1. Early years and training

2. Career and Musical Style

3. Music of Exiled Composers

4. Classical Music Outreach

5. Discography
     Orchestral / Concertos    Solo Albums  

6. Notes

7. External links

Daniel Wnukowski (born July 15, 1981) is a Polish Canadian pianist whose insightful interpretations of the standard classical music repertory are supplemented by projects that uncover rarely performed works.

Early years and training

Wnukowski was born in Windsor Ontario. One of his grandfathers was a Holocaust survivor.^[1] At age 3 and a half he showed strong fascination for a grand piano made completely out of glass in a music store and begged his parents to begin taking piano lessons.^[2][3] At the age of 12, he performed his composition "Like A Dove" together with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra. In 1997, at the age of 15, he moved to Warsaw, Poland for further studies and in 2000 became a laureate of the National Chopin Piano Competition resulting in many concerts all throughout Europe.^[4]

He studied piano at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland, with Piotr Paleczny, at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland, with Leon Fleisher^[2][3] and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Ronan O'Hora and Graham Johnson. In 2006, he was awarded a scholarship to study at the International Piano Academy Lake Como.^[5]

Career and Musical Style

His winning numerous performance awards and prizes has enabled him to perform all over Europe, Asia, North America and South America in many prestigious concert halls including the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, Poland, the Concertgebouw Music Hall in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the Salle Pleyel in Paris, France, and the Stadt Casino in Basel, Switzerland, the Tokyo University of the Arts in Tokyo, Japan, and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Italy.^[2][3]

He has performed with the Polish Radio Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Windsor Symphony, Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, Southfield Symphony, Poznan Philharmonic, Sinfonia Iuventus, Tifereth Israel Orchestra, with conductors such as Jerzy Maksymiuk, Alain Trudel, David Amos, Tomasz Bugaj, Romolo Gessi and John Morris Russell. He is also very active as a chamber musician and vocal accompanist. His festival engagements include performances at the Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy; the Pre-LSO Concert Series in London, UK; the Coppet Festival in Geneva, Switzerland; and the Euromusica Masterconcert Series and Uto Ughi Festival in Rome, Italy.^[2][3]

Wnukowski has an affinity for the music of Frédéric Chopin and other notable Polish composers such as Karol Szymanowski, Marek Stachowski, and Pawel Szymański. He has performed at numerous Frédéric Chopin societies around the world in cities such as Rome, Paris, Vienna, Toronto, Basel, Tokyo, Detroit, Warsaw, Singapore, Buenos Aires and Duszniki Zdrój. In 2010, Wnukowski performed Chopin's works worldwide in honor of the composer's 200th birth anniversary, including a recital together with soprano Aleksandra Kurzak in Poznań, Poland.

Daniel Wnukowski has also performed in important piano festivals such as the Chopin and His Europe festival in Warsaw, Poland, the Spoleto Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto,^[6] Italy, the Duszniki Zdrój Chopin Festival in Duszniki Zdrój, Poland,^[2] the Euromusica Masterconcert Series and the Uto Ughi Festival in Rome, Italy,^[7] International Piano Festival Chopiniana in Buenos Aires, Argentina,^[8] the Coppet Festival in Geneva, Switzerland,^[9] as well as those organized by the Chopin Society in Basel, Switzerland,^[10] the Chopin Society in Vienna, Austria^[11] and the Chopin Society in Rome, Italy.^[12]

Career highlights:

• On November 30, 2018, he presented a selection of Mazurkas by Chopin in a recital entitled "Conversations with Chopin" for live radio at the New Classical FM in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.^[13]
• On November 20, 2017, he performed a lecture recital for music students at University of California, San Diego on the topic of exiled Jewish composers.^[14]
• On January 1, 2017, he inaugurated the 2017 year at National Philharmonic in Warsaw, performing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue under the direction of Jerzy Maksymiuk.^[15]
• On May 7, 2016, he performed a recently published piano concerto by Józef Koffler together with Sinfonia Iuventus under the direction of Krzysztof Slowinski at the Festival of Music Encounters in Warsaw, Poland.^[16]
• On March 27, 2011, he performed a recital at the Stelio Molo Auditorium, in Lugano, Switzerland to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of Liszt's Birth, which was broadcast on RSI Swiss radio.^[17]
• On December 10, 2010, he performed as a collaborative pianist and Samling Scholar at the Wigmore Hall in London, UK.^[18]
• In May 2010, Wnukowski performed a special recital in Tokyo to commemorate the unveiling of a new Chopin monument in that city.^[19] This also led to a debut in Singapore, where he accompanied an Erhu, in the hall of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra.^[20] He also performed an outdoor concert for a large crowd at the Singapore Botanic Gardens in a concert program titled "Chopin by the Lake."^[21]
• In 2007, he performed Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 and Mozart's Piano Concert No. 27 with the Polish Radio Orchestra under the direction of Tomasz Bugaj which was broadcast on Polish Radio stations.^[22]
• At age 14, he performed at the Polish Embassy for government diplomats and officials in Ottawa, Ontario, becoming the youngest pianist to ever perform at the Embassy.
• In 1997, in remembrance of the outbreak of World War II, he performed a recital at the National Theatre in Warsaw, Poland in front of an audience of over 2,000 people, which was broadcast all over European television.^[2]

His performances have been broadcast on radio and television stations throughout the world including CBC Radio, Polish Radio 2, Dublin City FM, Tuttoggi TV, Rai Uno, Radiotelevisione svizzera di lingua italiana and Last FM.

The San Diego Arts music critic wrote that "his dynamic range is phenomenal" and that he has an "ability to play things at supernatural velocity without making a single mistake."^[23]

Music of Exiled Composers

The music of interwar Jewish composers has occupied a special place in Daniel Wnukowski’s repertoire, especially those composers who were affected by the Holocaust. Wnukowski is the recipient of numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and other foundations for promoting the works of exiled composers such as Szymon Laks, Władysław Szpilman, Viktor Ullmann, and Józef Koffler. Wnukowski recorded the recently published piano concerto of Józef Koffler together with Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra conducted by Christoph Slowinski, which was released on the EDA label in 2017.^[24]

Wnukowski’s recordings in this field have also included the exiled composer Walter Arlens’ complete piano works, which Wnukowski edited for the Vienna-based publisher Doblinger. Additionally, his performance of Walter Arlen's piano works at the Austrian Parliament on May 5, 2017, during the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust (Gedenktag gegen Gewalt und Rassismus im Gedenken an die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus) was broadcast live on Austrian television for ORF-2.^[25] His recordings of Walter Arlen's piano music were used as a soundtrack in a documentary about the composer's life titled "Walter Arlen's First Century" (Das erste Jahrhundert des Walter Arlen), which premiered at the Vienna International Film Festival on October 30, 2018.^[26]

He has received numerous praise from music critics for his performances and recordings of music by exiled composers. The Sunday Times called him "a dashing pianist",^[27] while the 2018 Autumn issue of Fanfare Magazine noted "a fierce inner conviction and sense of discovery."^[28]

Classical Music Outreach

Wnukowski is currently active in promoting various charitable organizations.^[29][30] In 2018, he founded the Piano Six "New Generation" collective that involves five other pianists performing in remote, rural regions throughout Canada.^[1] Wnukowski also joined as a member of the Vienna-based

Varietas Ensemble, which performs recitals for handicapped children.^[31]

Discography

Orchestral / Concertos

• George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue. With The Warmińsko-Mazurska Philharmonic, celebrating the XII New Year's Concert at the National Philharmonic in Warsaw. MTeatr. (2017) ^[32]
• Józef Koffler: en hommage: Koffler. Piano Concerto with Sinfonia Iuventus. EDA Records, EDA 42. (2016) ^[33]

Solo Albums

• Walter Arlen: Die Letzte Blaue. With violinist Daniel Hope, soprano Rebecca Nelsen, and baritone Christian Immler Gramola: 98996.^[33]
• Walter Arlen: Wien, du allein. With soprano Rebecca Nelsen. Gramola: 99078.^[33]
• Frédéric Chopin: A Chopin Recital. Recorded at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, Ontario, in 2001.^[34]

Notes

External links

• Official website
• Mp3 Downloads

• Joanne Johnson
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