PROGRAM
MAREK DREWNOWSKI - PIANO RECITAL Sunday, March 19, 2017, 7:00 PM
Roswell Cultural Arts Center >
Exclusive Interview by
Bożena U. Zaremba
Biography
Marek Drewnowski started to play piano as a young child. The distinguished Polish pianists, Zbigniew Drzewiecki and Ryszard Bakst, were his professors at the Warsaw Academy of Music. After the death of Professor Drzewiecki, he continued his studies under Professor Jan Hoffman in Krakow, where he graduated from the State Higher School of Music.
In 1975, after recording Domenico Scarlatti’s Twelve Sonatas, his career took an unexpected turn. Indeed, Leonard Bernstein, impressed by his performance, invited him to the Tanglewood Music Festival; on this occasion, he played under the direction of Leonard Bernstein with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
In 1980, he obtained a fellowship from the Polish-language Instytut Literacki in Paris. In September 1989, at the solemn concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of World War II broadcast worldwide, he appeared with famous artists such as Barbara Hendricks, Hermann Prey, and Liv Ullmann. At “Warsaw Autumn,” the International Festival of Contemporary Music in 1991, he won the prestigious Music Critics “Orpheus" Prize for playing Stefan Kisielewski’s piano concerto.
His discography is very versatile; it contains, among others, the Domenico Scarlatti sonatas, the Carl Maria von Weber concertos, Frederic Chopin concertos in chamber version, the Second Concerto of Alexander Tansman, the Karol Szymanowski’s Fourth Symphony (Symphonie Concertante), and the two concertos and the nineteen waltzes of Chopin registered on DVD for NVC Arts in London. In the film Frederic Chopin, directed by Krzysztof Zanussi, he plays the role of Chopin. Marek Drewnowski has also co-produced the film The Enchantment of Frederic with Izabela Cywińska.
Marek Drewnowski was professor of piano at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and at the Academy of Music in Lodz, Poland. He received the title of Professor from the President of the Polish Republic.
Presently, he is recording Chopin's complete works.