Standing room only
Pianist-conductor Krystian Zimerman performed to standing-room only crowds last week at the Warsaw Philharmonic as the curtain came down on a year of exhibitions and concerts devoted to the life of Frederic Chopin.
Zimerman, 43, led a more than 60-piece orchestra through youthful intrepretations of Chopin's piano concertos marked by swelling phrases and changing tempos. That's part of Zimerman's vision of the 19th century composer who premiered his first piano concerto at the age of 19. To get that effect, Zimerman spent time training the ears of his young musicians last week in the final hours before the performance.
"You have to play a nice sound all the time," Zimerman told them. "One unguarded moment and it (the sound) is wrong. A bit of quiet, please ... There! Now that's the bottom line between pianissimo and soundlessness."
Chopin was also known as an opera lover. To bring out that character in the composer's concertos, Zimerman emphasized two "voices:" the piano and violins. Last week's two performances in Warsaw marked the end of one year's work establishing the sound Zimerman was after. Last December, Zimerman began from scratch, auditioning musicians to build an orchestra that would eventually tour 21 countries in Europe and North America to showcase Chopin's works during the year that UNESCO deemed "The Year of Chopin" on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the composer's death. Out of 450 who auditioned, Zimerman chose 62.
"He decided that the best solution would be setting up a new orchestra," said Jan Popis, a media specialist with the Polish Festival Orchestra. "A fresh one, unpoisoned by bad habits, to create a new vision from the very beginning," he said.
The four-month tour, which began in August in Gdansk, included performances at Salzburger Festspiele in Salzburg, the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Salle Pleyel in Paris. The troupe crossed the Atlantic Ocean and performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Carnegie Hall in New York. Zimerman's project culminated at the Warsaw Philharmonic last Friday with the 41st concert on the tour.
Zimerman launched his musical career at the philharmonic here 24 years ago, when as a 19-year-old he took the Grand Prix award at the International Chopin Piano Competition, considered by many the piano "Olympics" held every five years in Warsaw. He later left Poland and his most recent Warsaw performance occurred in 1988.
His return last week was long awaited. Seats for the two performances, 1,072 each night and priced from zl. 150-zl. 300, were "sold out immediately on the first day the box office opened the sale on Oct. 21," said Joanna Polok from the promotion department at the Warsaw Philharmonic. Last week, the philharmonic was selling standing-room tickets before the performances. A dejected Marta Ostrowska, a student at the Warsaw School of Economics, stood outside the concert hall last Thursday.
"I came here about 50 minutes before the concert, and I realized that all standing-room tickets had already been sold," Ostrowska said. "I am disappointed, but I am still here in line, waiting for a miracle," she added.
Zofia Miketta had a seat. "It's been a long time since I heard him play," Miketta said last week. It was at Carnegie Hall a few years ago, she added. "I was so touched that I cried."
