again demonstrates his will to create a new breed of grand sonata, reflecting the spirit of his time; a work of magnificent proportions although interesting enough, this sonata does return somewhat more to classical structural tendencies than does the B fiat minor sonata. Notwithstanding this one faint nod to past aesthetics, he uses to the utmost all the harmonic and pianistic innovations which he had invented and perfected, and all the possibilities of colour and dynamics given to him by the improved instrument of his time. In temperament this sonata is very different from the previous one. The influence of Bach is unmistakable, especially in the first movement which is filled with polyphony.

The work is very much a masterpiece of a mature composer; the passion is there but altered, less raw, less violent, more involved, intricate and, in the final analysis, of an even more powerful beauty. The second movement is also very different from the clanging of skeletal spectres in the second sonata. This movement actually almost lives up to its name of Scherzo, but for a few anxious moments in its otherwise peacefully lyrical, highly polyphonic middle section.

The Scherzo movement flows almost directly into the Largo where we find ourselves in a spell-binding, almost Tristan-esque atmosphere. I have never found anything in the keyboard literature that can surpass the intense beauty and deeply touching quality of this movement. And from the dying strains of the last chord, the powerful Finale emerges. Written in a Rondo form, it acts almost like a harness for the unbridled, magnificent rush to the end, as each repeat of the theme (one of which is, unusually, in a different key!) becomes more and more thrilling in volume and emotion, finishing with a flourish both heroic and triumphant.

- Janinia Fialkowska