Biography —

For over 40 years, concert pianist Janina Fialkowska has enchanted audiences and critics around the world. She has been praised for her musical integrity, her refreshing natural approach and her unique piano sound thus becoming “one of the Grandes Dames of piano playing” (Frankfurter Allgemeine).

Born in Canada, she began her piano studies with her mother at age 4 continuing on in her native Montreal with Yvonne Hubert. In Paris she studied with Yvonne Lefébure and in New York at the Juilliard School with Sascha Gorodnitzki, experiencing the best of both French and Russian piano traditions. Her career was launched in 1974, when the legendary Arthur Rubinstein became her mentor after her prize-winning performance at his inaugural Master Piano Competition, calling her a “born Chopin interpreter” laying the foundation for her lifelong identification with this composer.

Since then, she has performed with the foremost orchestras worldwide under the baton of such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Bernard Haitink, Lorin Maazel, Sir Georg Solti, Sir Roger Norrington and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, to name one of the younger generations. She has won special recognition for a series of important premieres, notably Liszt’s newly discovered Third Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony and several contemporary piano concertos. Ms Fialkowska’s discography includes many award-winning discs, e.g. the BBC Music Magazine’s 2013 “Instrumental CD of the Year” award as well as the Canadian “Juno Award” in 2018.

Her native Canada has bestowed upon her their highest honours: “Officer of the Order of Canada”, the “Governor General’s 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award in Classical Music” (Canada’s equivalent to the US Kennedy Centre Awards), as well as three honorary doctorates. She passes on her wide musical experience in masterclasses and at her annual “International Piano Academy” in Bavaria, where she now resides and makes frequent appearances as a juror of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions.

Last seasons’ highlights were concerts with the BBC Symphony in England and Poland and two London recitals. She also performed recitals and orchestral concerts in Austria, Spain, Switzerland and returned to her native Canada for a spring and summer festival tour. A new CD with French piano music was released in September 2019 (Gramophone: “There’s simply no one quite like her.”). She continued with the 6th edition of her own “International Piano Academy” in Bavaria and acted as a juror of some of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions.

2020 began promising with another tour in North America featuring concerts in 5 Canadian provinces including a highly acclaimed recital at Salle Bourgie in Montreal as well as a recital at Willamette University in Oregon’s capital Salem.

Ms Fialkowska and her husband, cultural manager Harry Oesterle, reside in Bavaria, Germany.