Author: piano.in.ua

One of the most promising Polish pianists of the young generation, Michal Karol Szymanowski was born in 1988 into a musical family. He graduated with honours from the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, where he studied piano with Katarzyna Popowa-Zydron and symphonic-operatic conducting under Zygmunt Rychert. He honed his skills with Eldar Nebolsin at the Hochschule fur Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. At present he continues his piano education as a doctoral student and at the same time works as an assistant lecturer at his alma mater and at the Academy of Music in Lodz.

Michal has won top awards in a number of national and international piano competitions, including the International Chopin Piano Competition in Darmstadt, Germany (2017), MozARTe International Piano Competition in Aachen, Germany (2016), the International Chopin Piano Competition in Daegu, Korea (2015), the Zarembski International Music Competition in Warsaw (2012), the Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe Piano Competition in Katowice (2011), the Paderewski International Piano Competition in Bydgoszcz (2010), the International Competition in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz in Kyiv (2007), and the Polish National Chopin Piano Competitions in Warsaw (2008, 2015). In 2015 he was the highest placed quarter-finalist in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

Michal has given performances in Poland and other European countries (including Germany, England, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Switzerland) as well as on other continents (in the United States, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela). Of particular note, he has also performed in the Palace of Nations in Geneva, the Paul VI Audience Hall in the Vatican (a concert for Pope Benedict XVI), at Warsaw’s Belvedere Palace for Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, numerous philharmonic halls throughout the world as well as major festivals in Poland and abroad, among them Oficina de Musica de Curitiba, Festival Internacional de piano Chopiniana in Buenos Aires, Festival Europeo de Solistas in Caracas, Festival Pianistico di Roma, the Long Lake Festival in Lugano, and the “Chopin and His Europe” Festival in Warsaw, where he brilliantly performed piano concertos by Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Jozef Wieniawski.

Michal has performed under such eminent conductors as Alfredo Rugeles, Medardo Caisabanda, Juri Gilbo, Jacek Kaspszyk, Antoni Wit, Marek Pijarowski and Michal Dworzynski with, among others, the Teresa Carreno Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, the Symphonic Orchestra of the Claudio Santoro National Theatre in Brasilia, Daegu Symphony Orchestra, Russian Chamber Philharmonic St. Petersburg, the Warsaw, Cracow, Wroclaw, Szczecin and Bydgoszcz Philharmonic orchestras, the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra and the Capella Bydgostiensis Chamber Orchestra.

Apart from solo repertoire, Michal also frequently performs chamber music, in which his partners are the Silesian Quartet, Erzhan Kulibaev, Romain Garioud, Benedict Kloeckner, Anna Maria Stankiewicz, Maria Machowska, and many others.

Michal has released two solo albums for CD Accord (Naxos), featuring compositions by Fryderyk Chopin, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Karol Szymanowski and Jozef Wieniawski. The recordings were critically acclaimed. One reviewer wrote: “Uncommon talent and a pianist of great promise.”

Katarzyna (Ekaterina) Popowa-Zydron (full professor) is a Polish pianist of Bulgarian origin. She was a student in Prof. Zbigniew Sliwinski’s piano class at the Higher School of Music in Gdansk, from which she graduated with distinction in 1973. In the two years that followed she was a holder of the Austrian government scholarship and continued her music education under Alexander Jenner at the Hochschule fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna. She also perfected her piano skills by participating in masterclasses with Suzanne Roche, Dieter Zechlin and Gyorgy Sebok. She is a winner of numerous competitions, among them the 4^th National Festival for Young Musicians, or the 2^nd National Piano Competition. She was among the semi-finalists in such prestigious competitions as the 1975 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, the 1975 Piano Competition in Terni (Italy) and the 1978 ARD Competition in Munich (Germany).

Katarzyna Popowa-Zydron is a regular performer in Poland and abroad. Her repertoire includes compositions from the baroque to the present day, with particular emphasis on the works of Mozart, Beethoven (e.g. Piano Sonata No. 29, Op 106), Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, Bartok and others. She is known for premiering Polish modern music. She has also performed as a chamber musician with renowned soloists and ensembles: Urszula Kryger, Piotr Kusiewicz, Florian Skulski, among others. She has appeared in piano duos, duos with violinists, flutists and cellists, as well as in piano trios and quartets.

This is what music critics have had to say: ‘(…) Popowa-Zydron’s interpretation of Chopin is contemporaneous in character, understated and free of exaggeration. The pianist knows perfectly how to express Chopin’s lyricism, this peculiar ambience of personal tragedy (…)’, ‘(…) an exceptional care for detail. The pianist has been able to create a musical world of its very own kind. Her playing has been deeply moving – sad, surprising and relaxing at the same time. Katarzyna Popowa-Zydron is a romantic artist at heart. Her firm commitment to and total confidence in her music interpretation are what listeners find infectious as they become involved in the reality the pianist is constructing before them. Technical mastery, exceptional musicality, outstanding interpretative individuality (…)’.

Katarzyna Popowa-Zydron is a professor at the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, where she is also Head of the Piano Department. She gives guidance to talented students of secondary music schools in the region and frequently gives masterclasses, conducts seminars and courses for piano teachers at home and abroad. She has frequently been on juries, judging national and international competitions. In 2010 she was a member of the jury appointed for the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, and in 2015 she headed the jury. She is President of the I. J. Paderewski Music Society in Bydgoszcz, the organizer of the Paderewski International Piano Competition and the Paderewski Piano Academy, one-of-a-kind summer courses in piano playing with a symphonic orchestra.

Her pupils and students have won awards in numerous national and international competitions, are busy performing, and some of them are successful teachers, also abroad. Among her former pupils are Krzysztof Herdzin, Rafal Blechacz, Pawel Wakarecy, Katarzyna Borek, Radoslaw Kurek, Michio Nishihara Toro, Michal Szymanowski, and others.

For her artistic and pedagogical achievements, Katarzyna Popowa-Zydron has received a number of awards, including those of national significance such as the Gloria Artis medal and the Officer’s Cross of the Polonia Restituta Order.