{"id":25995,"date":"2020-02-21T18:13:19","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T23:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25995"},"modified":"2020-02-21T23:10:06","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T04:10:06","slug":"cultural-centre-marks-tenth-anniversary-with-concert-by-renowned-pianist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/cultural-centre-marks-tenth-anniversary-with-concert-by-renowned-pianist\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Centre marks tenth anniversary with concert by renowned pianist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Aurora Cultural Centre is set to celebrate its tenth\nanniversary this Friday, February 21, with a special performance by renowned\nCanadian pianist Janina Fialkowska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Fialkowska, who is in the midst of a Canadian tour,\nwill bring her program of French music to the Cultural Centre as part of the\nGreat Artists Piano Series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having launched her career in 1974 with the mentorship of\nlegendary musician Arthur Rubenstein, Ms. Fialkowska\u2019s career has taken her to\nthe most celebrated concert halls around the globe \u2013 collecting an Order of\nCanada along the way \u2013 but this week marks a return engagement to Aurora\u2019s own\nBrevik Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI started very early because my brother played the piano\nand I wanted to be like him,\u201d Ms. Fialkowska told The Auroran last week, over\nthe phone from her home in Bavaria. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t the beginning of my love of\npiano but sibling rivalry! My mother was my teacher and I wanted to please her,\nbut I found it was kind of fun to play and do something different from the\nother children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She began to take piano more seriously at the age of\ntwelve when her parents took her to see the Montreal Symphony. There,\nRubenstein was playing a Chopin concerto and the youngster felt a whole new\nworld open up for her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuddenly, I was absolutely mesmerized. The music moved\nme to tears,\u201d she recalls. \u201cIt was also about the performer and I suddenly\nrealized what he was doing, what he was communicating, how he held the entire\n3,000 people in the audience spellbound. I realized that if music could hold\nsuch a power over people \u2013 such a good power over people \u2013 it was from that\nmoment on I knew there was only one thing I wanted to do: play the piano, make\nmusic, and try to create this bond between the genius of the composer and the\nwonderfully receptive audience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is exactly what she has done over her storied\ncareer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, she has become renowned as \u201cone of the\ngreat interpreters of the piano works of Chopin and Mozart,\u201d according to the\nAurora Cultural Centre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The works of both composers will be well-represented when\nshe takes the stage this week. Her \u201cFrench Program\u201d consists of selections from\nDebussy, Revel, Faur\u00e9, Tailleferre, in addition to Chopin. Some might not\nconsider Mozart\u2019s place in a \u201cFrench\u201d program, she said, but he will be\nrepresented by what she describes as \u201chis most dramatic sonata\u201d, composed while\ntouring Paris with his mother, who died in the City of Lights during their\ntrip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is one of the most personal sonatas he ever wrote,\nverging on the romantic movement, breaking the boundaries of classical\nmovement,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is really a wonderful sonata and I love playing it.\nWhat always strikes me as wonderful about French music is that although the\ncomposers are all very individual and have very different personalities, the\nminute one hears their music one thinks of France, one thinks of Paris. I don\u2019t\nknow how they do it, but that\u2019s what I love about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople really actually like this program very much\nbecause it is varied. The second half is all Chopin and I think people expect\nto hear Chopin. I am always happy to play Chopin and Chopin is always a winner\nwith any audience. Audiences are glad to hear these different kinds of French\nmusic which people don\u2019t often get the opportunity to hear. It creates\nbeautiful pictures in one\u2019s mind, but it is incredibly restful as well.\nSomehow, that strikes a chord with the very stressful and nervous world that we\nlive in to come and sit and listen to half an hour or 45 minutes of lovely,\nbeautiful French music, it is something that actually works, I hope. I haven\u2019t\nhad any complaints!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to being appointed Officer of the Order of\nCanada, Ms. Fialkowska is a recipient of the 2012 Governor General\u2019s Lifetime\nAchievement Award in Classical Music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has recently completed a new recording of French\npiano music for the ATMA Classique label.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tickets for Friday\u2019s concert, which will open with a pre-concert talk by Rick Philips of CBC Radio\u2019s Sound Advice at 6.45 p.m., before the 7.30 p.m. curtain, are on sale now through auroraculturalcentre.ca or by phone through 905-713-1818.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aurora Cultural Centre is set to celebrate its tenth anniversary this Friday, February 21, with a special performance by renowned Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska. Ms. Fialkowska, who is in the midst of a Canadian tour, will bring her program of French music to the Cultural Centre as part of the Great Artists Piano Series. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/2020-02-20-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Lh","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 09:52:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}