Krystian Zimerman

Krystian Zimerman 2018

Krystian Zimerman (born December 5, 1956 in Zabrze , Poland ) is a Polish pianist .

Life

Krystian Zimerman studied at the Katowice Music Academy and won the Warsaw Chopin Competition in 1975 . He was also awarded the special prize of the Chopin Society.

Since then he has worked with the conductors Herbert von Karajan , Leonard Bernstein , Seiji Ozawa and Sir Simon Rattle and made the acquaintance of the pianist Arthur Rubinstein . According to his own admission, the conductors Kirill Kondraschin and Carlo Zecchi as well as the Polish theater director Tadeusz Kantor , who showed him the means of communication with a multilingual ensemble, which Zimerman were useful in his collaboration with orchestras , had the greatest influence on him .

Zimerman withdrew early record releases because they no longer met their own high standards. The result was that his few available recordings are often among the references on the market, e.g. B. his interpretations of Debussy's Preludes , the piano concertos, the dance of death and the B minor sonata by Liszt as well as the concertos No. 1 and No. 2 by Rachmaninoff .

Zimerman does not give more than 50 concerts per year, which according to his own statements is not cost-covering. He always travels with his own instrument and takes several keyboards with him on tours.

Zimerman also appears as a conductor at irregular intervals. After the death of Leonard Bernstein , with whom he had tackled a complete recording of Beethoven's piano concertos , he completed the recordings of the first two concerts that were still missing and also took on the duties of conductor.

He repeated this "experiment" in 1999: by founding the Polish Festival Orchestra on the 150th anniversary of Chopin's death. Together with the young, exclusively Polish musicians, Zimerman went on tour - only with the two concerts in E minor op. 11 and F minor op. 21 , which he then recorded on CD.

Krystian Zimerman has lived with his family in Basel since 1996 , where he teaches a master class at the Basel School of Music .

In April 2009 he caused an uproar during a concert in the United States when he demanded from the stage in relation to the American rocket shield in Poland: Get your hands off my country . This statement was possibly also personally motivated, as Zimerman's Steinway wing was confiscated and destroyed by customs eight years earlier, shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, when entering the USA on suspicion of terrorism.

On June 4, 2013 he broke off a concert in the Philharmonie Essen because a listener was filming it. After re-entering the stage, Zimerman explained his anger over illegal videos.

In 2015, Zimerman donated the Krystian Zimerman Prize for the first time for the best performance of a Chopin sonata as part of the International Chopin Competition . In October 2015 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.

Recordings (selection)

• Claude Debussy : Préludes ( Deutsche Grammophon 1994, recording in September 1991 in the ballroom of the Kassel town hall)
• Franz Schubert : Piano Sonatas in A major D 959 and B flat major D 960 (Deutsche Grammophon 2017, recorded in January 2016 at the Performing Arts Center in the Japanese city of Kashiwazaki )

Awards (selection)

• 1994: Gramophone Award in the Record of the Year category for Claude Debussy: Préludes
• 1994: Choc de l'Année by the French magazine Classica for Claude Debussy: Préludes
• 1994: Ritmo Award from the Spanish classical music magazine Ritmo for Claude Debussy: Préludes
• 1995: Echo Klassik in the chamber music recording of the year category for Claude Debussy: Préludes
• 1995: Edison in the Classical category for Claude Debussy: Preludes
• 1995: Cannes Classical Award for Claude Debussy: Preludes
• 1995: Grand Prix de la Nouvelle Académie for Claude Debussy: Préludes
• 1995: Diapason d'or de l'année for Claude Debussy: Préludes
• 1995: Grand Prix du Discophile Répertoire for Claude Debussy: Préludes

Web links

• Recordings by Krystian Zimerman in the catalog of the German National Library
• Harald Eggebrecht : The perfectionist at the piano. Classic column on Krystian Zimerman. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . 3rd November 2014

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfram Goertz : "I don't want to see the piano any more". In: The time . March 16, 2006, accessed September 4, 2016 . 
2. ^ Johannes Saltzwedel : pianist Krystian Zimerman. Samurai of sounds. In: Spiegel Online . February 24, 2006, accessed October 24, 2016 . 
3. ^ Margot Weber: The soul seeker. Krystian Zimerman. In: Magazine of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna . November 2006, archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; accessed on August 31, 2015 . 
4. ^ Polish pianist stops show with anti-US tirade. In: The Guardian . April 28, 2009, accessed May 19, 2012.
5. ↑ Krystian Zimerman no longer wants to give concerts in the USA. In: klassik.com . April 29, 2009. Retrieved November 25, 2009 . 
6. ↑ Krystian Zimerman: Pianist interrupts concert because of cell phone filmmakers. In: Spiegel Online . June 4, 2013, accessed December 2, 2014 . 
7. ↑ Poland's Chopin Competition draws to a close. Radio Poland, October 20, 2015, accessed October 24, 2016 . 
8. ^ Pianist Zimerman honored by Warsaw's Music University. Radio Poland, October 9, 2015, accessed September 4, 2016 . 
9. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Krystian Zimerman. In: KlassikAkzente. Universal Music GmbH, October 23, 2015, accessed on January 18, 2017 .