Piano star Blechacz sets sights on new Steinway

> BY ALEXANDER VARTY

He’s one of the greatest living interpreters of the classical and romantic piano repertoire, and enough of a scholar that he’s completing a doctorate in the philosophy of music, but it’s not art or aesthetics that we want to ask Rafal Blechacz about when we reach him following an afternoon concert in Atlanta, Georgia.

It’s money. More specifically, what does one do when an unexpected US$300,000 suddenly lands in your lap?

In 2014, Blechacz was the winner of the Gilmore Artist Award, given every four years to an outstanding concert pianist. With it came US$50,000 with no strings attached, and a further quarter-million earmarked for “artistic development”. Naturally, we wanted to know just how that sum was spent, but the prudent pianist happily confesses that, so far, it remains in the bank.

“I’m still considering different options,” Blechacz says, his fluent English marked by a light Polish accent. “Probably I will buy a new piano—a Steinway Model D, the concert piano, because now in my house I have a Model B. It’s also a very good piano, but it’s not a typical concert Steinway, so it would be very nice to have that.”

He adds that the Model D has expressive possibilities his current instrument just can’t match. “The sound is much bigger,” he explains. “You can reach some different colours and shapes of sound, which is very important in Debussy and other French music, but also in Chopin.”

Blechacz is no stranger to winning. His career was effectively launched in 2005, when he took top honours at the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, impressing the judges so comprehensively that no second prize was awarded. His technique has only improved since then— and so, he says, has his understanding of the interplay between music, performer, and listener.

“The relation between the artist and the audience is very important, especially when you play some metaphysical pieces, like Bach’s music or Chopin compositions like the Fantasy on Polish Airs or the late mazurkas,” he explains. “I remember the situation when I played a few years ago in Hamburg, in Germany. I performed Chopin’s Mazurkas, Op. 17, and the last mazurka is very special, because the last chord in it is played pianissimo, very quiet, and when I finished it I realized that the audience was fully in silence. It was like they’d been hypnotized; they didn’t applaud. And I realized that this was the greatest reward for me, because I sat and I knew that all the people in the concert hall were in my musical world, which was created at that moment.”

This doesn’t mean you should hold your applause when Blechacz plays Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and of course Frédéric Chopin at his Vancouver Chopin Society–sponsored recital this weekend. But if you’re that way inclined, he won’t mind.

“It’s not always like that; you cannot plan it,” the pianist says. “But when it happens, it’s very special.”