Rafał Blechacz

The Polish pianist Rafał Blechacz, who was born in 1985, started playing piano when he was five. At the age of eight, he was admitted to the State Artur Rubinstein Music School in Bydgoszcz and subsequently completed his studies at that city’s Feliks Nowowiejski Music Academy in the class of Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń. In 2005, he became the first Polish artist since Krystian Zimerman to win the prestigious Chopin Competition in Warsaw and additionally garnered all of the special prizes. Blechacz soon succeeded in establishing himself as an internationally sought-after concert soloist. He has performed with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and given concerts with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the London and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestras, the Orchestre de Paris, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Solo recitals have taken him to the Berlin Philharmonie, Munich’s Herkulessaal, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, the Salle Pleyel in Paris, Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and David Geffen Hall in New York. In February 2023, he made guest appearances in Japan and South Korea; he will perform Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under Pietari Inkinen in April and, in June, Mozart’s C minor Concerto with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Kent Nagano. His debut CD, an account of Chopin’s 24 Préludes, was awarded the Echo Klassik in 2008; for his recording of the two Chopin piano concertos, he received the German Record Critics’ annual prize in 2010. As a chamber musician, he has recorded and played in recitals with the Korean violinist Bomsori Kim. His latest recording is of Chopin’s Second and Third Piano Sonatas and was released in early March 2023. Rafał Blechacz received the Gilmore Artist Award, one of the most sought-after prizes for pianists, in 2014.

March 2023