Marek Jablonski

Marek Jablonski (born November 5, 1939 in Krakow , † May 8, 1999 in Edmonton ) was a Canadian pianist and music teacher of Polish origin.

Jablonski had lessons at the Kraków Conservatory from the age of six. In 1949 he came to Canada with his family, where he was a student of Gladys Egbert and attended the summer courses at the Banff Center for the Arts . In 1957 he received a Dimitri Mitropoulos Scholarship and studied at the Aspen School in Denver, Colorado and with Rosina Lhevinne at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

In 1961 he won the Grand Prix at the Jeunesses musicales du Canada competition . He then performed with numerous orchestras in Canada, the United States and Europe. Among other things, he played Chopin's First Piano Concerto with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in November 1961 , performed with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1962 and with the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall in 1963 . In 1962 he was featured in the CBC TV series Recital .

In 1963 he studied with Ilona Kabos in London and made his debut at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. He toured France, Italy, Austria, Yugoslavia and Poland in 1965 and performed at Wigmore Hall in London in 1969 . Between 1969 and 1975 he made four tours of the USSR. In 1971 he appeared in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, London, Madrid, Stockholm and Zurich, and the NFB produced the film Jablonski about him. In Montreal he gave a concert with Glenn Gould of music from the 1920s.

Jablonski's repertoire included the works of Liszt , Brahms , Beethoven , Mozart , Schubert , Szymanowski and Rachmaninoff . Chopin's piano works were always at the center of his interest.

In addition to his concert activities, Jablonski gave master classes in Toronto, Montreal, Bergamo, Milan and Corfu and from 1974 to 1998 every summer at the Banff Center for the Arts . From 1975 to 1981 he taught at the University of Manitoba , from 1985 to 1993 at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto (RCMT), then at the University of Alberta .

Jablonski's best-known students are Jon Kimura Parker , Kevin Fitzgerald , Bernadene Blaha and Francine Kay . In 1999 the Marek Jablonski Prize was donated for young interpreters of Chopin's works, the first winner of which was Thomas Yu .