A new CD by the Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman has been released by Deutsche Gramophon, albeit two years after the original recordings were made.
The recording is a tribute to the Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz. To mark her birth centenary in 2009, Zimerman came to Poland on what was his first tour after a lapse of ten years.
The tour’s programme included several concerts of Bacewicz’s chamber works performed by Zimerman and four Polish musicians, the violinists Kaja Danczowska and Agata Szymczewska, the cellist Rafal Kwiatkowski and the violist Ryszard Groblewski. The tour was followed by a recording session in Katowice.
The CD includes Bacewicz’s Piano Quintets Nos. 1 and 2 and the Piano Sonata No. 2. In his review of the recording, Andrew Clements wrote in The Guardian (UK) that “the performances are outstanding, and Krystian Zimerman’s account of the finale of the Second Sonata is quite dazzling.”
Zimerman himself is not too happy with the CD. According to the Rzeczpospolita daily, he wanted to include in it also a recording of a violin piece by Bacewicz performed by the composer, who was also a violin virtuoso, but negotiations with Polish Radio, which owns the recording, have ended in a fiasco.
It is because of these protracted negotiations that the CD saw the light of day two years after the recording session. The daily also quotes the pianist as saying that he is disappointed with the financial balance sheet of his 2009 tour.
Zimerman had hoped that more money would go to a charity and that 12,000 euro would be set aside as his special prize for the best interpretation of a sonata at last year’s Chopin Competition in Warsaw.
“I was astonished to learn that the organisers decided to lower the cash prize,” Zimerman told Rzeczpospolita, adding that all his visits to Poland were followed by a spate of gossip and intrigue.
The pianist has cancelled his planned tour of Poland with Chopin sonatas and instead of performing in Warsaw and Wroclaw in 2013, he has decided to go to Berlin and Paris. (mk/jb)